Introduction
In this learning blog entry, I am going to present key concepts, theories and models from Chapter 14: Respecting Employee Rights and Managing Discipline, from the eight edition (2016) of Managing Human Resources by Gómez-Mejía, Balkin and Cardy. I am going to summarize the key concepts from this chapter including Employee rights, Management rights, Employee Rights Challenges, Disciplining Employees, Administering and Managing Discipline, Managing Difficult Employees and Preventing the Need for Discipline with Human Resource Management. I will also present three different cases “New York Police Inspector Is Charged with Sexually Abusing Female Officer”, “Receipt rage: Why food is being served with a side of hate” and “Flint family says Navy is retaliating for speaking out about water crisis”, continuing with two other articles related to this topic.
Employee rights
A right is the ability to engage in conduct that is protected by law or a social sanction, free from interference by any another party. In the employment relationship, both employees and employers have rights. Employee rights fall into three categories:
Statutory rights
- The right protected by specific laws. For example, protection from discrimination, safe work condition, the right to form unions¨
Contractual rights
- A right based on the law of contracts.
- employment contracts that spells out explicitly the terms of the employment relationship for both employee and employer
- due process which is equal and fair application of a policy or law
- wrongful discharge is termination of an employee for reasons that are either illegal or inappropriate
- union contracts and employment policies
Other rights
- The rights to ethical treatment, limited right to privacy and free of speech
(Gómez-Mejía. Balkin & Cardy 2016, 457-461.)
Management Rights
Employers rights, often called management rights refer that employers have the right to run their business and make a profit from it. These rights are supported by property laws such as, common law and the values of a society that accepts the concepts of private enterprise and the profit motive.
Management rights contain the right to manage the workforce, and to hire, promote, assign, discipline and discharge employees. Another important management right is employment at will. A common-law rule used by employers to assert their right to terminate an employee at any time for any cause, there are three key exceptions to the employment-at-will doctrine: public policy exceptions, implied contracts, and lack of good faith and fair dealing. (Gómez-Mejía. Balkin & Cardy 2016, 462-463.)
Employee rights Challenges: A balancing Act
Sometimes the rights of the employers and employees are in conflict. For example, a random drug-testing policy can create a conflict between an employer’s responsibility to provide a safe workplace and employees’ rights to privacy. HR professionals need to find a balance with the rights of the employee and with those of the employer, when designing guidelines that address workplace issues such as random drug testing, electronic monitoring of employees, whistleblowing, moonlighting and office romance. (Gómez-Mejía. Balkin & Cardy 2016, 463-471.)
Discipline Employees
Managers often rely on discipline procedures to communicate to employees the importance to change their behavior. There are two approaches to discipline. The progressive discipline procedure, a series of management interventions that gives employees opportunities to correct undesirable behaviours before being fired. It relies on increasing levels of punishment leading to discharge. The positive discipline procedure on the other hand uses counseling sessions between supervisor and employee to encourage them to rather monitor his or her own behavior and take responsibility for their actions. Both procedures are designed to deal with forms of misconduct that are correctable. (Gómez-Mejía. Balkin & Cardy 2016, 472-475.)
Administering and Managing Discipline
To avoid conflict and lawsuits, managers must administer discipline properly. This entails ensuring that disciplined employees receive due process. The due process means fair and consistent treatment for everyone. Managers also need to be aware of the standards used to determine whether an employee was treated fairly and whether the employee has a right to appeal disciplinary action. For a disciplinary system to be effective, an appeal mechanism must be in place. (Gómez-Mejía. Balkin & Cardy 2016, 475-477.)
Basic standards if discipline
- Communication of rules and performance criteria
- Documentation of the facts
- Consistent response to rule violations
A hot-stove rule is a model of disciplinary action, discipline should be immediate and provide ample warning, and be consistently applied to all. (Gómez-Mejía. Balkin & Cardy 2016, 476.)
Managing Difficult Employees
It is often necessary to discipline employees who exhibit poor attendance (absenteeism and/or tardiness), poor performance, disobedience, workplace bullying, or substance abuse. Managing the discipline process in these situations requires a balance of a good judgement and common sense from the supervisors. Discipline may not be the best solution in all cases. (Gómez-Mejía. Balkin & Cardy 2016, 478-482.)
Preventing the Need for discipline with Human Resource Management
The need for discipline can often be avoided by a strategic and proactive approach to HRM. A company can avoid discipline by
– recruiting and selecting the right employees for current positions as well as future opportunities
– training and developing workers, investing in employees’ training and development can save a company from having to deal with incompetents or workers whose skills are not on the needed level.
– designing jobs and career paths that best utilize people’s talents, by designing effective performance appraisal systems and by compensating employees for their contributions. (Gómez-Mejía. Balkin & Cardy 2016, 483-484.)
CASE A: “New York Police Inspector Is Charged with Sexually Abusing Female Officer”
This article was published by Christopher Mele & Al Baker, November 18, 2016, on The New York Times. A deputy inspector with the New York Police Department was charged with sexually abusing a female officer that he supervised as the commanding officer. The inspector was charged with sexual abuse, forcible touching, official misconduct and harassment and was relieved of his gun and badge and placed on paid modified duty. (Mele & Baker 2016).
CASE B: “Receipt rage: Why food is being served with a side of hate”
This article was published by Sky McCarthy, 28th of August in 2015, on Fox News. In the article is described how often the employees of restaurants need to receive a bad behavior from the customers.(McCarthy 2015.)
