Is your disciplinary process dragging?

Recent stats reveal a worrying reality in the world of disciplinary processes: more than HALF of all of them take longer than a month to conclude. 

That’s a minimum of four weeks of stalled progress, angst, stress and damage to morale; in many organisations the process is taking much longer. 

Why are disciplinary processes stalling? 

Slightly surprisingly, it’s not because of red tape, or a lack of time. 

It’s because the manager in charge isn’t confident in their convictions and, as a result, fails to follow the process properly. 

Which means: 

- 60% of managers only end up escalating to HR after informal actions have failed. 

- 17% wait for “serious misconduct” before doing anything official. 

It might seem shocking, but we're not surprised. 

It’s a story we’ve seen time and time again. 

Managers who are genuinely caring and committed to their teams, but who feel uneasy about confronting conflict directly. 

They delay, and hope the problem resolves itself.  Which, sadly, it rarely does. 

In fact, delaying any confrontation only tends to complicate the issue, increase the chances of costs and increase the emotional toll. 

Get confident. Take action.

The best way to ensure your managers are confident enough to take action and escalate when they need to? Give them the tools to do so. 

Proper policies, proper procedures and a full-on handbook. Also, a HR expert who can tell them exactly what to do and when. 

With the Employment Rights Bill now becoming a reality, we can only see employee issues increasing. 

And if you’re serious about business success, you can’t afford the time, and emotional energy, it takes when disciplinary issues drag on. 

If you know you’re lacking in this area, we urge you - Get it sorted NOW.