Chapter 14: Respecting Employee Rights and Managing Discipline
Employee Rights
The rights of the individual employee must be important from a managerial standpoint and on a individual level. These rights protect both the employer and the employee to engage in particular conduct. One of the most known rights iss for the employee’s rights to form a union. It is illegal for an employer to infringe upon this right. (Gomez-Mejia, Balkin and Cardy 2016, 458.)
Over the last half century the the rights of the employee have expanded because of both federal and individual states for specific employee protections. In this blog we should explore in particular a few of those rights:
Statutory Right – Statutory rights prevents discrimination based on race, or sex, religion, national origin, age, and more listed in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Another important one protects the health and safety practices of employees.
Contractual Rights – These are the rights within the contract agreed upon by both employer and employee. It is a legally binding promise between two or more component parties. If one of the parties breaks the agreement or does not do their duty they are subject to legal action.
Other Rights – The other rights differ from statutory and contractual rights in a significant way. These rights may be expected by the employee but that does not mean that they will see any compensations if they feel these lights have been violated. A good example of one of these rights is the limitations of their rights to privacy (The Privacy Act of 1974. (Gomez-Mejia, Balkin and Cardy 2016, 461.)
Management Rights
The employer is also entitled to their own rights and protections. Those rights can be justified to run the business and to keep earnings for that result. The major two are the right to manage the workforce, hire, protect, discipline, and remove employees if their deem necessary.
These rights are influenced by those that have an invested interest in the choices made in their workplace. For example they have the right to hire, but there are also the employees’ rights that protects them from discrimination.
One of the terms used often in the business environment these resulting protections is residual rights. This means they keep the right to make the decisions but are limited to the laws or contract provisions. (Gomez-Mejia, Balkin and Cardy 2016, 462.)
Employee Rights Challenges Act: A Balancing Act
Sometimes managers are responsible for balancing both their own rights and that of their employees. For example, a random urine analysis might make the employee feel their rights have been violated. However, for particular jobs managers are also responsible for their customers and often with that legal battle when fought.
Disciplining Employees
Progressive Discipline
These are management interventions that provide employees the opportunity to take responsibility and correct their behavior before being potentially removed from the organization.
Positive Discipline
Keeping progressive discipline in mind, employees may feel encouraged to abuse or deceive their employers rather than make corrections. To avoid this scenario a more common form of discipline used is positive, which places an emphasis on employees track and take responsibility for their own actions. Often these are shown in documentation in counseling sessions to keep records of counseling’s.
Administering and Managing Discipline
Their a few basic standards of discipline:
1. Communication of rules and performance criteria
2. Documentation of the facts
3. Consistent response to rule violations
The just cause standard of discipline requires that employers only be allowed to remove an employee if there is adequate justification. A majority of those rights are as followes:
1. Notification
2. Reasonable rule
3. Investigation before the discipline
4. Fair investigation
5. Proof of guilt
6. Absence of discrimination
7. Reasonable penalty.
Managing Difficult Employees
Having difficult employees might be an inevitability for employees, but how should they deal with those difficulties? Things like poor attendance and or poor performance can be used as an example. Let’s explore some reasonable questions for those rules:
Poor Attendance
Are the attendance rules reasonable?
Has the employee been warned of the consequences of poor attendance?
Are there any mitigating circumstances that should be taken into consideration?
(Gomez-Mejia, Balkin and Cardy 2016, 479.)
However, in my opinion, the mitigating circumstances should be something significant if it is affecting their work attendance. Attendance in general is something that should be held with the responsibility of the worker and not the employer.
Poor Performance
Sometimes no matter how much an employer tries to council a workers a performance it does not improve. So, what kind of action should the employer make? There are some things a company should consider when considering discipline:
Are the company’s performance expectations understandable?
Are poor performance records being kept?
Has there been an opportunity given to the employee to improve?
(Gomez-Mejia, Balkin and Cardy 2016, 479.)
All of these are questions a employer should use as a tool to analysis if disciplinary action is justified.
Case Study 1: New York Police Inspector is Charged with Sexual Abusing a Female Officer
Abuse of power has always been an issue when that power is granted to those who may not be morally, ethically, or intellectually up to the responsibility it requires. This article is only another example of the many occurrences of abuses of power. This particular article involving a police officer is upsetting.
Unfortunately, the article is not giving an substantiating evidence, legal, or disciplinary action for the officer other than putting him on modified duty. If that is all that happens without further investigation it only highlights a fault in the American Legal Systems.
It does not show what actions the police department took in detail enough to really get a cage on what happened concerning what happened in regard to legal compliance, discipline and grievances.
Case Study 2: Receipt Rage: Why food is Being Served with a Side of Hate
The article studied is one that is truly disturbing. It highlights the vulgarity and foul actions of employees in restaurants putting hateful names on receipts of customers.
These lacks of morals are attributed to insufficient training for workers. However, I wholeheartedly disagree with that sentiment. This is not a sensitivity issue but a character issue. Perhaps it is because of how the individual was raised but that is no excuse for making those kinds of evil statements or name-calling’s on customer receipts.
The fact that the National Restaurant Association has no guidelines for anykind of disciplinary action is altogether absurd. This is a no brainer that needs to be addressed with the immediate expulsion of these kinds of employees.
There should be no kind of patience for employees that commit these kinds of acts. A lack of sensitivity training is no justification for individuals to be cruel and or rude to the establishment’s customers.
References
Gomez-Mejia, L.R. Balkin, D.B. & Cardy, R.L. 2016. Managing Human Resources. Global 8th ed. Pearson. London.
Trigger 1 