What is Discipline in the Workplace?.
When the word discipline is mentioned in the workplace environment, the predetermined interpretation is that of "I am in trouble". This statement listening to it at the surface is probably true and when defining discipline with that shallow statement, the word punishment shines brightly.
The progressive workplace environments in today's society view the term discipline more that punishment. Terms such as "orderly behavior" and "the training of employee conduct" are used in correlation with discipline. The phrase of training employee conduct can be simply compared to that of training an animal, better known as "conditioned response" or "behavior modification".
The employee has to know what is expected from them at the time they are performing their task, what they receive upon successfully completing that task, and what they will receive if the path to the task is deviated. Once this has been established, the means of training the employee can be successful.
The workplace supervisor in the process of training employee conduct has to have some ability to utilize one's emotional intelligence on each individual employee. All employees are different; they are not robots programmed by a micro-chip. The supervisor's ability to interpret each one of their employee's personality and apply the correct stimuli to achieve the accepted conduct can be very important to success.
Now I know this outlook sounds foolish, but it is as simple as it sounds, give the command with direction of what is to be accomplished, and if successfully achieved a positive reward is given. If the accepted conduct is not achieved, a physical correction is given (some from of discipline) for not achieving the accepted conduct. This is repeated until this conduct is achieved. .
