New
procedure for employee discipline & termination.
When owning a business, you often have to deal with multiple problems,
including handling difficult employees. Some people simply do not
know how to conduct themselves at work, or they have little experience
when dealing with people. Others have a bad attitude and make it
their personal mission to make everyone's life miserable. But instead
of firing them outright, you must give them a second change. When
using an employee discipline form you not only tell the problem employee
that their behavior is unacceptable, but you also have a written
documentation of the issues.
Creating an Employee Discipline Form
It helps if you create an official employee discipline form for
your organization. It makes it more formal and others will take it
more seriously. You can call it something like, "Notice of Employee
Discipline" or "Employee Discipline Feedback Report".
If you have a legal department, work with them to create the proper
lingo and spaces for all the relevant information.
In summary, you must include a few basic items in employee discipline
form. These are the employee's name, their title and official role
in the company, and the date and a summary of the incident. It is
best to create a form for each incident that occurs.
Using the Employee Discipline Form
After you create the employee discipline form, you need to learn
how to use it. What is your policy? What types of incidents will
you write up in the form? Once you put a policy in place, make sure
it does not single out just one or two people. To ensure consistency
and fairness, it should equally apply to all employees. It will be
up to you how far you want to take certain problems. For example,
will you write up an employee on the first offense or give them a
grace period? Will you allow them a few warnings before you do an
official write up? At what point will you terminate the employee?
Despite your position on these issues, you must always remain consistent.
Making Termination Easier
If you document everything that an employee does wrong using the
employee discipline form, it will make firing them much easier. You
can show that you gave the individual adequate warning. Since you
documented everything, it will be hard for them to turn around and
say they were terminated for no reason. If anything, these forms
will provide your legal department or your company's lawyer with
enough evidence against the employee should legal problems arise
from the termination.
Downside of the Employee Discipline Form
In a perfect world, your company will never need to use the employee
discipline form. In fact, there is a fine line between it being helpful
and useful and it being destructive. If overused, the form can hurt
the overall morale of the company. However, if you single only a
few people out, that can also hurt the morale. Before you use it,
it is best to put in place a policy and explain to everyone the policies
are in place to make the environment fair and nonjudgmental. Your
goal is to create an environment of support and leadership while
effectively using the employee discipline form to help keep the problems
in line.
See
how easily you can discipline a bad employee ... and fire if
needed. Form and sample letters.
|