Download
1 / 62
620 likes | 734 Vues
“Performance Management” . ‘One Step at a Time’ – Documenting Disciplinary Issues”. Presented by: Hortense White, MBA. Introduction.
E N D
“Performance Management” ‘One Step at a Time’ – Documenting Disciplinary Issues” Presented by: Hortense White, MBA
Introduction The purpose of this presentation is to provide leaders with the principles of effective employee discipline and demonstrate how to document management actions in an appropriate manner. Included in this presentation are examples of best practices.
Introduction (cont’d) • Documentation of employee performance and/or conduct issues is very important to both management and to employees. • Effective documentation can help employees take corrective action and ward off potential law suits especially if an organization has a progressive discipline policy.
Objectives At the close of this session, you will be able to:
A tree is typically a woody perennial plant having “a single usually elongate main stem generally with few or no branches on its lower part (bark)”, yet branches form when the tree has matured. The older the tree the broader its bark and better its branches when it has been nurtured. Each person is metaphorically a tree whose broadened knowledge and maturity sprouts branches of ideas for prosperity and is based on its growth journey and then inspire newer branches to do the same. “If you want to have a healthy tree, it will takes a lot of sunshine , fertilizer and rain… Successes give you confidence, but the set backs will give you character.”
Overview… • Organizations are comprised of: • Top Performers: 10 – 30 % • Average Performers: 50 – 70% • Poor Performers: 10 – 20% • Look for ways to reinforce good performance. • Don’t over look good performance • Confront and correct poor performance and/or behavior.
What Makes Someone Difficult? • Difficult employees are driven by the need to control their environments"...difficult people mainly use their conduct to control their situations and other people's reactions. • Difficult employees thrive on the chaos they create and go out of their way to push people's buttons.
What Makes Someone Difficult? (cont’d) • Difficult employees create a great deal of havoc in the workplace. Yet many leaders refuse to address the problem. • Despite costs and burdens of these employees, many leaders ignore the problem (hoping it will go away) or simply fail to act. • Doing nothing only perpetuates the cycle, further reinforcing difficult employees' behaviors. • The most important tool a supervisor can use in addressing the difficult employee's problem behavior is feedback.
Why Leaders Avoid Discipline… • The manager feel dependant on the employee. • Solution: Look at the big picture. In truth, there is a huge performance gap between high and low performers in any organization - 30%-50% percent for unskilled jobs and up to 1000% for highly technical ones. Poor performers, regardless of their technical merit, never justify their costs. • The manager confuses discipline with punishment. • Solution: Provide skills training. When used appropriately, your discipline system doesn’t focus on punishing an employee for misdeeds, it provides a concrete opportunity for employees to take personal responsibility for their own behavior.
Why Leaders Avoid Discipline (cont’d)… • The manager feels sorry for the employee. • Solution: Refer to appropriate resources. It’s often the best managers that fall into this trap; because they genuinely care about their employees, they may become overly involved in their employees’ personal lives or emotional difficulties. As a result, it may be easier to make excuses for the poor performer rather than get him or her the professional help they need. Meet with the employee on a regular basis to assess his/her work more frequently and give immediate feedback. Urge the employee to use support facilities and help with the emotional/psychological aspects of the situation.
Why Leaders Avoid Discipline (cont’d)… • The manager has never told top management about the problem and/or convinced them of how serious it is. • Solution: HR needs to be involved. • Inform your manager/HR as soon as an employee’s performance seems to call for intervention, even if you want to try to handle it alone. • Review with your manager/HR the criteria by which you ruled out unfairness factors as causes for unacceptable performance. • Recount what you have done so far, and ask for coaching. Also, ask your manager/HR to collaborate on a timetable for: (a) ruling out all unfairness factors, (b) coaching and counseling the poor performer (c) taking action to separate should performance not improve.
Why Leaders Avoid Discipline (cont’d)… • The manager feels responsible for the employee’s poor performance. • Solution: Learn from your experience – But don’t pay for it: Imagine what would happen if another manager confronted a different employee on anything.. say, poor attendance, drug use or even sleeping on the job? The employee could simply point to the poor performer and say, ‘As long as you let him get away with that, you can't make me do anything’: the poorest performing employee always sets performance standards. Managers can preach excellence but if an obvious problem is ignored, the words become an empty joke.
Why Documentation Is Important? (cont’d) • It serves as evidence of the employer’s business reasons for actions taken in the event an employee takes formal or informal steps with a claim against a manager or employer. • It brings about fair and equitable treatment. No one wants to be blindsided or treated differently than other employees. • By using this disciplinary approach, you wipe out any potential legal case. Your ex-worker can’t argue, “My employer was unjust because… o He never gave me a chance to get bettero He never told me I had a performance issue.o He never told me that my job was in jeopardy.“ • With all your documents and warnings, the employee more than likely won’t sue.
Example Unemployment Questions: • The Claimant named above states he/she was separated from employment due to inability to meet the employer’s work standards. • Explain claimant discharge or separation • Was the reason for the separation due to the claimant’s inability to perform the job duties satisfactory? Yes/No • If yes, explain in detail:
Example Unemployment Questions (cont’d.): • Was the claimant ever able to perform the job satisfactorily? Yes/No • Was there misconduct involved on the part of the claimant (Misconduct refers to a willful disregard of the employer’s best interest) ? Yes/No • If yes, explain in detail. • If the claimants job duties changed since the date of hire state how, when and why?
Example Unemployment Questions (cont’d.): • Did the claimant receive any previous warnings regarding the behavior or incident causing the separation/suspension, provide whether these were verbal or written, dates issued and who conveyed them. • Attach copies of all written warnings given. • If the claimant was aware that his/her job was in jeopardy, explain how and by whom he/she was made aware. • Provide date of last occurrence:
What Documentationis Your Responsibility? • Notes (hand-written/typed) from coaching and/or counseling sessions with employees. Written comments including specific examples in performance reviews. • Disciplinary actions, such as warning documents with specific examples and consequences. • Hand-written or typed explanations with business reasons for employment actions such as demotions, promotions, layoffs.
