6 Employee Discipline Tips for Your Business

An employee discipline program is in place to handle situations in which an employee violates company rules or policies. Rather than as punishment, employee discipline should be viewed as an opportunity to foster, build, and enhance individual performance to improve overall company productivity and culture. Implementing a disciplinary policy also helps to prevent poor performance or undesirable employee behavior in the first place.

Here are the six must-know employee discipline tips to help prevent misconduct and enforce discipline in your business.

1. Communicate Your Disciplinary Policy

Your company’s disciplinary policy should be clearly communicated, widely published, and readily available. The more information provided, the less room for misinterpretation and error.

For easy visibility, your policy should be communicated in your employee handbook. An employee handbook includes everything your employees could possibly need or want to know about company policies. Most businesses hold employee orientations or require signed acknowledgment of company expectations from employees early on.

You may communicate disciplinary policy rules by category. Common categories include:

• Day-to-Day – This type of company policy may outline attendance, tardiness, time off policy, phone policy, dress code, and available resources for employees.
• Employee Conduct – The employee code of conduct may include a breakdown of company expectations for employee productivity and work ethic; acceptable and unacceptable treatment and behavior toward customers, peers, and superiors; and company policy on unethical or illegal behaviors and actions and poor performance.
  • This section can then expand to review company policies on employee performance expectations, job descriptions, performance evaluations or employee reviews, and disciplinary action.
• One Strike or Inviolable Rules – For some companies and industries, the safety of employees is paramount. It is mostly at these kinds of companies where there is one strike, or “inviolable rules,” which, when broken, result in immediate termination. This might include an egregious violation of safety protocol that endangers or harms company employees.

2. Decide What Constitutes a Policy Violation

There are some factors to be considered when determining what constitutes a policy violation. First, the severity of the offense must be considered. A minor infraction may not warrant the same punishment as a major one. Second, the intent of the offender must be taken into account. If someone breaks a rule accidentally, they should not be treated the same as someone who deliberately disobeyed it.

In addition to whatever is specifically outlined in the employee handbook, here are some examples of employee misconduct that likely require corrective or disciplinary action:

• Absenteeism
• Abuse of customers
• Abusive language towards colleagues or supervisor
• Assault
• Causing unsafe working conditions
• Damage to machinery, equipment, or other company property
• Defamation of employer or colleagues
• Dishonesty
• Violation of contractual agreement (Non-Compete or Non-Disclosure, or Conflict of Interest)
• Falsification of documentation
• Loafing
• Negligence
• Obscene or immoral conduct
• Possession or use of illegal substances
• Refusal to accept assignment or overtime assignment
• Sleeping on the job
• Slowdown
• Tardiness
• Theft
• Threats, threatening language, or profane language directed at colleagues or management

One of the legal obligations of employee discipline is that it must be applied consistently without discrimination, exception, or favoritism. Whatever you decide constitutes a policy violation must be uniformly applicable to all employees. While it may be tempting to vary disciplinary action among job descriptions and departments, it’s a legal can of worms.

3. Offer Progressive Discipline & Due Process

Hopefully, yours is a company culture that fosters employee sentiment of feeling heard, valued, and respected—and there’s no better place to demonstrate this than in the disciplinary process. A modern disciplinary model is that of progressive discipline. This simply means employees are given due process, scaled disciplinary action, and consequences that fit the offense. The progressive discipline model typically follows a four-step process (with slight variation depending on company culture and industry): verbal warning, written warning, final written warning, and termination.

• Verbal Warning – The employee should be given a verbal warning from their direct supervisor, with facts and specific examples to support that warning and ample opportunity to explain the event in question.
• Written Warning – This represents escalation, neglect, or repetition of the problem, or an employee’s inability to adhere to their performance improvement plan (PIP) within the given time frame. Sometimes, a written warning will warn of an impending termination if the behavior or problem is not curbed.
• Final Written Warning – If an employee fails to improve after the verbal and written warnings, they should be given one last opportunity to do so. Prepare a final written warning that includes a recap of the previous steps taken and why this last step is necessary. Be explicitly clear with the employee that if you have another discussion with them, it could be to terminate them.
• Termination – Under some circumstances, when all else fails, it is the unfortunate obligation of businesses to terminate employees. As outlined in our how to terminate an employee guide, this process should involve thorough documentation of the disciplinary process and why the ultimate solution is termination.

4. Investigate Thoroughly

Conducting a fair investigation is essential to arriving at the appropriate course of action in a case of employee misconduct. Employees are entitled to due process. In the occasion that you have to conduct an employee misconduct investigation, be sure to abide by the following general guidelines:

• Keep investigation records, ensuring they are secure and confidential
• Where applicable, abide by union collective bargaining agreements
• Do your homework and know the law (and maybe hire a lawyer)

5. Document Everything

Documentation is the lifeblood of a compliant, legal, and fair disciplinary process. Sufficient recordkeeping can help businesses protect themselves and defend against an OSHA citation or penalty, a lawsuit levied by an employee, or charges brought by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), among others.

Adequate documentation of an employee’s disciplinary record may include:

• Employee personnel file
• Documentation of poor employee performance or misconduct
• Complaint form(s)
• Witness reports
• Record of meetings with the employee in issue
• Discipline or termination reports
• Record of employee redress, including mediation or arbitration
• Written materials relevant to investigation

6. Do a Self-Check

Nobody’s perfect, and even practiced human resources professionals make mistakes every now and then. A great self-check on your disciplinary process with an employee is to ask yourself at each stage of discipline:

• Did I clearly define what was expected?
• Was the employee aware of disciplinary rules/inviolable rules?
• Did I perform the necessary training/retraining?
• Would others be held to the same standard?

If you answered “yes” to these questions, it would appear the discipline is appropriate. It’s rarely pleasant, but can be fruitful when executed properly.

Bottom Line

Following these tips will help any employer establish a specific, fair, and public policy that employees can easily abide by. When employee discipline is necessary, there is due process that makes the procedure easier and more objective for all parties involved. The ultimate goal of employee discipline is to keep and foster good employees with good intentions, ensure employee health and safety, avoid terminations, and enhance company productivity and personnel harmony.