Here are the 7 dirty, dirty sins that frequently come back to haunt employers.
1. The Retaliation Sin – An employee raises a complaint. Suddenly, every mistake becomes a disciplinary issue. Be careful with the timing. Courts often look closely when disciplinary action appears immediately after a grievance, whistleblowing report, or complaint.
2. The Scapegoat Sin – Something goes wrong. Management already knows who they want to blame before the investigation even begins. Remember, the purpose of an investigation is to discover the truth, not to build a case against someone you’ve already decided is guilty.
3. The Favourite Child Sin – One employee receives a warning letter. Another employee commits the same offence and receives nothing. When discipline depends on who you are rather than what you did, management’s credibility starts falling apart.
4. The Technicality Sin – The boss spends months looking for the tiniest mistakes to justify removing someone they already dislike. Meanwhile, bigger misconduct by others gets ignored. Hello, the court can often tell the difference between genuine discipline and a hunting expedition.
5. The Forced Resignation Sin – Darlings, making someone’s life miserable until they resign is not a clever alternative to termination. Some of the dumbest things management can do are excluding employees from meetings, taking away their responsibilities, humiliating them in public, and suddenly demoting them. Please, darlings, atone for your sins before you kena saman for constructive dismissal.
6. The Missing Paper Trail Sin – Managers remember everything. Employees remember things differently. Witnesses suddenly develop selective memory (pulak!). Which leaves one thing standing – DOCUMENTS. HR folks, don’t screw this up.
7. The Cover-Up Sin – Sweeping problems under the carpet. Ignoring complaints, hoping the issue will somehow disappear on its own. Poof! Trust me when I tell you this: When management knows there is an issue and does nothing about it, it becomes a problem. It will always come back to haunt you. Just a question of when.
Be better.
xoxoxo
P.S. Each sin is loosely based on actual events I have witnessed/investigated/managed during my twenty years in the workforce solutions industry.
