Developing the knowledge and skill to give a disciplinary performance review is an important part of being a good manager, although, hopefully, it will be the most infrequent skill you use.

A true disciplinary review should never come as a surprise to the employee; rather it’s the final chance to turn around performance/behavior issues that have been previously addressed at length in both informal and formal reviews.

For the best chance of success, you need to stay calm, unemotional, and very factual, while understanding that the recipient may become extremely emotional.

The entire disciplinary process must be in writing. Good sense, backed by employment law, requires that a written disciplinary notice must precede the dismissal of any employee for failure to perform their job after their initial probationary period has ended.

Write the review ahead of time with the same attention, and willingness to rewrite it, that you would accord a presentation to a major client. This is not something that you can dash off during your commute, or knock out five minutes before meeting with the employee.

The review has three main sections:

1. Why: The reasons for the disciplinary notice must be clearly stated, contain no ambiguity and have been previously been brought up in both written and oral form, so nothing comes as a surprise to the employee.

2. Mitigation: The requirements for correcting the problem(s) must also contain no ambiguity. Just as with any objective, there must be clearly measurable goals and a specific completion date. When dealing with performance deficiencies, it may be necessary for you to develop task(s) that will measure the employee’s ability to improve to the desired minimum performance level required and beyond.

People respond more positively to quantified objectives that they understand and are achievable. Setting the person up to fail with unreasonable objectives that are beyond, or different, from what other people in the group are asked to do, is not only a formula for employee failure, but also one that encourages lawsuits.

Just as important to the objective is time allowed for delivering change or accomplishing given tasks. Again, unreasonable time frames may encourage litigation. This interval is called the disciplinary period.

3. Consequences: What happens if the person fails to meet one or more objectives must be accurately spelled out in no uncertain terms. Consequences are the stick (since carrots haven’t worked), but you don’t necessarily want to use a bludgeon (termination), when it’s not warranted (and may not stand up in court). Here are several consequences that have been used successfully by other managers,

• demoted with a reduction in salary;
• suspended for two weeks without pay;
• receive zero salary increase;

and the ultimate warning when it’s warranted

• subject to disciplinary action up to and including termination.

When warranted, a disciplinary notice may state that no further warning is necessary and that committing a similar violation at any time in the future would be grounds for dismissal without additional notice.

This is important since, without such a clause, it could be argued that another disciplinary review and disciplinary period would follow a repetition of the offense.

In order create a stronger positive motivation, you can also provide a reward if the employee performs at a higher than expected level during the disciplinary period. For example, if failing to meet the objectives results in a zero salary increase, an employee who not only met, but also significantly exceeded, the objectives during the disciplinary period might actually receive a small increase.

Make no mistake; a true disciplinary performance review is a turning point for any individual. Clarity will avoid a lot of unpleasantness and maybe even a lawsuit. Although it’s very stressful on managers, handling performance deficiencies correctly often demonstrates to the employee the truth he has been hiding from himself and forces him to conclude that he cannot perform at the required level.

At that point, he will either resign or ask for reassignment and the company can avoid an awkward and unproductive disciplinary period.

Better yet, the kick in the pants given by a disciplinary notice may actually shock the person into turning his performance around and becoming highly productive.

At executive levels (Vice President and above), individuals may be disciplined for differences in policy with their superiors without any prior notice and written warnings about performance failings in job content frequently aren’t given, for example, a Vice President of Sales need not be warned in writing that he’s liable for dismissal if he continually fails to meet sales quotas. However, CEOs who don’t at least issue verbal content-failing warnings may quickly get a reputation for being arbitrary and unfair.

This is not true for overt actions. A Vice President of Sales making racial slurs, engaging in sexual harassment, or similar violations, should go through the same disciplinary process as any other employee.

Even at executive level, disciplinary reviews involve a defined process (see above) that protects everybody—the employee, the manager, and the company.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 at 10:03 am and is filed under Business info, Communication, Culture, Leadership, Motivation, Retention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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