Try Discipline Without Punishment

03/05/07

Dick Grote has a problem with the traditional progressive discipline systems. Grote, the author of Discipline Without Punishment (amacom, $24.95), believes such systems are “the last remaining vestige of adversarial, 1930s style, labor vs. management thinking in the modern organization.”

“What is our objective?” asks Grote. “With traditional systems, it’s to punish.” Plus, he adds, “We ask so little of the employee. We don’t ask for a commitment or to take responsibility."

Grote’s take on discipline favors coaching to help employees improve. His system calls for a couple of “reminders” not warnings, which he equates with coaching sessions. And the last resort is still dismissal.

The big difference between his and a traditional discipline method is the “decision making leave.” It occurs with the next offense after the second reminder. With it, you suspend the employee for a day, with pay, and tell him or her to come back with a decision either to commit anew to acceptable job performance, or to quit and find another job. If the employee comes back and violates a rule or performance still lags, he’s fired.

In other words, says Grote, “You’re eliminating punishment and substituting individual responsibility,” says Grote.

Why a paid suspension instead of probation? Grote says, “It’s a dramatic gesture it gets the point across that a change has to occur. And most important, any time a termination is challenged, the arbitrator or judge wants to know: Was the employee aware of the seriousness of the situation? A suspension establishes that well.”

Show Trust
Trust and belief in the employee’s ability to improve permeate Discipline Without Punishment. For example, employees don’t sign reminders. “The only time that would be useful,” says Grote, “is in court so we could prove we had a conversation. But do people usually dispute that disciplinary conversations took place? No they argue instead that you weren’t fair, for example.”

Grote elaborates: “When you make people sign, you’re showing you don’t trust them. Instead say, ‘Give me your word that this won’t continue to be a problem and you don’t have to sign anything.’”

Dismissal: A Failure
Adopting Grote’s system requires a change of mindset. That’s because many managers use disciplinary systems to get even. “I originally thought there’s no downside to implementing this system, no price to be paid,” Grote says. “After all, when you use it, managers solve problems and enhance relationships. I was wrong there is a price to be paid. Discipline Without Punishment denies the right of some managers to get even, to get that pound of flesh.”

To managers of this sort, the disciplinary process is simply a series of hoops that HR makes you jump through to get somebody fired.

But when you turn your mind around to view discipline as a way to help employees improve and become more valuable, then you can see that termination is the failure of disciplinary action and not its logical outcome.