Page 326 - Business Principles and Management

Chapter 12 • The Manager as Leader

Applying Work Rules

One difficult management responsibility is dealing with employees who violate
work rules. Work rules are regulations created to maintain an effective working
environment in a business. Employees must meet certain expectations if a business
is to operate effectively. Those expectations might deal with hours of work, care
of equipment, worker safety, and relationships among employees and between
employees and management.
Many companies have developed work rules that apply to all employees.
Other companies have unique sets of rules for workers in different divisions or for
employees with different job classifications. For businesses with negotiated
agreements between the business and a labor union, the union contract speci-
fies most work rules and the procedures for handling violations. Procedures
sometimes include an oral warning for the first violation, a written warning en-
tered into the personnel file for the second violation, a short suspension, and fi-
nally termination if the problem continues. Penalties are usually more severe
for serious violations of work rules. Also, there are normally protections for
employees in the procedures that include hearings, appeals of penalties, and
union representation.
If a business does not have a formal set of work rules, each manager needs to
develop procedures and policies that tell employees what the manager expects of
them and how the manager will resolve problems if they occur. If managers do not
communicate expectations to employees and do not handle problems in a reason-
able and equitable way, they soon lose the respect of the employees. Managers
who involve employees in developing rules and procedures usually find greater
support for those rules and fewer problems when penalties need to be applied for
rules violations. Guidelines for managers to follow in enforcing work rules are
listed in Figure 12-4 (see p. 314).

CHECKPOINT
What are work rules and why are those rules needed?

Responding to Rules Violations

It is not easy for new managers to handle difficult employee situations, espe-
cially if they must reprimand or punish an employee. Managers do not want em-
ployees to dislike them or perceive their actions negatively. However, it is
important that managers deal with those situations in a direct way rather than
postponing or ignoring them. The result of not dealing with an obvious rule
violation or other employee problem is that employees will not have clear expec-
tations and will not know whether the manager intends to enforce the rules or
not. Often if a manager ignores a problem created by an employee, the manager
will remember the situation and wait for the employee to make another mis-
take. If that happens, even for a minor problem, the memory of the earlier
problem will cause the manager to overreact to the new situation and confront
the employee for both problems.

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