How to discipline a subordinate without involving HR or our Manager? [closed]

Question

I have an extremely unique situation in which I need to discipline one of my subordinates for violating my privacy. My subordinate went through my desk without my permission while I was running a very quick errand.

A little background. We are on a team making a very important product for our company (I won’t say the name here but you would definitely know it if you heard it). Unfortunately there have been a lot of missed deadlines due to inexperience and laziness on the part of our programmers. One of the key issues I was able to identify was that many programmers like to leave as soon as they think they can get away with it or if they want to take long lunches. To fix this problem I made a policy of collecting car keys during our morning one-on-one stand ups, that way I knew when programmers were leaving the office too early.

One of the more arrogant coders who has always given me problems over my policies went through my desk to get his car keys while I was running an errand at lunch. This is not my first issue with this employee and I have given him many verbal warnings in the past.

I feel like my privacy has been violated but I would prefer not to go to HR or our manager over the issue.

How can I discipline this rebellious employee?

Answer 1

You are the project manager. If your only way to keep your project on schedule is to play the childish game of confiscating something like car keys then you've got bigger problems than someone going through your desk to retrieve their own property. If I was asked this by a project manager my response would be "f**k no". I'd then be talking to my supervisor (and maybe HR).

Treat the people on your project (developers, analysts, testers, etc.) as professionals. Treating them a children is guaranteed to get the pushback your getting.

If the project is missing deadlines then you (as the PM) need to lead. Do you have a daily standup? Scrum? Goals for each day, week, month specified? Do you get developer feedback (if using a methodology such as agile) for specific deliverables? Are the people on your team involved in setting goals?

Holding people accountable is the goal. Treating them like children is not.

Answer 2

You Don't

In the particular situation described above, collecting your employees' car keys under threat of firing them could be constituted as theft under US law, as you are in a position of power over them. IANAL, but I would STRONGLY recommend you immediately stop with this absurd policy, and come clean to HR before one of your subordinates considers legal action.

By theft, I am referring to the (even temporary) removal of someone else's property through coercion. That is to say, when you announce that there is a new company policy that all car keys be turned into you at the start of the workday, and may be retrieved at any time, but the intent is understood to mean that early leaving etc. will be punished, this is forcing them to surrender control of their property under threat. This may be illegal. This could be considered theft, and given the value of the property involved, may even be interpreted as a felony.

NOTE : This question shows that it may not constitute theft to take someone's keys in this manner, as the keys are surrendered voluntarily. IANAL so I would have to defer to someone with more legal knowledge for the jurisdiction.

Answer 3

You are talking about programmers and coders. Either you are showing a spectacular degree of contempt for these employees, or its all your own fault for not hiring proper developers.

I'll tell you a secret: The salary that I get paid is what makes me go to work in the morning and return home in the evening, and not switch to another company. What makes me work hard is the people there, the environment, a boss that trusts me and relies on me, a job that is interesting, and so on. I deliver, and the company gets that for free, just by the way everyone behaves.

What you do will destroy anyone's motivation. If you took my car keys (not that you would have the slightest chance getting them, if you think you've got arrogant developers, you haven't met me), it's obvious that you wouldn't get any work out of me if I can avoid it. If you miss deadlines, it's your behaviour, your total contempt for your employees, that is at fault.

PS. People tend subconsciously to try to meet your expectations. You expect your developers to be inexperienced and lazy, to avoid being at work, so guess what they are doing. The result: They try to meet your expectations.

Answer 4

Managing programmers is like herding cats, and it looks like you are about to get the claws.

Not only do you not attempt to discipline the programmer, you take a long hard look at yourself and ask yourself why you feel the need to treat your people with such utter contempt and disrespect.

If you take this to HR, you will find out just how much HR IS NOT YOUR FRIEND

I've been a project manager and nobody could figure out why my projects were getting done so quickly. Neither did I until I read this as it seems that treating people with decency and respect seems to be the exception as opposed to the rule.