For example, when the diners have left poor tips, or none at all, with a mean note. This week, a waitress in New Jersey found a nasty “LOL” remark on the check after an unhappy customer said the service was too slow. Most of these stories play out in the field of public opinion, especially on social media. But after the media attention fades, some of them have ended careers, destroyed businesses and even created lawsuits.(McCarthy 2015.)
“This type of behavior, and this case in particular, reveals a side of humanity that you thought was dead.”
Stuart Shanus. 2011. on FoxNews. (McCarthy 2015.)
CASE C: “Flint family says Navy is retaliating for speaking out about water crisis”
This article was published by Ellie Kaufman, 30th of November in 2016, on CNN health. The article describes how Lee Anne Walters and her family were the first in Flint, to discover that there were very high levels of lead in the water and alert the Environmental Protection Agency. But the family now says her criticism and advocacy during the water crisis has been met with workplace retaliation and harassment against her husband, a sailor with the US Navy.(Kaufman 2016.)
In his lawsuit, Dennis Walters claims that he has been ”subjected to a systematically hostile work environment” in which he was made to work unreasonably long hours without breaks and was denied training opportunities, according to court documents. He claims the stressful work environment has resulted in some physical symptoms including vomiting and nausea. This hostile working environment occurred after his wife started to advocate and criticize during the crisis, and brought public attention while trying to bring awareness for the crisis.(Kaufman 2016.)
Article: “Companies deny responsibility for toxic ‘forever chemicals’ contamination
This article was published by Emily Holden, 11th of September in 2019, on The Guardian. It is about how a chemical company executives have denied responsibility for a category of toxic fluorinated chemicals that have contaminated water supplies around the US and are now found in the bodies of nearly all Americans.
The class of chemicals, called PFAS, are in non-stick pans, water-resistant clothes, food packaging and firefighting foam. These chemicals do not break down in the environment and accumulate in the human body. Numerous studies link PFAS exposure with cancer, thyroid problems and developmental issues in children. These chemicals have been found in high levels in groundwater near industrial facilities and near military installations and airports that have used PFAS-based firefighting foam. (Holden 2019.)
The former Minnesota attorney general Lori Swanson, sued 3M for contamination of her state, said the company “knew about the risks of the chemicals to the drinking water, the environment and human health for decades but concealed its knowledge, subverted the science and kept pushing the chemicals out the door”. (Holden 2019.)
Article: “Employee privacy in the US is at stake as corporate surveillance technology monitors workers’ every move”
This Article was published by Ellen Sheng, 15th of April 2019 on CNBC. The article explains about the controversy between the vastly digitalizing work environments and the possible privacy issues coming along it. The emergence of devices and other technologies that allow companies to track, listen to, and even watch employees as business time raises questions about corporate monitoring rates. Privacy advocates warn that employees may be at risk of losing their sense of privacy while on the job if the modern technology is not used carefully. (sheng 2019.)
The key-points of this article are:
- Corporate interest in surveillance seems to be on the rise to boost productivity.
- A 2018 survey by Gartner found that 22% of organizations worldwide are using employee-movement data, 17% are monitoring work-computer-usage data, and 16% are using Microsoft Outlook- or calendar-usage data.
- Employees are concerned over this invasion of privacy.
”Employees are in a difficult position. As more and more consumer privacy laws take shape, we’ve seen that there’s been a concern from companies that those privacy laws don’t apply to employees”
Lee Tien, Senior Staff Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation
According to Tien, the Companies should explain what they are doing. The empoloyees should always know that they are if they are subjected to surveillance and what it is covering and how it is being used. Also, Accenture advises businesses to ”co-own” employee data, and to develop policies and processes to ensure the data is used safely and ethically. The technology is increasingly evolving so it will take businesses longer to find out how to do it. (Sheng 2019.)
References
Photo source URL: https://unsplash.com/photos/YXemfQiPR_E Accessed: 11 March, 2020.
Gomez-Mejia, L.R., Balkin, D.B. and Cardy, R.L. 2016. Managing Human Resources. Global Edition 8/E.
Holden E. 11September, 2019. The Guardian. Companies deny responsibility for toxic ‘forever chemicals’ contamination. URL: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/11/pfas-toxic-forever-chemicals-hearing-3m-dupont-chemours Accessed: 11 March, 2020.
Kaufman E. 30 November, 2016. CNN health. Flint family says Navy is retaliating for speaking out about water crisis. URL: https://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/29/health/whistleblower-complaint-us-navy-flint/index.html Accessed: 11 March, 2020.
McCarthy S. 28 August 2015. Fox News. Receipt rage: Why food is being served with a side of hate. URL: https://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/receipt-rage-why-food-is-being-served-with-a-side-of-hate Accessed: 11 March, 2020.
Mele C., & Baker A. 18 November 2016. The New York Times. New York Police Inspector Is Charged with Sexually Abusing Female Officer. URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/19/nyregion/new-york-police-sexual-abuse-of-officer.html?_r=0 Accessed: 11 March, 2020.
Sheng E. 15 April 2019. CNBC. Employee privacy in the US is at stake as corporate surveillance technology monitors workers’ every move. URL: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/15/employee-privacy-is-at-stake-as-surveillance-tech-monitors-workers.html Accessed: 11 March, 2020.
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