Treating Employees Like Adults: Discipline versus Empowerment

  • 30
  • April 2025
    Wednesday
  • 10:00 AM PDT | 01:00 PM EDT

    Duration:  90  Mins

Level

Basic & Intermediate & Advanced

Webinar ID

IQW25D0408

  • Documenting the Empowerment Agreement (with and without a Collective Bargaining Agreement)
    • Rights of the parties.
    • Avoiding setting a precedent or establishing a past practice
    • Empowerment Process.
    • Exemption from the grievance/appeals process.
    • Final and binding nature of the understanding.
    • Following up = Following through.
  • Elements and application of:
    • Limbo (or “Cryogenic Stasis”) Agreements
    • Mirroring for discipline or bidding
    • 90-60-45-30 Performance Improvement Program
    • Conditional Discharge
  • LCAs (Last Chance Agreements
  • Pre-bid award conference for mandated seniority-based position.
  • The Left-handed compliment

Overview of the webinar

By learning and using the techniques discussed in this webinar you will be able to empower employees in the best interests of their own as well as for the organization’s future. Additionally, should you have no other choice but to proceed with discipline these methods can help you to make a good case even better.

Is traditional discipline always the best choice? Does it always provide the best result? How productive is it for parties to expend resources in a grievance/appeals process or before a federal/state/local board or commission to make its case? And even if the facts are clearly on your side the discipline might still be mitigated or even reversed! Alternatively, are there better options and if so, what are they and how do they work? The answer is “yes” there are options and when used properly they can promote and enhance the empowerment of all parties. Can such options serve to de-escalate grievance/appeals procedures? Again, the answer is “yes” and this webinar will introduce several alternative approaches designed to evolve your disciplinary process from punishment into empowerment and accountability.

  • Realizing empowerment is a more useful/productive tool instead of traditional discipline (which all too often makes a situation worse, resulting in a damaged relationship).
  • Understanding the concept and relationship between employee empowerment and performance.
  • How to raise an employee’s performance awareness and accountability.
  • The use of techniques/strategies for communicating non-disciplinary clear expectations/outcomes.
  • How emphasizing employee empowerment can reduce friction/conflict between managers and employees (and their representatives).
  • How employers can build a culture of mentoring employee success by treating employees as adults.

Who should attend?

  • Managers
  • Supervisors
  • Human Resources
  • Employee Relations
  • Labor Relations
  • Attorney’s
  • Union Officers
  • Representatives
  • Stewards
  • Law Enforcement or Security staff
  • Public and Private Sector Organizations
  • Professional Organizations such as SHRM, IPMA-HR, NPELRA
  • All Professional HR and Management Associations
  • Any and All Unions

Why should you attend?

Tired of applying the same types of discipline and still getting the same old mediocre or short-lived results? Or maybe it was a “righteous” discipline but was still overturned or mitigated by a hearing officer or arbitrator. If so, you might be ready to broaden your horizons by considering how treating employees like adults can not only avoid these issues but empower employees to act like adults which can also result in positive changes to not only their long term conduct and performance but to the bottom line as well.

Disciplining an employee is the start of what can be a long, costly and relationship damaging process with the potential to have that discipline reversed or lessened even if your facts are correct and you followed your process to the letter. Additionally, discipline does not always have a long term, or sometimes even a short-term effect. So, the question is what is the purpose of discipline in your organization? Is it punishment? Or is it for behavioral change?

Would you like to stop the “shame and blame games” and perceptions of victimization resulting from discipline? If the answers are “yes” then this webinar is for you!

Faculty - Mr.Bob Oberstein

Bob Oberstein has over 51 years of Labor/Employee Relations experience on all sides of the labor-management table including as a neutral (arbitrator, mediator) in both the public and private sectors. He has served as a Commissioner, Maricopa County's Judicial Merit System Review Commission; Member, City of Phoenix Fire and Police Pension Boards; and Member/Chairman, City of Phoenix Civil Service Board. He is also the recipient of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) Director's Certificate of Recognition for Achievement in Promoting Positive Labor-Management Relations. Bob has served as Director, of the Labor Management Relations Program at Ottawa University, Phoenix (OU), Arizona where he taught conflict resolution, grievance processing, arbitration, and negotiation among other courses. He also served OU as Ombudsman for all student, faculty, and support disputes as well as the Disabled Student Liaison and received recognition in "Who's Who Among America's Teachers.

 

 

Credits

HR (General) recertification credit hours toward aPHR™, PHR®, PHRca®, SPHR®, GPHR®, PHRi™ and SPHRi™ recertification through HR Certification Institute® (HRCI®). Please make note of the activity ID number on your recertification application form. For more information about certification or recertification, please visit the HR Certification Institute website at www.hrci.org

ComplianceIQ is recognized by SHRM to offer Professional Development Credits (PDCs) for the SHRM-CPSM or SHRM-SCPSM. This program is valid for [1.5] PDCs for the SHRM-CPSM or SHRM-SCPSM. For more information about certification or recertification, please visit www.shrmcertification.org.

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