DISCIPLINARY PROCEDURES AND CHALLENGES IN TAKING DISCIPLINARY

ACTION IN SIMEDARBY PLANTATION SDN.BHD.

INTRODUCTION

SIMEDARBY PLANTATION SDN BHD is a company strongly driven by values

and its people, who are at the centre of everything it does, with endless
opportunities for personal and professional growth as well as competitive
rewards. Sime Darby has an overall rating of 3.7 out of 5, based on over 374
reviews left anonymously by employees. 75% of employees would recommend
working at Sime Darby to a friend and 66% have a positive outlook for the business.

The disciplinary procedure is a process to follow when you want/need to address an

employee’s behaviour. It may be that you’re concerned about their general conduct,
absence, their work for example. It allows you, as the employer, to explain clearly
what improvement is needed and provides an opportunity for the employee to give
their side of the situation.

The disciplinary procedure is complicated and it’s vital that you get this right,
because failure to do so can result in a case of unfair dismissal on the grounds of
failing to follow a fair process. This blog sets out the challenges of the disciplinary
procedure and later in the month will be followed with some simple steps to
optimising your process. Each section below lists the key challenges faced for
conduct, performance or absenteeism:

CONDUCT

1. The first challenge is getting managers to see the process as corrective not
punitive. More often than not, Managers view the procedure as punitive and
therefore avoid initiating the disciplinary procedure at the appropriate time and
instead allow employees to continue to behave inappropriately. The
disciplinary procedure is intended as a means to bring about improved
behaviour not as a means to dismiss. Dismissal should result only as a last
resort except in cases of gross misconduct.
2. While on the subject of gross misconduct, the second challenge is managers
knowing when it is appropriate to suspend an employee pending investigation
and when it is not.

3. Managers following the procedure correctly. As HR professionals, on

occasion we have found that a disciplinary investigation was not conducted at
all before the hearing was initiated. On other occasions we have found that
the wrong people were involved in the process, which led to lack of objectivity
etc, for example a witness carried out the investigation or the disciplinary
officer also carried out the investigation.

4. The fourth is linear organisation structures resulting in inadequate numbers of

people at appropriate levels to carry out the procedure objectively. Either that
or despite there being enough people they lacked the knowledge due to
inadequate training, instruction or support.

5. Making sure that the decision to apply a sanction is only made following the
disciplinary hearing and not before. We have seen an investigatory officer
recommend sanctions in their investigation pack sent to the disciplinary
officer, we have seen disciplinary officers involve other people in their
decision making, and have seen disciplinary officers decide the outcome
before even going into the disciplinary hearing.

6. Getting disciplinary officers comfortable with conducting a disciplinary hearing.

We have seen senior management in large companies avoid taking on the
responsibility even after years in post.

7. The seventh is making sure that the disciplinary officer covers off the very
basics with the employee at the beginning of the disciplinary hearing before
asking any questions about the incident itself.

8. Making sure that the disciplinary officer asks the right questions to uncover all
of the facts and any mitigating circumstances to the point they feel confident
they can adjourn and make a decision.

9. Ensuring the disciplinary reviews the facts of the case objectively and takes
any mitigating circumstances into consideration when determining whether
 there should be a sanction and to do so alone without any input from the note
taker.

10. The tenth challenge is making sure that the sanction is consistent with the
seriousness of the incident in question. We have known cases of gross
misconduct where the employees were not dismissed and conversely cases
where general misconduct resulted in dismissal. Either of these are likely to
make it difficult to discipline future cases appropriately, some resulting in
tribunal cases for unfair dismissal due a precedent set in a previous case.

11. The final conduct challenge can be in the disciplinary officer accurately
delivering the outcome i.e. the sanction and the reasons for it or reminding the
employee of their right to appeal the decision.

PERFORMANCE

1. As with conduct, the first challenge with performance is that managers can
often fail to see the procedure as corrective not punitive and therefore fail to
initiate the formal performance management procedure at the appropriate
time resulting in a continuation of underperformance.

2. The second is ensuring managers realise their first task is to counsel the
employee to understand what might be contributing to under performance and
what support is needed by the employee.

3. Ensuring that managers know how to provide the support to the employee or
know where to go to obtain the support for the employee.

4. The fourth is making sure the manager is able to set performance targets
appropriately and accurately and measure performance against those targets
objectively.

5. Making sure that managers hold the performance review meetings regularly
and on time, recognising improvement and congratulating it, identifying and
highlighting where improvement is still needed, and applying a sanction where
appropriate. For example, first written warning.
 6. Keeping the formal performance management procedure on track throughout.
We have seen a case of performance management that was abandoned,
even though all the improvement targets were not met. In this case, after
improving a little the employee’s performance soon began to wain again,
perhaps not surprisingly.

7. The last but, perhaps most challenging, requires the manager bringing
themselves to initiate the capability procedure and dismiss an employee who,
despite receiving all the support available, has been unable to meet the
standards required for no reason other than lack of competence. It’s a tough
call.

ABSENTEEISM

1. As above, the first challenge here is that mangers can often fail to see the
procedure as corrective not punitive and therefore fail to initiate the formal
attendance management procedure at the appropriate time resultant in poor
attendance continuing.

2. Similar to performance management the second challenge is for managers to

counsel the employee to understand what might be contributing to the poor
attendance and what support is needed by the employee.

3. The third is managers knowing if there are absences that do not count
towards poor attendance, which might involve the support of occupational
health and may result in recommended adjustments.

4. Managers being able to determine if a recommend adjustment is reasonable

and when it isn’t, and how to apply it.

5. The fifth is managers bringing themselves to initiate the capability procedure

and dismiss an employee who, despite having lots of adjustments made for
them, are still unable to attend work regularly for no other reason that they
have an illness or a disability. This is a tough call.
 6. When the absences that do not count have been discounted, the sixth
challenge is ensuring that managers follow the absence management
procedure, holding a hearing and giving the appropriate sanction.

