Punishment and Rehabilitation

Last week, team production and gift exchange were discussed. In the team production, we talked about the past performance and how the current reward should be divided. This week, we are looking at the team production in the other way; How can we improve the performances of each worker to have the better team production?

There are various ways to improve the performance of the worker. The boss can encourage under-performed employees to make them be productive again, or the boss can discipline under-performed employee. How hard does the boss or manager should discipline their workers to rehabilitate the relationship? I believe that moderate discipline and the following encouragement like compliments can rehabilitate the relationship and increase their productivity.

I have worked as an assistant teacher during summer for three years. When I worked as assistant teacher at summer camp in China in 2018, I was able to see several disciplinary moments. The summer camp was held for four weeks, and it was for Korean students who want to learn Chinese. The camp was hosted by Korean department of international school in Shanghai, China. The teachers in summer camp were all from that school so that students who are interested in entering the school can experience learning from the same teachers. There were not only learning part in the camp, but also experiencing Chinese culture. So, teachers had to bring students to some places in Shanghai. One day, the teacher and one assistant teacher brought some students to huge market letting them have some shopping time. But, one student was missing for an hour. The student went to the other market nearby and couldn’t find the way back. Later, the director heard about this incident. The director was extremely upset about it and yelled at the assistant teacher, not the main teacher. Instead, the director politely told the teacher to be more be careful since you are the one with responsibility of students. The assistant teacher was frustrated after the discipline and wanted to quit due to the stress on her responsibility over students. As expected, I couldn’t see that that assistant teacher in 2019 summer camp, even though college students who worked as an assistant teacher in the former year usually re-work in the following years as me.

After this incident, losing students had never happened again. In this case, I think the director’s discipline to assistant teacher was appropriate since it is a crucial mistake to losing students during camp in some foreign country. I think the reason why the director not yelling at the teacher was wise. It can be unfair and not understandable at the first time, but it is important for director not to ruin positive relationship with teachers and make them under-performed in teaching students at school in the future. And, it is not main responsibility for teacher to look after students in safe-wise. Teachers’ main responsibility is to teach Chinese well in the camp at that time. For assistant teachers, the director can always hire new better-performing employees in the future, not quite for the teachers.

On the other day, I was in administrative office and could hear disciplines by boss to administrative teachers. The administrative teachers were in charge of making photo albums to be distributed to students after the camp, and they didn’t include important information in the album. It was a mistake and they had to print all albums for students again which costed quite a lot of money. The boss was unhappy about it and talked how their performances are not satisfying to the boss for long time. The boss brought up some past mistakes and disciplines as well and pushed administrative teachers harder. The administrative teachers who were disciplined seemed exhausted and less passionate about the responsibilities that they currently have. It seemed like they were usually disciplined by their boss and used to it, yet their performances are not getting better and still making mistakes.

Pushing harder on employees can be effective for short time. However, in the long run, it can be less efficient. If I were the boss in the administrative office, I would tell them remake the album as soon as possible and not make the mistake again in the future, not like 20 minutes disciplines or talking about the past mistakes to discourage workers. Listening to the discipline for such long time is stressful for workers and embarrassing, making them less passionate for their work. After disciplines, I think that compliments on their recent/future work can balance their stress and rehabilitate the relationship. In addition, giving incentives or bonus to workers if they performed well is helpful to make workers productive. If workers get disciplines a lot, they won’t be confident about their performance, possibly decreasing work efficiency. And, I believe disciplining should be happened privately, not making the person receiving discipline embarrassed. Disciplining in the public can warn gently other workers but for the rehabilitating relationship, it should be done in privately. It can make the overall work atmosphere down, when done in public. Overall, I think that balancing moderate punishment and encouragement to workers is important to make the productive team and better performance of individual workers.