Rules in company manuals and employee handbooks are created to keep employees safe, equipment in working order and organizations functioning smoothly. Breaking rules puts small businesses at risk.
For owners and operations managers, ensuring that employees consistently follow company rules isn’t always easy. Even among teams of grown men and women who can monitor their own behaviors, rules are still forgotten, neglected and broken. In order to keep missteps to a minimum, many contractors and industry consultants suggest using some reverse psychology – rewarding positive behaviors to diminish the number of negative infractions. Often, practices that create accountability successfully keep employees on the straight and narrow.
ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE. In order to create accountability in their workforces, companies must develop programs that give employees opportunities to grow in their fields, suggests Dean Snodgrass, vice president of Dennis’ Seven Dees, Portland, Ore. His company’s Career Development Program has had great success in keeping rule breaking from becoming part of the daily routine.
“Career Development is our most effective program because it puts employees in charge of their own growth,” Snodgrass points out.
As part of the program, supervisors sit down individually with their direct reports every six weeks to discuss how the employee thinks he or she is doing, and what the supervisor’s perspective is as well. From there, they consider where the employee wants to go careerwise and what opportunities are available to make that happen. “It gets you so far away from the annual review situation – where lingering problems come up at a point where they can rarely be resolved – that it keeps everyone much more focused on what’s necessary to succeed,” Snodgrass says. “It’s a matter of challenging people, providing opportunity, visiting regularly and documenting it. With this program, there’s almost always room to grow an employee’s position and/or compensation.”
These Career Development meetings only take 15 to 30 minutes per employee, but the rewards for just a few minutes of discussion are impressive, ranging from opportunities in different company areas to raises and promotions. Other companies, such as Columbus, Ohio-based Greenscapes, have similar reward programs to keep employees on the right track. “Our employees start work at 7:45 a.m. and our landscape trucks need to be on the road by 8 a.m.,” says company President Bill Gerhardt. “That’s our ‘Out-of-the-Gate-by-8’ program and we reward crews that follow the rules. We posted a board to keep track of all the crews and put a star next to the crews that are accomplishing the 8 a.m. goal. At our weekly foreman’s meetings, we recognize the crews that did well and at the end of the year there are gift certificates, tickets to sporting events and other prizes for the crews that did the best.”
Moreover, Gerhardt says the company’s Greenscapes Bucks program also has been successful. Gerhardt rewards employees’ positive performances with $5 or $10 in Monopoly money, which they can save up and cash in later for Greenscapes logo gear, work gloves, boots, etc. “The most important thing about our rewards is that we make them public,” Gerhardt says. “Our philosophy is ‘Praise in public, punish in private,’ and it’s that positive recognition in front of their peers that keeps employees doing the right things. No one wants to be the guy who wasn’t out of the gate by 8 a.m., but it’s worth so much more to get the $10 or a star by your name.”
According to Gerhardt, Greenscapes used to overhire by 15 to 20 percent in order to make up for absenteeism. Now, performance-related rewards have dropped tardiness and absenteeism from 15 to 20 percent to only 5 percent.
Similarly, Snodgrass says his company rarely has to deal with poor performers on a disciplinary level. “By the time you’re at a discipline situation, something has gone wrong in the program and we may not have the right person for the company,” he explains. “We’ve created a program that helps us focus on making bigger, directional decisions for the company and our employees, rather than dealing with situational problem-solving that can be avoided.”
GOOD PEOPLE, BAD CHOICES. Industry business consultants agree that recognizing employees’ positive efforts is the first step in creating an effective disciplinary process. “If we can get employers to sincerely appreciate their people – saying thank you, giving a pat on the back, recognizing them in a public forum – those are positive motivators to help them achieve their goals,” says Bob Coulter a consultant with JP Horizons, Painesville, Ohio. “When an employee is clear about their personal pride and they know what success looks like, they can continue to do well for the company.”
Of course, companies still must have disciplinary procedures in place for instances when rules are broken. Maintaining a strong level of accountability among his staff, Gerhardt says Greenscapes’ disciplinary process was developed by employees and involves peer review when there is an offense. “In the past, if company property was lost or damaged or stolen, the cost for that equipment came out of profit sharing or the employee who was at fault had to pay for it,” he says, noting that this system caused hard feelings, especially among employees whose pocketbooks were affected even though they weren’t at fault. That’s when employees banded together. “As a group, the whole staff came up with the idea of having a ‘court’ of their peers review any incidents, and if the employee was at fault, he or she would pay for it,” Gerhardt says. “Everyone agreed they would abide by the procedure, even if they were the one at fault.”
