Disciplinary Action for "Negative Attitude/Behavior"
chaiscom
4 Posts
Can an employer take disciplinary action against an employee (non-mgmt level employee) for "Negative Attitude and/or Behavior"? Thank you!
Comments
Not necessarily for their "attitude", but if their behavior has some effect on performance of either your employee or other employees, you could certainly take some action. It is much easier to change a behavior than it is an attitude as behaviors are objective and less tied to beliefs.
You will have to temper the level of "disciplinary action" to fit the misbehavior of the employee. If they are just spreading toxicity, then suspending them or firing them is likely too harsh. If their negative attitude/behavior is causing them to have attendance issues or affecting actual performance, then you should absolutely address this with the employee. And as always...document, document, document.
Best of luck.
E.
be really careful with subjective terms like negative attitude. If you can quantify what is a negative attitude, then yes, you can definitely deal with it through the disciplinary process. We had a former employee who seemed to spread her toxic attitude. So we wrote her up for wasting too much time gossiping and distracting her co-workers. It got the point across that we were not playing around.
Focus on objective benchmarks and you will be in good shape.
"Attitude" only matters so much as it comes out in behavior. You could potentially have a customer service representative who hates people but as long as they're appropriately pleasant and professional, then it doesn't matter (and you'd never know, anyway). We don't have special access to the inner workings of peoples' minds, so we can only work with the behaviors they exhibit such as the things they say or the tone they use. This kind of thing comes up in "reasonable suspicion" drug testing. You don't test someone because they appeared to be high. You test them because they exhibited (for example), slurred speech, unsteady gait, and dilated pupils from which you determined that there is sufficient concern that they might be high.
So, where am I going with this? When you say that a person has a "negative attitude", you're saying that the person is doing something from which you find that they have a negative attitude. The question is what, exactly, are they doing from the perspective of a description of their behavior?
I agree with efeldman that you should temper the level of discipline with the magnitude of the problem. However, that's also highly context sensitive. "Spreading toxicity" might be "disruptive behavior" that significantly impacts business. It might also just be gossip nonsense that's making people cranky but not really costing $ (yet). A lot also depends on the employees past record and your own disciplinary policies and practices. I assume you have a progressive discipline policy. "Negativity" usually only gets into a step 1 warning (or whatever you call your first documented issue) after at least 1 counseling session. However, "negativity" sometimes denotes insubordination or disrespectful behavior, either of which might lead to an environment that interferes with the safe and orderly conduct of business. More information about the actual behaviors and your policies and practices would be helpful.
As other posters have said, the short answer to your question is yes. I would caution you to be careful here as things like negative attitue and/or behavior can be very subjective. What exactly was the person doing? Do you have a code of conduct policy? If so, is there anything in this policy that the person was doing that they shouldn't be doing? If so, then use this policy as a guide to your discipline. Do some retraining on this policy.