Is this wrong?

Here is the situation:  an manager was put on a written corrective action for a reason that is questionable and very generic at best.  Apparently, other manager peers of this employee have been talking in the office about the fact that this manager was given disiplinary action and word got back to the people that this person manages.

 What should a person do in this situation?  I believe that it is wrong for other managers to discuss this at all, let alone with the staff members of the person who received the disiplinary action.  Who should they go to?  WHo should they report this to? 

Comments

  • 6 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
  • You should report it to your HR people who should remind managers to keep information about discipline confidential
  • Makes me wonder how all these other managers found out about the discipline in the first place. If the individual who was disciplined is telling people, it is one thing. If someone in HR told other managers, then the HR person should be disciplined because the job includes maintaining confdentiality. At any rate, managers should be reminded that gossiping is not part of their jobs and if it causes morale problems in the organization it could lead to discipline (especially when the gossip is about a confidential personnel matter).

     

  • I agree with BarbieW:  someone must have leaked this information. 

    Look at who must have known about the disciplinary action originally, and also who was talking about the disciplinary action after it occurred...it may have been the manager, it may have been someone in HR, it may have been someone who overheard a phone conversation. 

    You never know, but I'd say it's worth looking into, by addressing it with HR, because this type of information should not be spread around the company as it can have a demoralizing effect on all employees if they see that the management team is not unified.

  • Sounds to me as if the people discussing what happened to another member of their team are very unprofessional. 

     This definitely should be brought to the attention of the HR department.  This definitely could have a demoralizing effect on the rest of the employees. 

  • Should report this to the head of HR and let that person deal with the managers in question - they would need to be reminded of their responsibilities as managers and that continued behavior like this could result in a disciplinary against them.
  • I would look to your code of conduct, confidentiality policies, and job descriptions for sources of enforcement.  A bunch of managers hanging around the water cooler talking about disciplinary measures against a co-worker, leading to this information being leaked to subordinates of the disciplined manager can only serve to undermine the disciplined manager.  The original source of the leak could be a problem, too, depending on who leaked what to who and why.  This is definitely a matter for HR.
Sign In or Register to comment.