Basic ingredients or guidelines of a disciplinary action: the principal ingredients of a sound disciplinary system are:
1. Responsibility for maintaining discipline: the Responsibility for maintaining discipline should be entrusted to a responsible person, though it is the personnel officer should be entrusted with the responsibility of offering advice and assistance.
2. Proper formulation and communication of rules: it is essential that rules and regulations are properly and carefully formulated and communicated to the employees.
3. Rules and regulations should be reasonable: plant conditions and the management climate should be such as would be conductive to the observance of rules and regulations. Rules should always be enforced equitably, promptly and consistency or they will lose their effectiveness.
4. Equal treatment: all defaulters should be tracked alike, depending on the nature of their offence.
5. Disciplinary action should be taken in private: this is because the main objective of a Disciplinary action is to ensure that a wrong behaviour is corrected and not that the wrong doer should be punished, or held up to ridicule.
6. Importance of promptness in taking Disciplinary action: all violations and misconduct big and small should be promptly enquired into because the greater the delay the greater the more one forgets and the more one feel that punishment is not deserved.
7. Innocence is presumed: an individual is presumed to be innocent until he is proven to be guilty. The kind of proof that would be needed for this purpose would depend on the gravity of the offence that has been committed.
8. Get the facts: before taking any disciplinary action, it should be made sure to get and keep adequate records of offences and warnings.
9. Action should be taken in cool atmosphere: the action should be taken, not when one is angry but when the anger has "cooled off" a bit so that rational and sensible judgement could be taken.