HR MANAGEMENT - Staff Insubordination Policies

Staff Insubordination Policies

by Ruth Mayhew, Demand Media

Insubordination might be overt or covert refusal to do the work assigned.

Insubordination policies are intended to regulate employee behavior. However, if they restrict the way employees communicate with their supervisors, they could have unintended consequences, such as trepidation among employees and overzealous supervisors criticizing employees at the mere suggestion that they aren't obeying work orders. Small businesses, in particular, have to determine the level of authority they want supervisors to have concerning insubordination policies. Considering the close working relationships that occur in small businesses, it could be wise to simply stress that mutual respect is required and leave it up to employees to abide by basic rules of professional courtesy.

Guidelines

Before your company can develop and implement a workplace policy on staff insubordination, you must define insubordination. Defining insubordination is difficult if you're trying to include specific behaviors and actions that you believe are inappropriate. Instead of creating a list, focus on the elements that constitute insubordination. The three elements include a work directive from the employee's superior, acknowledgment from the employee and the employee's covert or overt refusal.

Leadership Role

Providing guidelines -- rather than a list of employee responses that might be insubordinate -- gives your leadership team members the latitude to decide what they believe are inappropriate workplace behaviors. After you establish the guidelines for insubordination, give supervisors and managers the authority to use their discretion in determining what's inappropriate behavior based on the relationship that each supervisor has with her employees.

Training

Before you put the guidelines in place, train supervisors and managers on how to evaluate insubordinate behavior and actions. Leadership training shouldn't dictate how supervisors and managers should react to employees -- it teaches them to use their critical thinking and communication skills in dealing with their employees. Training also encourages supervisors to look at the type of relationship they have with their staff in gauging whether an employee response crosses the line into insubordination.

Discipline

Just as putting insubordination into a box is difficult, so is deciding what type of discipline is appropriate when an employee's behavior warrants it. Discipline for insubordination can range from a verbal disciplinary counseling for the first occurrence to termination for employees who are repeatedly insubordinate. If your company has a progressive disciplinary policy, then it must be enforced consistently. On the other hand, if you give your supervisors latitude to determine what constitutes insubordination, you must also give them the authority to determine the appropriate discipline.

Policy Language

Determine what constitutes insubordination on a case-by-case basis and state that in your employee handbook. Constructing a list of behaviors and actions and matching the discipline to the offense is practically impossible, particularly if you give supervisors and managers authority that's consistent with their positions. Use policy language in your handbook that stresses the importance of mutual respect in the workplace instead of attempting to create an exhaustive list of inappropriate employee responses to supervisor work orders.