Punishment in the Workplace

Pre-Post

For this week’s post, it is taking the gift-giving model and flipping it to make the performance of one person below standards. I feel that it is about digging deeper into our past experiences to learn more about punishment behavior in and organization setting. First, by analyzing an example of moderate punishment through our experiences and what was done to reprimand the person in trouble. Then by seeing what the person did to fix their mistake and how the boss tried to repair this analysis. After this analysis has been done then I will put myself in my bosses and shoes to explain what I would have done. I feel like this prompt was given to us to think overall about weather moderate punishment works or if there is something else that is needed to get the relationship to function productively. This prompt is taking the gift-giving model and flipping it to make the performance of one person below standards.

Post

While working at Ashland one of the engineers on my team made a big mistake with one of the orders that he had to submit to his customer. This customer had to send the order back and this slowed down the process of that customer, who then complained to the engineer’s boss. When the boss found out he was very upset and called the engineer in his office where he began to yell him for about an hour and asked him repeatedly why he thought it was okay to send those orders even though he knew that the lot numbers were missing. He also said that it was his fault and he needed to do something to make it right with the customer so they would feel content with continuing their business with us. My cubical was next to the boss's office and you could hear my boss yelling for most of the conversation and the engineer seemed to be freighted and would reply with short stutters. After the engineer walked out of the office you could see how nervous he was and he seemed very scared of losing his job. For the rest of the day, the engineer was very quiet and isolated himself in his cubical. I was not able to ask the engineer how he felt after the conversation, but I could tell that he was very upset at his boss and possibly himself for making the mistake.

The following days after the scolding, I would see my boss walk over to the cubical of the engineer and continually ask him questions about his work and to see if he was trying to fix the mistake. I also heard my boss compliment the engineer a few times on little tasks that he was doing. You would never really see my boss complement other engineers on the regular so you could tell that my boss was trying to repair the relationship. My boss also offers the engineer extra help with getting his work down and would give him less work to make sure he had enough time to complete the tasks the engineer had at hand. My boss kept emphasizing to the engineer to take his time and do the job correctly rather than fast.

If I were in my boss's shoes I would have handled the situations differently. I feel like punishments in the workplace can be toxic, especially if there is confrontation/ embracement involved. The fact that the whole office knew that the engineer was being yelled at was not okay because it vocalized to the office that he made that mistake. Instead, I would politely tell the engineer to fix the mistake and ask him to ensure that a mistake like that did not occur again. I would also ask the engineer reasons as to why he thought he might have made that mistake and what he could do to improve himself to ensure it does not happen again. By acting this way it advocates for the growth of an employee rather than belittling the employing and embarrassing that employee. The manager who competed with my manager had a different style of management and used positive reinforcement to gain results. His team was a lot more effective than our team and I think that was because he treated his workers with respect. The engineers on his team felt as if they were equal rather than his boss and that allowed them to solve engineering problems fast than our team. That positive work environment also allowed them to grow and those workers stayed with the team a lot longer. Our team, on the other hand, had more of a turnover rate than the other team. Therefore, I think that punishment should be avoided in the workplace and focusing on mistakes as a learning opportunity for growth should be embraced.