Regular contributor FRANK NEWBERRY explores the evergreen problem of maintaining discipline in the work place. Getting it just right has always been a challenge for individuals and organisations in both the public and private sector. In the first of a two part article Frank considers four prevention strategies.
Top Tips for great DISCIPLINE AT WORK
1: KNOW YOUR CODE
‘Prevention is (particularly) better than cure’, in matters of discipline in the workplace. It may sound silly but many people find it hard to do prevention because they cannot even remember where their organisation’s Discipline Code is kept. They can remember seeing it once, or being told about it, but many have not seen it for years and now they are dreading having to use it (reactively) in a discipline situation that is developing fast.
familiarise yourself with its contents and face difficult situations at work with more confidence. It is at this stage when it might be worth taking a moment to consider your personal approach. In their groundbreaking
people around.
Nowadays most organisations give a copy of their Discipline Code to new employees at the induction stage or with their contract of employment. They will even require the new employee to read it from cover to cover and sign a document saying s/he has read it and fully understands it. It may seem a bit heavy handed to do this on their very first day at work but it is an excellent prevention strategy.
book ‘The One Minute Manager’ (ISBN: 000-710- 7927) Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson tell the story of an Emperor and a Prime Minister who between them ran a small country. To paraphrase the story in my own words - the Emperor, over time, had grown a little envious of the Prime Minister because when the PM wanted things done, things were done promptly. When the Emperor wanted things done they were done … eventually. Now the Prime Minister was
If you work for a small firm and you are not sure whether your organisation even has its own Discipline Code then you might like to get onto ACAS via their website:
www.acas.org.uk . This website is one of the best of its kind in terms of giving both bosses and staff the advice they need.
Publications’ link and when the page appears you will find a great range of free guides and leaflets that you can download and then perhaps use as the basis of your own Code if you do not have one. If you do already have a Discipline Code you will be aware that the laws that affect discipline issues at work, particularly people’s rights, are changing all the time and you might wish to use the downloads to revise your out- of-date code.
2: REMEMBER THE EMPEROR
Armed with an up-to-date Discipline Code you can
68 Click on the ‘Our
in charge of the police and the judiciary and the Emperor had all the social and ceremonial duties e.g. royal visits, prize givings and the like and he was the PM’s boss The Emperor announced one day that he wanted to swap areas of responsibility with the Prime Minister whilst retaining his status as head of state. He figured if he had the PM’s powers people would treat him with more respect. Perhaps now when he wanted things done they would get done … pronto. The Prime Minister was no fool and he readily agreed to the swap. Within six weeks the PM was the new head of state and the Emperor had fled the country. Why? Well the people had always liked the Emperor and had always been afraid of the Prime Minister. One day when their patience with the PM was at breaking point he suddenly changed his ways, started giving out prizes and being nice. They began to think that perhaps the Prime Minister had been a nice guy all along. This good news was short lived because it unfortunately coincided with the revelation that the Emperor had changed his ways as well. The Emperor had apparently stopped being nice and was now bossing
Confused but determined the people staged a coup, chased the Emperor out of the country and promptly made the nice Prime Minister the new Emperor. End of story. The moral of the tale is that it is easier to start out ‘tough’ with people in order to maintain discipline and then become softer, when standards are maintained. For many people it is far harder to start out ‘soft’ and then try to be tougher later on if discipline breaks down.
3: AGREE THE METHODS
It is vital to have a method or way of working with discipline in the workplace. It must not be undiscussable. Sadly many bosses find it hard to raise the topic and put up with a certain level of indiscipline because they fear that they will not be able to motivate or replace the person causing difficulties in the work team.
such matters. What I did do though, almost immediately, was to start looking for another job.
At the time I would be very angry with my boss and despite being pretty good at my work and, in every other respect, happy with the job I was quite prepared to get a new boss by getting a new job. With this is mind I realised I needed a way of making discipline discussable. I quickly scheduled one-to-one private interviews with each of my staff. My question to them was simple: ‘If you ever make a bad mistake or break the
disciplinary code, how do you want me, as your boss, to handle it?’
The need for a method is particularly acute if you have quite a cosy relationship with your staff and you are worried that it will be hard to be tough with them when the occasion demands. If that is the case here’s an approach I used to help to maintain discipline in my work team at a time of skills shortages, i.e. at a time when I could not afford to lose people. One day I listened to a colleague bad-mouthing our boss on the way the boss had handled a discipline issue. My colleague had been ‘ticked-off ’ and to comfort himself (and get some sympathy) he was telling people how badly he had been treated (in his view). I reflected that I would not want one of my team members to bad-mouth me and possibly de- motivate my whole team after such an incident. I further reflected on the way I had been treated when I had made mistakes or infringed the disciplinary code. I had to admit that I had been treated very unprofessionally by my managers in the past but that I had always kept quiet about
Now the five people in my team all gave quite different answers. One wanted notice of the question; one wanted to have a preliminary discussion about any serious mistake to take place well away from the premises, preferably ‘down the pub’. Another wanted a ‘praise sandwich’, i.e. some praise, then some criticism or reprimand followed by more praise, one person said they would only ever believe criticism, so I was not to bother with any praise at all and, finally one said he could take it ‘on the chin’ meaning I should get on with it and get it over with. Following some clarification and a little more discussion I agreed a strategy for each individual in my team and moved onto my next question which was: ‘If you ever feel that, as your boss, I have made a bad mistake or let you down, how do you want to handle it?’ My motive in asking this question was to alert them to the fact that I sometimes had a lot of things going on in my mind and I might not even notice that I had said or done something that was, in their view, unprofessional.
This innocent little question had a much bigger impact than I had imagined with all of the team wanting notice of it and some time to think! These were probably the
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