Problem:
Please assist in writing a 200 to 250 word. using the information about Sandy's manager and how would you use the eight disciplining behaviors to discipline Sandy for her poor performance.
Skills Concepts and Behaviors:
If an employee’s performance regularly isn’t up to par or if an employee consistently ignores the organization’s standards and regulations, a manager may have to use discipline as a way to control behavior. What exactly is discipline? It is actions taken by a manager to enforce the organization’s expectations, standards, and rules. The most common types of discipline problems managers have to deal with include attendance (absenteeism, tardiness, abuse of sick leave), on-the-job behaviors (failure to meet performance goals, disobedience, failure to use safety devices, alcohol or drug abuse), and dishonesty (theft, lying to managers). The essence of effective disciplining can be summarized by the following eight behaviors.
1) The team leader in the customer services department at Mountain View Microbrewery.
Sandy is the newest member of 10-person team, having been there only six weeks. Sandy came to MountainView with good recommendations from his or her previous job as a customer support representative at a car dealership. However, not long after joining your team, Sandy was late in issuing an important purchasing order. When you talked to Sandy about it, you were told it was “lost.” But you discovered it in Sandy’s in-box, where it had been properly placed. Then, just last week, Sandy failed to make an immediate return call to an unhappy customer who could easily have been satisfied at that point. Instead, the customer worked himself into a rage and vented his unhappiness in a letter to the company’s CEO. The latest incident with Sandy came up just yesterday. As part of your company’s quality improvement program, the team members prepare periodic reports on the service they provide to each customer and turn these reports over to an upper-management team who evaluates them. Sandy didn’t meet the deadline for getting his or her report into this evaluation group received a call from one of the team members wanting to know where this report was.
Because Sandy is still on probation for another six weeks, it appears that it’s the time has come for us talk about his or her failure to meet expected work-performance goals.
A. Respond immediately. The more quickly a disciplinary action follows an offense, the more likely it is that the employee will associate the discipline with the offense rather than with you as the dispenser of the discipline. It’s best to begin the disciplinary process as soon as possible after you notice a violation.
B. Provide a warning. You have an obligation to warn an employee before initiating disciplinary action. This means that the employee must be aware of the organization’s rules and accept its standards of behavior. Disciplinary action is more likely to be interpreted by employees as fair when they have received a clear warning that a given violation will lead to discipline and when they know what that discipline will be.
C. State the problem specifically. Give the date, time, place, individuals involved, and any mitigating circumstances surrounding the violation. Be sure to define the violation in exact terms instead of just reciting company regulations or terms from a union contract. It’s not the violation of the rules per se about which you want to convey concern. It’s the effect that the rule violation has on the work unit’s performance. Explain why the behavior can’t be continued by showing how it specifically affects the employee’s job performance, the unit’s effectiveness, and the employee’s colleagues.
D. Allow the employee to explain his or her position. Regardless of what facts you have uncovered, due process demands that you give the employee the opportunity to explain his or her position. From the employee’s perspective, what happened? Why did it happen? What was his or her perception of the rules, regulations, and circumstances?
E. Keep the discussion impersonal. Penalties should be connected with a given violation, not with the personality of the individual violator. That is, discipline should be directed at what the employee has done, not at the employee.
F. Be consistent. Fair treatment of employees demands that disciplinary action be consistent. If you enforce rule violations in an inconsistent manner, the rules will lose their impact, morale will decline, and employees will likely question your competence. Consistency, however, need not result in treating everyone exactly alike; doing that would ignore mitigating circumstances. It’s reasonable to modify the severity of penalties to reflect the employee’s history, job performance record, and the like. But the responsibility is yours to clearly justify disciplinary actions that might appear inconsistent to employees.
G. Take progressive action. Choose a punishment that’s appropriate to the crime. Penalties should get progressively stronger if, or when, an offense is repeated. Typically, progressive disciplinary action begins with a verbal warning and then proceeds through a written reprimand, suspension, a demotion or pay cut, and finally, in the most serious cases, dismissal.
H. Obtain agreement on change. Disciplining should include guidance and direction for correcting the problem. Let the employee state what he or she plans to do in the future to ensure that the violation won’t be repeated.