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Texas Progressive Discipline

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In Texas, what is progressive discipline?

Progressive discipline can be confusing for employers and for Human Resources professionals. Often the term is used for discipline meted out by co-workers, or for peer-review. Those are types of progressive discipline, but not the only types.  Usually, supervisors oversee progressive discipline instead of peers.

The term progressive, doesn’t mean state-of-the-art, or incredibly modern. Instead, the term refers to a program that includes successive steps, such as making “progress” up the stairs.

The system of progressive discipline refers to any policy in a workplace where discipline encompasses a well-defined set of circumstances for each time a particular rule is broken. The circumstances increase in intensity, or “progress” as the violations progress.

An example could entail the following. A worker arrives to the workplace late, by several hours, and has no reasonable explanation. The first occurrence earns the worker additional training on the company’s tardiness rules. The second occurrence earns the worker a verbal warning, the third and fourth occurrences mean warnings in writing. A three day suspension is the consequence for the fifth occurrence, while upon the sixth time, the employee gets fired.

The supervisor normally documents each step in this process in writing, including verbal warnings and training, to demonstrate fair and equal application of the process.  Plus it’s a way to measure the worker’s progress in adhering to policy.

Progressive discipline has distinct advantages. The employees know up front exactly what is expected of them, and what the consequences are for violating the rules. The supervisor doesn’t have to choose the discipline, it’s already chosen for him or her, and the employee is already aware of it.

The policies set by a company don’t have to follow the example here. As long as the disciplinary system is fair and applied equally, each employer has the right to set its own set of consequences.

In an ideal situation, each progressive disciplinary system should also contain some flexibility for mitigating circumstances. A man who is late to work because his spouse was in an automobile accident is different from a man who arrives late simply because he overslept. JH