MAN IS REASONABLE. If you treat your employees more than what they expect of you, they will reciprocate by treating your customers more than what they expect you to do. It is as simple as that. Progressive discipline has become obsolete in the 21st century workplace. If you’ll stick to the imposition of reprimand-suspension-termination procedural steps, chances are erring employees may even challenge you with the idea of bringing you to a court of justice, if not make things difficult for the organization in some ways.
Disgruntled employees can do a lot of things. They can sabotage business operations without you knowing it. Among other reasons, they can even copy product designs or customers’ database for some malevolent reasons.
Instead of progressive discipline, why not explore positive discipline where instead of giving suspension without pay, you allow erring employees to exhaust their vacation leave credits instead? Of course, you may find this as an extreme idea, unless you benchmark with other dynamic organizations on how they manage difficult employees.
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