UNDERSTAND THIS

Your people will make or break you and you need them more than they need you. The fact that you are referring to them as lazy and/or incompetent, as well as you treating them like children by confiscating their keys is a recipe for disaster and you'll be the main ingredient.

Stop this before someone takes YOU to HR, and HR will be their friend.

I thought the days of "Beatings will continue until morale improves" ended in the 1980s!

If what you want is discipline and high performance, then you treat your employees with respect. Stop referring to them as your subordinates. That's another thing that went out with boom boxes, shoulder pads, and mullets, which brings me to...

WHY YOUR EMPLOYEES ARE MISBEHAVING

They're staging a job action, and you are the cause. Two times in my career, I have managed to push managers out the door. Don't underestimate what your "subordinates" can do to your career. Their morale is in the basement and you're making it worse. Your job as a manager in any capacity is to eliminate obstacles to the job getting done. If they are under-skilled, get books and classes. If you think they're not putting out 100%, it is your job to encourage, not threaten them.

THE SOLUTION

Drop any thought of trying to punish your employees like children and start motivating and encouraging them.

Answer 5

So, you have to collect car keys to enforce your workers' good behavior?

To advance as a manager, you need to get out of this rut of micromanagement and start trusting your workers. I know what you're thinking: "but they can't be trusted." It's a chicken and egg problem, to be sure (which came first: poor performance, or micromanagement?), but they both contribute to a vicious cycle.

For instance, you say "We used to have daily standups with the team but I canceled them in favor of one-on-one standups so I could assign programmers heir tasks for the day without argument or confusion. And even with this a lot of them still come up with excuses as to why they can’t complete simple tasks." I assume your programmers are all adults with qualifications, so why do you think that is?

You might want to say "But it shouldn't be this way!" but those thoughts aside, this is where you are right now. The question is how do you play the hand you were dealt.

If you keep trying to go down the path of authoritarianism, you're going to be stuck in this pattern of extremely poor performance and your best people jumping ship. Do you want that? Or do you want employees that get things done by themselves, with only a light touch from management?

I'd suggest reading up on micromanagement and trying to learn how to recover from what sounds like a very difficult situation for everyone. Remember, the only person you can really change is yourself.

Answer 6

The automatic answer to "How do I avoid involving management" is you should get management involved.

The automatic answer to "How do I avoid involving HR" is take the matter to HR.

At work we used to have a saying, "If the public knowing what you're doing would make the company look bad, then you probably shouldn't be doing that.

All of these cases involve you operating "in the danger zone" where you are doing things you worry others might not approve of, or that may even be illegal as others have suggested. In the danger zone, you absolutely need to be protected by a consensus process.

Without consensus, you're a rogue manager acting alone, and management had no idea about this shady stuff you were doing, which they will rectify by firing you with cause. No unemployment, no references, it's all blamed on you.

With consensus, you are simply actioning the company policy made by others, and the group of you (management up the chain) mutually support each other. This is the way you are supposed to work.

It seems to me like your sense of "the task of management" is an adversarial one -- you are holding the line "against" your employees (who you don't trust to work), and holding the line "against" management (who you don't trust enough to educate them). That is not the truth. You would be wise to think very hard about what influences caused you to become inculcated into this way of thinking. Those influences are faulty.

Answer 7

Let's assume for the moment your actions are reasonable and justified.
Aside: I don't, but it's irrelevant for the point I'm going to make.

You can't discipline people you have no authority over. To cut the person/people responsible for their behavior out of the loop will only create more problems for you.

In my former position, I was a manager over 5 developers. One of them had a problem with tardiness. This was an issue I was well aware of, and I was taking the necessary steps to deal with this properly. Someone else took it upon themselves to try and talk to the person with the issue and exert some authority on the situation. They tardy person came to me, told me what happened, and the end result was that I had two write ups to submit instead of one.

If you truly believe you're in the right here, there's no reason not to escalate this through the proper channels, and let the chips fall where they may.