Creating a High-Performance Culture

Ashville Company is trying to develop and implement a variety of HR practices to establish a high-performance culture. In order to do this, Ashville company must have HR strategies that fit with this aspiration. This includes the company’s discipline procedure on dealing with substandard performers. The two most widely used types of discipline procedures are progressive and positive discipline. Progressive discipline focuses on a series of interventions by management, increasing in severity, which gives employees opportunities to correct their behavior. Positive discipline is similar to progressive discipline in that there are a series of steps increasing in severity that are followed when an employee is not performing well. It differs because employees monitor their own behavior and they are responsible for their own actions (Gomez-Mejia, Balkin, Cardy, 481-483). Because positive discipline focuses on counseling sessions to collaborate with substandard performers, instead of warnings to punish them, and Ashville Company is looking to develop a high performance culture, a positive discipline procedure may fit well with their strategy. 

The first step in developing a discipline system for Ashville Company is to determine the purpose of the system and to determine exactly what behavior is considered to be “substandard performance.” This must be considered to be a reasonable and fair measure of performance by all employees so they do not view the discipline procedure as unfair. There must also be a due process established, so that an investigation is done to ensure the performance is truly substandard, and an appeal procedure must be established to allow the employee to tell his or her side of the story.