Disciplining employees not pop-culture simple

Not fun, but necessary: Good communication can ease the pain of dealing with problems

By Jacob Moon

The Salt Lake Tribune

http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_2377858

You’re fired!

Thanks to Donald Trump and reality television, the phrase has become commonplace in many households, but regardless of what pop culture wants you to believe, employee discipline is not that simple.

An employee arrives at work an hour late for the fifth time in three weeks. He has generally been producing good work, but his attention to punctuality is noticeably diminishing.

Co-workers are starting to notice and have even commented about the negative trend, but managers don’t seem to be doing anything to correct the behavior – possibly out of fear of losing a friendship with the delinquent employee by uttering those two fateful words.

It is a scenario many employers have to deal with on a regular basis.

"The biggest thing for employers to remember is to proactively communicate their concerns with their employees," employment lawyer Jonathan Driggs says.

Even if communication may be difficult to carry out, Driggs argues it will pay surprising dividends, the largest being a healthy employment relationship in the office. Even if employment doesn’t work out in the end, good communication will help it "work out amicably."

Expectations of both the employer and employee should be clear from the beginning, says Deborah Stone, a director of the Salt Lake Society for Human Resource Management.

"It should never be a surprise when an employee is terminated for a specific deficiency," she says.

Good human resource practices usually include some type of progressive discipline policy, Stone says, in which the employer would typically receive an oral warning, two written warnings and, if the problem isn’t resolved, termination.

Problems often arise when managers are afraid to discipline employees because they don’t want to come across as being mean. Instead of dealing with the issue, they terminate the employee without any warning.

"When we give someone a warning about their performance, we are being fair to them," Driggs says. "You’re not being mean, you are not being harsh, you’re not the bad guy. You are being unfair to the employee when you do otherwise."

Such advice can be a good reminder for managers who regularly deal with discipline problems, says Debbie Pazos, district operations and sales manager for Kelly Services.

"Its hard to treat everyone the same," she says. "You need to be fair and consistent regardless of your feelings toward any particular employee."

When dealing with legal implications of hiring and firing employees, Driggs says fairness and consistency are the safest defense. If terminated employees feel that they have been discriminated against, a record of consistency will provide strong evidence to clear up situations where they think discrimination occurred.

Driggs admits it sounds simple, but the best way to avoid having to deal with problem employees is to not hire them.

"We need to do our due diligence during the hiring process. We need to do thorough, searching, legally compliant job interviews that stem the flow of problem employees," he says.