"Disciplining" Adults is Just Wrong

It's a great irony that the discipline policy preferred by most companies is called "progressive". Since the word progressive means "making favorable progress or change" nothing could be further from the truth. The progressive discipline policy is about punishment -- not improvement. This senseless and de-humanizing process was created to protect companies from adverse legal rulings and mostly at the advice of legal counsel. The irony is that a claim or charge can be adjudicated in favor of the employee -- not because of what the terminated employee has or hasn't done -- but because the company failed to follow the myriad details outlined in its own policies. Here, Bingham reports that punishment expects employee performance to improve by treating the employee progressively worse.