Employee Disciplinary Action Notice: Fill & Download for Free

As a shift manager at a fast food joint many many years ago, I had an employee who, upon arriving for her shift, changed the deployment for the shift. She would put people on the front counter that needed to be in the kitchen for crunch time, and put inexperienced front line people in the kitchen. Her sister had gone through the management training program, and she had read through the training materials, so she thought she was better qualified to act as manager than I was. So, one night I caught her in the act and told her she was free to clock out and go home, and we would have a meeting with the general manager the next day, or she could accept the shift deployment as I had written it. She was then told by the general manager that workplace politics would not be tolerated, and any further transgressions would result in disciplinary action, up to and including termination. Rather than accept that I was the shift manager and she wasn’t, she moved to a different shift and put in her two weeks notice shortly after that.You need to be cautiously assertive in your leadership style. You need to assert that you are the supervisor, and your staff are the employees. If you are working with people who are trying to undermine your authority, you need to clarify their position as employee.

A young, female entry-level employee showed a pattern of combative and uncooperative behavior toward her supervisor.The supervisor, Sonia, had about 10 years at the company. She was a chemical engineer and had supervised other people. HR had seen no interpersonal problems with her as a supervisor.The company’s performance reviews included peer-evaluations. Two of the five criteria evaluated interpersonal skills: Teamwork and Interaction. She was at a level where she would have had 8 co-workers rating her work and workplace behavior, with 40% of the review about how employees treated their co-workers. Sonia did well on those factors.She asked me for help. As head of HR, I managed a disciplinary action that stretched over months, included warnings about termination of employment if performance didn’t improve, and ended with the termination of the younger woman’s employment.I was in a telephone hearing about the terminated employee’s unemployment claim. ON the call were the terminated employee; her supervisor; the head of HR (me); and the State of California’s UI examiner. The UI examiner asked her why she had done something that we cited as a partial cause for her termination of employment.Examiner: “Why didn’t you show up for the meeting as your supervisor instructed you to do?”Former employee: “Because she didn’t give me enough notice.”Examiner: “How much time did she give you?”FE: “She told me in the morning to come to a meeting in the afternoon.”Ex: “If that wasn’t enough time, how much notice do you think your supervisor should give you to come to a meeting?”FE: “Uh...at least a day.”

It would be interesting to quote a case study which was asked in the Civil Services Examination 2014 (GS-4: Ethics, Integrity and Aptitude).You are a no-nonsense, honest officer. You have been transferred to a remote district to head a department that is notorious for its inefficiency and callousness. You find that the main cause of the poor state of affairs is the indiscipline of a section of employees. They do not work themselves and also disrupt the working of others. You first warned the troublemakers to mend their ways or else face disciplinary action. When the warning had little effect, you issued a show cause notice to the ringleaders.As a retaliatory measure, these troublemakers instigated a woman employee amongst them to file a complaint of sexual harassment against you with the Women's Commission.The Commission promptly seeks your explanation. The matter is also publicized in the' media to embarrass you further. Some of the options to handle this situation could be as follows:1. Give your explanation to the Commission and go soft on the disciplinary action.2. Ignore the Commission and proceed firmly with the disciplinary action.3. Brief your higher-ups seek directions from them and act accordingly.Suggest any other possible option(s). Evaluate all of them and suggest the best course of action, giving your reasons for it.I have worked for over 25 years as an IRS officer in Indian Government.I have also seen many cases where the women made complaints of sexual harassment against their superiors.Many of these complaints are genuine while many of these are false also.However, in either case, the harassment to the male officer is tremendous and indescribable.Such allegations are much more painful if the allegation is made because you have tried to act firmly while doing your duties.It happens because such complaints are presumed to be true by your adversaries, media and the society.Even in this case, most people have already assumed the allegations to be true before even the investigations have started and they have already pronounced the CJI guilty in their tweets, Facebook posts and Quora answers.I only wish that none of you has to ever face an inquiry of a false allegation of sexual harassment in your life.Such inquires are very painful where you have to give several statements before police officers and then face the courts to defend yourself.Moreover, it takes several years for the courts to decide the case.Even if the officer gets exonerated, nothing happens against the women complaint and the man never get back his reputation due to the social biases against male in India.When the Chief Justice of India says that the independence of judiciary is under very very serious threat, it may be due to the fact that he is himself suffering the allegation or it may be also due to the fact that someone is really targeting him and the Indian judiciary for standing up against the powerful people or doing his duties.We don’t know the truth as of now, but we must at least not assume the allegations to be correct unless it is proven true.It would be wise for the Chief Justice to let the matter investigated properly for the truth to come out as soon as possible.However, in all likelihood the investigation would be done by a central agency like CBI which is under the control of Central Government.Hence, the CJI and the judiciary is certainly going to face the pressure till their matter is over as investigation agencies can ask very uncomfortable questions, and they can always incriminate him in their report and it would take several decades to get exonerated in India thanks to the (in)efficiency of Indian judicial system.Till such time, Indian media, politicians and people would enjoy the explicit details of the allegation and enjoy that alleged misdeeds of one of the most powerful persons of India .If he has indeed done the harassment, he has to pay the price for it.However, we must at least not allow media trial and assume him to be guilty till the judgement is out.EditSome of you appears to be interested to know the answer of this case study. Please find the links of the video lesson in Hindi and English in the comment section of my reply to Souvik Chakraborty.