Greenscapes’ court system puts the production manager, vice president of operations and the employee’s crew leader on a jury to look at the facts of the incident. The jury thoroughly discusses the infraction with the employee and determines whether it was an act of carelessness or negligence, or if it falls into a cost-of-doing-business category. “Usually, they decide to split the cost 50/50,” Gerhardt says. “If they’re having a meeting in the first place, there has to be some negligence on the employee’s part. At the same time, the employee’s crew leader is there and may have had a similar experience and can support the crewmember’s actions.” Gerhardt says the new procedure eliminates the mentality that discipline is arbitrary or the owner is being unreasonable and reinforces employees’ accountability.
Azusa, Calif.-based Andre Landscape also has a formal review process to hold employees accountable for everything from tardiness to theft. “For a first, second or third offense, we have a pink employee discipline form that they fill out,” explains Operations Manager Larry Ramirez. “After the third offense, the employee is subject to company discipline, which could be anything from being sent home for a day or week without pay, or letting them go if the offense is serious.”
For each offense, Ramirez says employees go through a discipline meeting with the operations manager and production manager or company superintendent. “We never do one-on-one discipline meetings – there always should be a third party there to provide balance,” he says. “The meeting is always conducted with respect and allows the employee to offer their explanation of what happened and why they agree or disagree with our actions.”
Ramirez says documentation is essential during a disciplinary meeting, including using the pink slip to identify what the infraction was, what the warning means and any comments from the meeting participants regarding their acceptance or challenges to the disciplinary action. “Whether it was coming in late or damaging a piece of equipment, we’ve never had an employee say they disagree that what they did was against our policy,” he says. “But we always make sure the employee has a chance to say their piece and we document that in writing.”
From there, Ramirez says employees are asked to write down the steps they’ll take to ensure their infraction doesn’t happen again. “By doing that, they’re bought into the solution because it’s in their own words,” he says. “After that, it’s my responsibility and the production manager and superintendent’s responsibility to stay positive with the employee and keep reinforcing those changes. If they start to slip, we remind them of the steps they said they’d take to keep things in line. You have to discipline, but you also have to support.”
Ramirez says in the year the company’s pink slip program has been in place, the number of policy violations has been cut in half from once every two weeks to once a month or less.
ON THE BOOKS. Ramirez, Gerhardt and Snodgrass all note that their disciplinary practices include thorough documentation of what is discussed during employee discipline meetings. In all cases, forms that include prior disciplinary action and also positive performance reports are filed in employees’ personnel folders and come up at annual review sessions.
“When we take a look at the employee’s file during annual reviews, any disciplinary documentation can affect their overall review, including the raise they’re eligible for,” Gerhardt says. “For our reviews, each employee starts with 100 points and something like being late to work will knock down that number of points at the manager’s discretion. The more times you’re late, the more points you lose. At the end, your overall point total represents the percentage of the possible raise that you can get.”
For example, an employee who could receive a 5-percent raise but loses 20 points over the course of a year for tardiness, uniform infractions or improperly filing paperwork, would only receive a 4-percent raise – 80 percent of his or her possible raise. However, Gerhardt notes that positive actions, such as earning extra training hours or taking other personal development opportunities can add points back into the total, up to 100 points.
Beyond documenting specific violations, most industry professionals agree that having some type of employee manual is key to effective discipline. Coulter notes, however, that employers should be judicious about what an employee manual includes, and avoid being overly verbose. “Simplification is what we’re after,” he says. “When you’re writing your employee manual, focus on your company mission statement and values, and determine the consequences of employees’ actions when they violate what the company stands for.”
Coulter suggests a one-page employee manual with a list of five to 10 rules reinforcing the company mission statement. From there, employers can outline why violating these rules pulls the company away from its goals. “A one-page employee manual would be so powerful because it could be posted, trained, thought about – even memorized,” he says. “Certainly, when you list items like ‘we show up on time,’ you have to clarify what ‘on time’ means, but the point is that an uncluttered manual can really help employees focus on the job they’re there to do and how their actions directly affect the company’s reputation.”
While many companies may hesitate to move away from traditional multichapter employee handbooks, Ramirez points out that the longer the manual, the less likely employees may be to read it. “We have an employee manual that’s very in-depth, but not everyone reads it,” he says. “What we’ve started to do is go back to all our existing employees and have them review the manual to refresh their understanding of our policies, and also make it a point to detail specific policies during our weekly company meetings.”
Ramirez and Snodgrass both say tailgate meetings and company training regularly include topics related to company policies. Snodgrass says all policy infractions and on-the-job incidents are tracked. “There’s a report filled out with input from the employee’s supervisor and those are reviewed weekly during our company’s morning stretch,” he says. “If there are incidents to report, the individual who was involved gets up in front of the group and tells their story. There’s a terrific amount of peer pressure involved there and it creates really good accountability and consequences. No one wants to get up in front of 40 or 50 people and say they were responsible for something that went wrong. By proactively setting these limits and consequences, it’s been very beneficial to the company and helps our employees grow in their careers.”
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