When it comes to dealing with employees’ policy infractions, Bob Coulter emphasizes the importance of having meaningful, sit-down meetings to discuss the problem. “Progressive discipline starts with a coaching conversation,” says the consultant with JP Horizons, Painesville, Ohio. “If someone breaks a rule, at least half the time you can change that behavior just by talking it out with the employee, but those conversations only happen 10 percent of the time because employers think a simple statement like, “Don’t come in late anymore,” is a coaching conversation.”
On the contrary, Coulter says simply riding with an employee to their job site provides plenty of time to talk about why he or she was late to work, or any other infractions they may have had and can resolve future problems before they happen. “People skip the process part because they want to avoid the conflict,” Coulter says, “ but as those rules continue to be broken, the employer ends up venting to the employee and someone gets fired. In those cases, nothing gets resolved and there is still potential for other employees to break the same rule.”