An effective discipline policy can help your workers remain aware of, and in compliance with, workplace safety rules. However, if your workplace discipline policy is badly designed or inconsistently applied, you could put yourself in a bind with workers and regulators.
Here are some disciplinary mistakes to steer clear of.
Discipline and Whistleblowers
Workers have the right, under the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) and more than twenty other federal statutes, to report violations of those statutes. Federal OSHA oversees whistleblower protection under all of those statutes. Employers that discipline a worker who has been identified as a whistleblower may open themselves up to a retaliation lawsuit filed by OSHA. Make absolutely certain that your employee discipline policy prohibits the misuse of disciplinary action to retaliate against legally protected activity like whistleblowing.
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Discipline Against Injured Workers
When workers are injured as a result of their own carelessness and disregard for safe work practices, you really have no choice but to discipline them. However, if OSHA believes that you are simply disciplining workers for reporting a work-related injury, you’ll create the same sort of problem for yourself that you’d have if you discipline a whistleblower. Reporting a work-related injury is a protected activity, and OSHA will take action against you if it thinks you are discouraging workers from reporting injuries through an improper application of your disciplinary policy.
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Discrimination and Breach of Contract
If your discipline policy is unclear and inconsistently applied, workers will begin to believe that “discipline” is more a matter of personal favoritism than any real concern for safety or good behavior. Employees who are disciplined in situations like this can sue their employers, and many have successfully argued that employers whose disciplinary policies were inconsistently enforced were guilty either of discrimination or breach of contract.
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