Guest Editorial: The Duty to Discipline

Anyone with children can tell you, discipline has to start early. That belief seems universal among parents, so why would it be any different with our employees? Our employees are not children, of course, but for both groups correction of wrongdoing must begin when they’re young. The sooner into their careers employees learn what standards they are expected to meet, the sooner they will strive to meet those standards and buy into that vision of their company.

When new employees come into our organizations, we rarely anticipate problems. They are excited to be a part of our teams, we are excited to have them. However, new employees often have issues that arise even in that first year. Those issues may not be severe or even require much more than a friendly reminder of a rule or policy, but still, those small issues need to be addressed.

What happens when we don’t? Often those in leadership will ignore these small issues with new employees by using the decades-old excuse “They’re still new—they’re still learning.” The problem with this logic is, that sentiment will spill over to employees who have to work with that individual, and they will start to use it also. Many of us have seen this happen: Someone oversleeps for a run, forgets to restock the truck, comes in late here and there, and we make the excuse for them: “They’re still new—they’re still learning.” Others see the behavior tolerated and decide Who am I to try to correct it?

This mentality is dangerous. Allowing those small issues to go unchecked during that pivotal first year will lead to further issues down the road. Undoubtedly, the employee’s behavior will get worse. Not only will the individual breaking the rules feel as if they are above reproach, but their mentality will spread, creating an ethic of “they don’t punish them, so they can’t punish me.” 

Breaking the Cycle

When I became the training officer for my agency in 2016, we had no real quality assurance system in place to review run reports, among other problems, which meant we didn’t really know if our guidelines were being followed. 

That first year I had an excellent team helping me, and we all had a hand in our QA process. Within that first year, multiple employees had to be disciplined for a number of issues. The problem was, some of those issues had never been fully addressed before. 

It was rough, but thankfully we had overwhelming support from our administrator and medical director. Within 12–14 months we had all but eliminated nearly every issue we’d encountered when we started. Paramedics’ treatments got better and more aggressive, guidelines were followed, and the narratives and run reports improved. All of this was made possible through discipline. Employees were held accountable for their treatments, scene times, response times, and so on. Once everyone knew their reports were being reviewed, everyone almost automatically began to take more pride in their reporting and treatments. 

Three Focus Areas

There are three areas I believe you must focus on if your agency has trouble with discipline but wants to improve.

Treat everyone the same—If you are going to have discipline, you must hold all employees to the same standards. This can be difficult, as favoritism is a very real thing. You cannot allow one employee to bend certain rules and not expect others to follow suit; and when they do follow suit, you can’t expect to discipline them because you already let someone else get away with the same actions. 

Everyone, from crews to supervisors to assistant chiefs, must be treated the same. Not only does this benefit morale, it helps protect you against claims of discrimination.

Start discipline early—Set standards when an employee begins with your agency—do not ignore those small issues when they are new. They will become larger.

Do not try to please everyone—Some in administration believe if they can accommodate everyone, issues will not arise, and everyone will be content. This could not be further from the truth. Pleasing one or two individuals and pacifying their concerns will almost always mean upsetting others. 

Maybe A shift thinks it would be a good idea to hold weekly training sessions, B shift thinks you should have them once a month, and C shift only wants them every other Tuesday. You cannot give every shift the option it wants. You have to decide and realize it will make some employees unhappy. That is part of any leadership role. 

Enforcing discipline takes courage and commitment. Overlooking issues and accommodating employees is much easier than writing someone up, sending them home, or even terminating them. This does not mean you have to be hard on your employees or scream and shout to get your point across; it simply means you set the standard for what the agency will and won’t tolerate and make sure that standard is enforced. 

Once that standard is enforced across the board, employees will buy into the environment you and your staff have created.   

Brent Crawford is a training officer and paramedic at DeSoto Parish EMS in Louisiana.