Approach to Discipline

The handling of cases of indiscipline within the workplace setting has been an issue of concern to most organizations. This is made more complex by the increasing levels of organizational diversity and the demand to develop more cohesive and unitary teams. There is abidance in the fact that inability to tactfully deal with cases of indiscipline may have a spiraling effect of employee commitment and overall employee productivity. It is within this backdrop knowledge that this paper seek to examine the best disciplinary approach of.

There are various approaches to discipline that make and enforce rules and regulation in organizations. These rules in workplace are the ones that enable the employees to have self discipline in a situation of undesirable behavior. Therefore many organizations and companies preferred the use of progressive discipline, positive discipline, or a combination of progressive and positive discipline approach in workplace for disciplinary actions. Disciplinary problems encountered in organizations involves pilfering, wastage of time, substance abuse and absenteeism,

Progressive discipline approach

This is a corrective action and it is a fundamental approach in correcting undesirable behavior of the employees in organizations. The Progressive discipline approach is done with diplomacy due to the fact that it serves two main purposes. "It serves as documentation to show "just cause" in the event of the need to terminate a problem employee and work as a means of correcting undesirable employee behavior." (Spilka,1998). A progressive discipline approach leads to termination of the contract of an employee in a scenario of undesirable behavior in a workplace. When an employee demonstrates the undesirable behavior in a workplace, the first step for the manager is to deliver an oral warning.

This will definitely be followed by a written warning before progressing to a suspension, and lastly termination of the employee's contract. The advantage part of Progressive discipline approach is that it delivers a fair and equal treatment of all employees in organization. In addition to the above, employees are less likely to do or repeat the same undesirable behaviors when he or she is in mind aware that more severe penalties will be the outcome. Another advantage of progressive discipline approach is that the use of approach enables employees to get several opportunities to correct previous unacceptable behavior in organization.

Positive discipline approach

Even though the progressive discipline approach is the most used approach to discipline employees with undesirable behaviors in organization, managers have pointed out that it has certain flaws, such as adversarial and intimidating nature. According to Kuban, (1996), "these flaws prevent this approach from achieving the intended purpose." Due to these facts, organizations often use another approach called positive approach. Positive discipline approach is concerned with the general concept that employees are obliged to be responsible for their personal conduct and job performance in organization. In addition to the above, Positive discipline approach needs a cooperative and a conducive environment due to the fact that managers and employees are required to indulge in joint discussion and problem solving to resolve incidents of employee irresponsibility.