Excerpt: What could be more important than discipline in any organization? How do you achieve effective discipline? What is the key to success? Well first, let’s describe what discipline really is. Discipline is nothing more than having a set of rules, and enforcing those rules. The tricky part is how to achieve discipline without being a disciplinarian. Certainly supervisors have the responsibility to enforce all company and departmental rules, policies and procedures. It’s your job to train the employees in these policies, explain the purpose, and then to follow up to make sure everyone marches to the same tune. There are a number of misconceptions about discipline. Some believe that it means punishment. Punishment rarely achieves results more than just enough performance to avoid being punished again. You can relate that to childhood experiences.

We know that a systematic orderly manner is necessary in a work environment in order to achieve company goals, and at the same time satisfy personal needs. Top management understands the need for discipline. Supervisors and managers understand the need, and believe it or not, employees fully understand the need for discipline in the work environment. If you were to take a poll of all your employees they would probably all be in agreement that good discipline makes their job easier. That’s rather hard to believe, but employees want an orderly and disciplined work environment. If that’s the case, what’s the problem? Well, let’s answer that question with some examples of poor disciplinarian actions. There’s a company rule that all employees must be at work on time. When an employee violates this rule, action must be taken. The world’s worst employee comes in last, and is given a written warning relating to this incident. The best employee in the company, who has never been late in his life, comes in late, but no action is taken against this individual. What you have here is unfair, biased, and unequal enforcement of the rules. You have condoned a rule violation by not taking action on Mr. Wonderful. Any way you look at it, it’s unfair, and unequal enforcement of the rules.

Discipline is having a set of rules, and enforcing those rules equally among all employees. Before you start throwing things at the television set let’s see what action is appropriate for Mr. Wonderful. Now this is a great employee, always follows the rules, has a clean record, and is simply a great employee. Action for the simple infraction of being late could be nothing more than a short counseling, and an agreement that coming to work on time is a company rule that is enforce for all employees. A simple note on the employee’s file that a counseling was conducted for the infraction, and that’s it. Action was taken. In the case of Virgil Dunderhead a written warning was justified because he violated this rule in the past. You’re taking action on both individuals, but the degree of action doesn’t have to be the same depending upon the circumstances. You have fair equal enforcement of the rules.