Discipline versus Coaching: When an Employee Does Something You Don’t Approve Of

When an employee does something that you don’t approve of, what do you do? It depends on the severity of what’s happened. Before you move to discipline them, there are a few things to consider. As a leader you have a duty to keep employees safe and to minimize risk to the organization. People are your best asset but bring complexities to the workplace which can cause risk.

Some of those risks are:

Compliance	Operations	Strategy
- Workplace incident or injury - Harassment, bullying - Misuse of company resources - Theft - - Litigation due to employer’s lack of due diligence - Failure to accommodate for disabilities	- Onboarding time wasted - Employees learn the wrong behaviours and reduce productivity - Internal inequity - Difficulty hiring - Complaints from customers - Constructive dismissal	- ​Brand and reputation are impacted - Loss of productivity and revenue

So, how do you react? To mitigate risk, the employer must have clear, easy-to-follow policies and procedures that are applied consistently