7. Ensuring that managers keep a close eye on attendance to monitor further

periods of absence, and then hold further disciplinary hearings and give
further sanctions when a trigger point is reached.

8. Taking the final decision to dismiss for poor attendance.

There are several challenges that managers face throughout all of the above
scenarios.

 Unlike operational matters, disciplinary matters cannot be referred upwards by

managers for guidance and support because it is absolutely paramount that
the appeal officer does not form an opinion about the validity of a particular
disciplinary sanction, before the appeal hearing has taken place.

 Managers must handle the matter in the strictest confidence, only those who
need to be involved should have any knowledge of it and only then on a need
to know basis only.

 Following GDPR guidelines, managers need to know how long to retain a

disciplinary sanction beyond the sanction period, on the employees personnel
file.

 The fifth challenge is simply having the time to devote to time consuming and
often demoralising formal procedures.

Even where all these challenges have been overcome many companies are finding
more effective ways to drive good conduct, high performance and regular attendance
such as increased employee engagement, adapting a coaching style (rather than
command and control) and introducing recognition and reward schemes.
 WAYS TO ENHANCE HARMONIOUS WORKPLACE ENVIRONMENT

A good and harmonious working environment is a workplace in which all persons are
treated with dignity and respect and where no one is subjected to harassment. Not
only is it good practice, it can have direct benefits for your organisation such as
increasing productivity, efficiency and profitability.

1. Ensure that there are common goals between management and

staff. One way to accomplish this is by defining desired outcomes for the
unit/business and measuring the unit's or business' success towards
accomplishing those outcomes on a regular basis.
2. Explain why. Many supervisors just tell their staff what to do. However,
informing them why tasks are done a particular way, or why certain behaviors
are required goes a long way towards eliminating worker/supervisor friction,
ensuring that the tasks and behaviors are actually done correctly, and that
improvements in the workplace occur through suggestions from workers who
are performing those tasks on a regular basis.
3. Be results oriented. Many workplaces value time over results. However,
unless a job function is time-based (e.g. customer service phone
representative), reward the results of someone's work more than their face
time on the job. A worker who works a normal work day but produces high
 quality output and new ideas is more valuable than the worker who spends
more hours at work but produces lower quality work and has fewer new ideas.
4. Promote balance. Many workplaces want their employee's top priority to be
their job; over family, over enjoying life, and maybe even over life itself. In my
opinion this leads to employee burn-out and many employees eventually
working on “auto-pilot”. The best employees are employees who have a
balanced life. Whether they balance work with family, playing softball,
donating their time to a not for profit, or going to the movies is irrelevant.
When an employee has balance and works for a business that promotes
balance, when that business needs him/her to go through a period of time
where work comes first, they will do it and be effective.
5. Demand the best. Don't accept workers being just okay. Remind them that
they weren't hired to do a so-so job. They were hired and are being paid to do
a good job.
6. Hold workers accountable. Your workers are adults so treat them as adults.
Don't act like an enabling parent. Don't accept excuses, don't allow them to
slide through, don't allow them to point fingers. You'd be surprised how
holding workers accountable results in good workers performing at their best
and feeling fulfilled at work; and bad workers (probably performing a lot worse
than you realize) quitting or starting to look for work elsewhere.
7. Reward properly. This means both rewarding the right people and rewarding
them appropriately (no big reward for a small accomplish). This includes
verbal praise as well as tangible rewards such as raises and bonuses.
Nothing disrupts the smooth operation and effectiveness of a workplace more
than the best workers not getting the recognition/rewards they deserve.
Therefore you need to be aware not only of the actual performance of your
staff, but their perceptions of who are the best workers. Then you need to take
steps to ensure that their perceptions coincide with your employees' actual
performance by communicating what you value.
8. Encourage creativity. Not everyone is creative. Therefore, creativity needs
to be part of “going above and beyond” not part of the expected work product
unless a person's job is a creative position (e.g. writing advertising copy). That
means that creative employees may not be creative on the job since it isn't
part of their standard job functions. So encourage creativity by always
 responding positively to creative suggestions (unless they are clearly
ridiculous) and reward useful creativity with excellent rewards.
9. Provide ongoing feedback. Don't leave your employees waiting for their
annual review to know how well they are performing on the job. Also, don't
wait for them to ask how they are doing. Provide ongoing feedback; positive
feedback to your top employees (but also include areas where they can
improve) and constructive feedback for others (don't just let them know they
need to improve, but give them steps to take to help them improve their
performances). Also let your employees know that they really need to worry
when they are receiving no feedback from you. For the under-performing
employee, lack of feedback on their performance means you do not think that
employee can improve, so you aren't wasting your time talking to him/her
about his/her job performance. This is also a good way to send a message to
employees you would like to look for work elsewhere.
10. Build an effective team. All managers obviously promote teamwork.
However, there are some who build teams of workers who all have skills and
knowledge that overlap their own, but at a lower level. Other managers build
teams with workers with skills and knowledge that compliment their skills and
knowledge. You would be surprised how many take the first approach since
they either are intimidated by employees that know more than them in a
specific area, or they do not have confidence that they can make good
management decisions on topics that they are not knowledgeable on.
However, that is not the way to build an effective team. Build your team with
employees that have skills and knowledge that you do not possess, and have
confidence in your ability to think logically and make solid management
decisions.
11. Build trust as your team environment.  As human beings we want to
belong, feel valued and do meaningful work.  Leaders who create a trusted
environment where people know they are safe to be themselves and have the
support of the boss and team members - thrive.  Trusted leaders create a
team culture that we all crave.
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