If employees feel their work environment or their discipline are unfair they may feel the organization is not a viable or fair place to work.  Would you like your employees to feel that if they work hard they will get ahead because their boss works with them to correct and improve their performance?  Do you want your employees to feel they can trust their careers and their future with you and your company? 

A progressive discipline policy will build trust.  It allows employees to change their performance before they are disciplined thereby demonstrating that you are fair and willing to give employees a chance.  In addition, you may gain an effective employee and learn how to improve the work environment.

Your discipline policy can include a statement about the organization's philosophy toward progressive discipline including a description of the basic steps for progressive discipline, who reviews the discipline, who issues the discipline and steps for filing an appeal.

Progressive discipline utilizes increasingly stronger counseling or training to raise the employee’s performance or conduct to an acceptable level. This shows that you gave the employee a reasonable chance to save their job.  The critical ingredients are due process including notice of the specific infraction or unacceptable conduct, a chance to improve or suggestions for corrective performance or conduct, investigation, consequences for continued infraction and a review process.

Consider the following steps:

Step 1:  Meet with the employee and explain what performance or conduct is unacceptable, what improvement is required and give suggestions for accomplishing this improvement. Be specific in describing the performance or conduct.  You may consider providing assistance such as assigning the employee a mentor who can provide the necessary coaching and guidance or some additional training.  Allow the employee to become part of designing the solution. Verbal warnings are useless without written documentation so prepare a written record of the meeting and have the employee sign it acknowledging that the meeting took place.

Step 2:  Conduct regular meetings with the employee to review progress but if the employee’s performance or conduct continues to be substandard, prepare a writing that describes the required improvement, the suggestions for improvement, and a warning about the consequences for failure to perform at an acceptable level such as "If your … does not improve by (date), and if this improvement is not sustained, you will be subject to discipline."  Be specific as to the deadline for improved performance or conduct.  Meet with the employee, present this writing and discuss it together.  Again, have the employee sign the writing acknowledging that the meeting took place.  If the employee refuses to sign, document this on the writing. 

Step 3:  Before the decision to discipline becomes final talk to the employee and objectively investigate what they say.  Always make your investigation and your final decision fair and reasonable.  Often the objective investigation is not performed leading to poor discipline decisions and litigation.  You may consider suspending the employee for a brief period while you conduct this investigation. 

Step 4:  If you have implemented your progressive discipline process correctly and fairly and the employee still does not meet your standards then finalize the discipline by consistently following your written policies.  A letter informing the employee of the final decision and the effective date of the discipline is the most usual method of informing the employee of the organization’s decision.  If you act reasonably and fairly, the employees are not surprised when you finally implement the discipline.  They know they are being fired because you repeatedly communicated the behavior or performance expectations and they chose not to live up to them.

Always follow your written policies and past practices and apply them consistently to any situation.  Employees with long tenure require more help and counseling before discipline is considered appropriate.  If you have a union contract, your discipline policy must be in compliance with the terms of that contract.

In conducting your investigation, you will learn about the work practices of your organization and the relationships between your supervisors and employees.  You may find that additional training is needed for the workers, supervisors or senior level executives.

Not taking action may preclude you from taking action in a similar situation in the future. In addition, it may communicate to your employees that there are no guidelines of acceptable conduct or work practices.  When you take notice of one employee's unacceptable conduct or work practices, other employees will improve their conduct and work practices as well.  You will end up with a better product or service to your customers and a better work environment for everyone.