|
Workplace Discipline.
Judging by the number of
e-mails I receive from employers regarding poor performance, it is obvious that
very few employers understand that misconduct and poor performance are handled
by two completely different procedures.
Many employers inform me that due to an employee's poor performance or failure
to reach the required standards of performance, the employer has instituted
disciplinary proceedings, has issued the employee with three written warnings
which resulted in no improvement, and subsequently the employee was dismissed.
The employee, of course, refers a dispute of unfair dismissal to the CCMA or
bargaining council, and a punitive award is made against the employer on
procedural unfairness.
The employer is adamant that they followed a proper procedure, and whilst this
may be true if the problem was an act of misconduct, it is certainly not true in
allegations of poor performance.
The problem is not that the employer followed an unfair
procedure - the problem is that the employer followed the
incorrect procedure.
Issues of poor performance are not handled by a disciplinary process. A
disciplinary process is followed in allegations of misconduct only, and for no
other reason.
Matters of poor performance are addressed by a completely different procedure,
and in fact there exists two separate procedures in this regard - namely one
procedure for handling poor performance based on ill-health or injury, and
another procedure for handling poor performance caused by factors other than
ill-health or injury.
Employers need to acquaint themselves fully with the available disciplinary
procedures for misconduct and poor performance procedures for correctly
addressing those issues.
The importance of gaining such knowledge is obvious when one hears of instances
where one particularly employer continued a counseling process with a poorly
performing employee for 4 years before finally dismissing the
employee.
One can only guess at what such a process actually cost the employer in terms of
time, money, loss of production, frustration and so on.
| 