Implications of Not Documenting… • Performance or attendance doesn’t improve, and there are negative impacts to business, morale, and eventually the manager’s own performance. • Increased frustration by manager and co-workers. • Misunderstandings on interpretation of discussion. • Employees not equitably treated; may have discrimination claim.
Why Documentation Is Important? • It establishes a record of employment actions taken and the reasons for the actions. Memories fail, managers move on and other circumstances change. • It informs employees of what is expected of them and the consequences if they don’t meet expectations. Employees should never be surprised when they are disciplined and/or find themselves in a termination meeting. • From a performance management standpoint, it serves as a written record to guide both the employer’s and the employee’s future behavior. It gives the employee the opportunity to improve.
Implications of Not Documenting Consistently… • It is important to be consistent when documenting, because juries like to have something to hang their hats on when making a decision. • Example: “An employee who is fired for coming in late every day for three months might win their lawsuit if the supervisor never documented the fact that the employee was late. Add to that “a performance appraisal that rates the employee as satisfactory in the area of timeliness” and the employee is running to the bank before you can spell D-E-F-E-A-T!”
When Do You Consult with HR? • Accommodations – religious and medical • FMLA – serious health condition for employee or spouse, child or parent, birth or adoption of child, qualified exigency and servicemember caregiver leave • Significant changes to job duties • Demotions • Promotions • Work/life balance matters, such as telecommuting • Harassment claims • Final Written Warning • Egregious code of conduct or policy violations • Layoffs • Terminations
How To Document? Discipline issues fall into three mutually exclusive categories: Attendance, Performance, or Conduct: • Know your employee handbook and follow the company discipline policy. • Start early. Make it a habit to discuss all employees’ performance with the employee continuously as part of the performance management process. This includes positive and negative feedback. • Don’t wait, hoping issues will improve. They usually won’t. • Document only the facts, not subjective judgments or conclusions. • Be thorough. Ask yourself, if someone outside the organization read the documentation, would they understand the situation and the impact it had to other employees or the company? Or is there too much company jargon and too many assumptions in your documentation? • Make notes in writing. Include when (date and time), who was present, what was discussed, the employee’s response, and the outcome, including a date for a follow-up meeting.
How To Document (cont’d) Formal Written Warnings: • Use company warning templates. • Cite examples of how the employee has not met performance or attendance expectations. • Give specific guidance for improving performance or attendance. • For example: if the employee is being warned for cursing his immediate supervisor, you should not write in the action plan that the employee must “stop cursing at his immediate supervisor.” Instead, you should consider writing something such as, “the employee must control his temper and avoid unprofessional outburst at work.”
How To Document (cont’d) Formal Written Warnings: • Have face-to-face discussion (whenever possible) with employee and review warning document in detail. • Ask employee to sign warning indicating they have had the discussion, received a copy, and understand the document. • Give copy of warning document to HR. • Document the discussion from the discipline meeting in writing. • Discuss any issues that came up during the discipline meeting with HR.
Principles Surrounding Discipline (cont’d)? • “More cases are won and lost due to documentation than any other factor”. • Example: If Susan is written up three times for tardiness and then fired, but John is written up six times over the same time period for tardiness, and does not receive any discipline, you can bet that Susan is going to win her sex discrimination case, even if the supervisor did not have any specific gender bias against her. It is enough that Susan was treated more harshly than her male colleague. Thus, the disciplinary procedure must be applied fairly to your employees. The best way to gauge fairness is to compare employees’ files to ensure discipline is consistent and fair for similar misconduct.
Progressive Discipline steps… *check your organizational policies to verify this step is included in your progressive discipline process.
Do… • Investigate each incident regardless of how it first appears. • There are three sides to every story. Your side. My side and the truth. • Select an appropriate time & place to meet privately with the employee. • Document! • Allow the employee to explain his/her understanding of the incident. • LISTEN. • Confer with HR for their recommendations on how to proceed. • Present the disciplinary action in a calm manner.
Don’t… • Yell, scream or curse. • Base disciplinary actions based on rumors. • Discuss an employee’s performance or conduct issues with the employee’s co-workers. • Reprimand employees in public places or in the presence of others.
Before Disciplining Consider… • The facts surrounding the incident. • The seriousness of the infraction. • Whether the employee was informed of the work rules in advance of the infraction. • Whether the employee was previously advised, coached or warned about the issue.
Also consider… • The degree to which the employee’s conduct hampers the organization’s mission or day-to-day operation. • Documentation of previous conduct or performance problems within the past 3-6 months or less.
Other things to consider… • Was the employee provoked? • How thoroughly have I examined the issue or infraction? • How have other employees who were in similar situations disciplined?
Develop a Checklist that Asks …did I • Document the conduct or performance issue with just the facts? • Share this documentation with the employee? • Outline discipline appropriate to the infraction?
Develop a Checklist that Asks… • To make sure your disciplinary actions are fair, ask yourself the following questions before taking action against an employee: • Does the punishment fit the crime? Or is the employee being singled out? • Is the discipline consistent? How have you treated employees who have shown similar conduct in the past? • Has the discipline been administered after a proper investigation of the facts? (Be a neutral fact-finder until you gather all the facts.) • Is the discipline taken too quickly? Overly hasty discipline may be portrayed as "railroading" the employee. • Is the discipline confidential? It's important that you don't spread stories about why certain employees are being disciplined. Discuss disciplinary actions with other managers and staff on a need-to-know basis only.
