WHILE WE ARE FREE TO CHOOSE

OUR ACTIONS,

WE ARE NOT FREE TO CHOOSE

THE CONSEQUENCES OF OUR ACTIONS. 

STEPHEN COVEY

Have you ever observed an extremely naughty and loud child in a store with a mother who is completely ignoring her child and acting like nothing is going on?  If you are like me you have probably thought to yourself, why would the child behave?  They certainly aren't suffering any consequences from their actions.  Managing your employees is exactly the same.  Do not allow your employees to choose the consequences of their actions because you aren't choosing any for them.  I have to ask, why would you set any policies or procedures if you do not intend to enforce each and every one of them?  Timely discussions and/or disciplinary action can save a really good employee.  You owe timely consequences to your employees.  The key factor for effective management is to administer the proper disciplinary action the same day the infraction occured, when possible, but no more than two days from the date of the infraction.  If there are no consequences, or only occasional consequences, you do not only lose all influence with your employees but you also leave yourself open for a discrimination case.  If you do not facilitate consequences for employees actions they will begin to choose their own actions and consequences.  At this point you have lost total control.

Any employee who demonstrates continual poor performance, poor behavior, violates a policy or demonstrates inappropriate workplace conduct should be given a verbal warning.  This should be behind closed doors and documented in the employees file.  There should be an agreed upon corrective plan with expectations and follow up dates.  Document the verbal warning in the employee's file.  If expectations are not met then the employee should receive a written warning which will be signed by both the employee and the owner/manager stating specific problem areas, documentation of infractions and expected performance improvement with dates.  If these expectations are not met the same will happen on a probationary notice.  If there is still no improvement the employee will be terminated.  Follow this process for all infractions;  attendance, punctuality, quality of work, excessive breakage and damage, etc.  If you faithfully follow this process and document every infraction you will never lose an unemployment case, probably will never lose a law suit and will come across to your employees as an organization that has clear expectations both verbally and in your actions.

An added bonus to using a timely system of disciplinary action is a verbal warning generally fixes the problem.  Until there is a clear statement of the infraction to the employee the employee may feel that they really did not understand how important 'the problem' was.  Perhaps they didn't, perhaps they did, who knows?  What is clear to the employee now is that there is a problem that must be fixed.  Once this is made clear to the employee most employees will fix their problem. 

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