Thoughtful Approach to Disciplinary Action

The plant manager, supervisor, and HR reps determined that an employee was behaving in a way that created a hostile work environment for another employee. We all sat in a meeting and agreed that this was a disciplinary issue. The employee deserved a written warning. We parted ways after making the appointment for the disciplinary meeting the next day ...

Several of the group thought about the situation all night long - and concluded - we were wrong. Emails flew back and forth and all four people agreed they had second thoughts almost immediately following the meeting. Superficially, the situation was an easy call. On deeper thought, the employee did not deserve the disciplinary action at all.

We learned. The employees will never know how we grew - but we did. In the future, we plan to wait a day or two before implementing any disciplinary action whenever possible. Our second thoughts and deeper analysis prevented a disaster, in this case.

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