Somewhere along the way, we started confusing discipline with punishment and accountability with being unfair to employees. Leaders sometimes hesitate to correct behavior because they don’t want to be seen as harsh, unreasonable, or difficult to work for. Others take the opposite approach, believing that discipline requires intimidation, embarrassment, or making an example out of someone. I disagree with both approaches.

Discipline is not cruelty. Holding people accountable for reasonable expectations is part of leadership. Discipline, in its constructive sense, is about developing self-control, responsibility, and the ability to meet expectations. Punishment imposes a consequence for something that has already happened.

I have never been a believer in disciplinary policies that suspend employees from work for violating safety requirements. Sending someone home for three days without pay might demonstrate that the company is serious about enforcing its rules, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we have corrected the problem. We may have simply created another problem.

Before deciding what needs to happen after an employee violates a safety requirement, leadership needs to understand why the violation occurred. Was it a training issue or a behavior issue? One is primarily a safety and workforce development issue, while the other is a management issue. Both can expose someone to the same hazard, but they require different responses.

What Discipline Is Supposed to Accomplish

The purpose of discipline should be to correct behavior, reinforce expectations, and help people understand their responsibilities. In some organizations, an employee violates a requirement, receives a written warning, and may eventually be suspended without pay. These steps are written into policies that leave little room for understanding the circumstances. The process becomes more important than the problem we are trying to solve.

A suspended employee loses income. The company loses productivity. When the employee returns, a lack of understanding may remain, or the choice to disregard the requirement may remain unchanged. We have imposed a consequence without necessarily addressing the cause.

Is It a Training Issue or a Behavior Issue?

Consider an employee who is observed using a piece of equipment incorrectly. The immediate response should be to stop the unsafe activity and make sure the employee is no longer exposed to the hazard. That responsibility exists regardless of why the problem occurred.

When the Employee Needs Training

Before deciding the employee needs to be disciplined, someone needs to determine whether that individual understood how to perform the task correctly. That means examining the training received, demonstrated ability, available equipment, and clarity of instructions. If the employee was never properly trained or did not understand the procedure, I see that as a training and workforce development issue.

The employee may have violated a safety requirement, but the solution begins with correcting the gap in knowledge or ability. The safety professional can work with supervision to identify that gap and develop the employee’s capability.

When Management Must Address Behavior

Now consider another employee performing the same task incorrectly. This employee has been trained, understands the requirements, has demonstrated the ability to perform the task, and has the necessary equipment. There are no conflicting instructions or unreasonable conditions preventing compliance. The employee simply chooses to disregard the established procedure.

That is a behavior issue, and behavior is a management responsibility. The safety professional may identify the violation and help establish that the employee understood the requirement. But the responsibility for addressing deliberate behavior belongs to the employee’s supervisor and operational leadership.

The Safety Professional Should Not Be the Disciplinarian

Safety professionals are there to provide technical knowledge and support operational leadership in creating an environment where people can perform their work safely. They are not there to take over the supervisor’s responsibility for managing employees.

Yet in many organizations, the safety department becomes closely associated with disciplinary action. A safety professional identifies a violation, writes it up, and recommends that the employee receive a warning or suspension. Over time, employees begin associating the safety professional with punishment rather than someone who can help them perform their work successfully.

Employees who fear disciplinary action may become less willing to acknowledge mistakes or discuss problems. Identifying a safety issue and managing employee behavior are separate responsibilities. As I wrote in Construction Safety Leadership: Stop Being a Safety Cop, the safety professional’s value comes from coaching and helping supervisors succeed rather than policing the crew.

Discipline Does Not Require Humiliation

Embarrassing someone in front of their coworkers does not demonstrate authority. A superintendent yelling at a foreman in front of the crew may believe he is sending a strong message about accountability. Employees may instead learn that admitting mistakes leads to embarrassment, and become less comfortable asking questions or raising concerns.

I believe in praising people publicly and coaching or correcting them privately whenever the circumstances allow. If someone is performing dangerous work, we need to intervene immediately. But stopping the work is different from humiliating the worker. A supervisor can explain that an activity is unacceptable without attacking the person performing it.

Accountability Starts With Leadership

Consider a foreman who knows a particular task requires additional equipment but doesn’t have it available. The schedule is already behind, another trade is waiting, and the superintendent continues pressing the foreman to get the work completed. The foreman makes a poor decision and allows the work to proceed.

That decision needs to be addressed, along with the equipment shortages, schedule pressure, and conflicting expectations that may have contributed to it. I have seen organizations place considerable emphasis on holding field employees accountable while spending far less time examining decisions made above them.

The same responsibility applies when an excellent tradesperson is promoted to foreman without preparation for supervising people. Technical ability may earn the opportunity, but the organization still has to provide instruction and coaching to develop leadership judgment. We cannot assign responsibility without also accepting responsibility for preparing people to succeed.

Fairness Does Not Mean Ignoring Poor Behavior

There are employees who know the rules and deliberately choose not to follow them. There are supervisors who repeatedly fail to fulfill their responsibilities even after receiving the instruction and support they need. Management cannot ignore those situations, because failing to address deliberate poor behavior can be unfair to employees who consistently do what is expected.

The employee should understand what was wrong and what is expected going forward. If the behavior continues, management has to determine whether that employee should continue performing the assigned responsibility. Serious or deliberate misconduct may require an immediate change in work assignments or a different employment decision. Those decisions belong to management.

A written policy may describe the steps a company intends to follow, but the policy cannot replace leadership judgment. As discussed in Why “Zero Accidents” and “Zero Tolerance” Can Backfire in Construction, treating every violation identically can overlook its cause.

When an employee returns after a suspension, the crew is still there, the work still needs to be completed, and the conditions that contributed to the violation may be unchanged. That is what leadership needs to examine before deciding that sending someone home accomplished anything.