HR Basics is a series of short courses, designed to highlight what you need to know about a particular human resource management topic. In today’s HR Basics, we explore employee discipline, discussing the approaches to and administration of discipline.

Discipline is a process of corrective action used to enforce organizational rules. Problem employees are most often affected by the discipline system. Fortunately, problem employees represent a small percentage of the workforce in most companies. However, if managers fail to deal with problem employees promptly, work outcomes are often negatively affected. Effective discipline should be aimed at the problem behaviors, not at the employees personally, because the goal is to improve performance.

It is often said that 90 percent of aggravation for managers comes from 10 percent of our employees. That is, a small number of employees create the vast amount of discipline work for managers.

A disciplinary process can demonstrate to employees the organization’s commitment to due process and just cause in employment actions. The two most common approaches to discipline are positive discipline and progressive discipline. Regardless of approach, certain standards should be applied to the administration of employee discipline.

An organization with a sound approach to and administration of employee discipline ensures fair and consistent treatment to all employees.

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