THE ACTRESS JOAN CRAWFORD ON PROGRESSIVE DISCIPLINE
The next time some top manager proposes termination rather than uses progressive discipline on an employee think about showing the oral reply official the wire hanger scene from Joan Crawford’s Mommy Dearest film. It is a spot-on visual description of precisely what the CEO-as-executioner is doing. If you have seen the film, you will remember a wild-eyed Joan rampaging and ranting through her house destroying thousands of dollars because her child violated one of Joan’s peccadilloes, i.e., she used wire rather than wooden clothes hangers. Obviously, in Joan’s world what she wants is not only more important than anything else, but deserves termination with extreme prejudice, the guillotine, the full Vlad-The-Impaler package, etc. if slighted. Given the harm “termination without previous discipline” does to the employee, their family and sadly at times our communities, this CEO preference for extermination is more than the executive’s ego or even hubris. It is far closer to a megalomania, i.e., a delusional obsession with self-importance.
Are there offenses that often—but not always–deserve immediate termination? Probably. Being a physical threat to co-workers, deliberate attempts to sabotage the organization, and serious theft. (I am not talking about padding a travel voucher.) However, it is a very short list because employers have so many options that should correct the improper behavior, e.g., reprimands, suspensions, demotions, reassignments, delaying promotions, and withdrawing benefits such as telework, AWS/CWS, transit subsidies, etc. And of course there is always the Last Chance Agreement which leaves the employee with certain, unreviewable termination
Moreover, in my experience all too often immediate termination is proposed to deal with minor to moderate offenses that are correctable. I remember the case where an employee was called into an investigatory interview and asked whether he had guns in the trunk of his government car. He said he did not and swore to that. A short time later the government fired him when they had witnesses testifying that they saw a gun in the car. They charged him with a lack of candor after he explained that while he gave a truthful answer about a gun in his trunk he always kept one under the front seat. I see that case, like almost all lack of candor cases, to be a matter of sloppy and lazy agency investigators, not a lying employee.
Frankly, I wish some union would at least try to have a failure to discipline progressively recognized as a violation of the CEO’s fiduciary obligations. A couple of years ago, a management consulting firm published an article outlining how a single union member can sue the union’s leadership for wasting resources because those leaders have a statutory fiduciary duty, e.g., to act in the memberships best interest. Wasting resources, whether capital or human ones, violates that obligation. Unions should flesh out that case law to help them go after agency managers who waste government human resources. After all, they have a similar obligation. Management should be obligated to explain why, in tangible terms, a lesser action is not adequate when they go directly to termination.
It is time to get all the “Joans” out of management.
