The Red Hot Stove Rule

Some employees, regardless of an organization's efforts at selection, socialization,

job design, performance standards and reward practices, create discipline problems
for the management. Handling these discipline problems is a sensitive and
challenging task for a human resource manager.

Employees of an organization are expected to conduct themselves in accordance

with the organization's rules and standards of acceptable behavior. Employees who
cannot be motivated to maintain such discipline require some degree of extrinsic
disciplinary action. The primary objective of disciplinary procedure is to motivate
an employee to conform to the organization's performance standards. The
disciplinary problems faced by the HR managers can be classified into four
categories - attendance, on-the-job behavior, dishonesty, and off-the-job behavior.
There are three approaches - incorrect discipline, preventive discipline, and
positive discipline – to discipline the employees. One effective way to approach
the disciplinary process is to follow the Red Hot Stove Rule, which suggests that
administering discipline is more like touching a hot stove. The various disciplinary
actions that are administered are verbal warning, written warning, suspension, pay
cut, demotion, and dismissal. The severity of the disciplinary action should be in
accordance with the severity of the misconduct. The Government of India enacted
the Industrial Employment Standing Orders Act in 1946 to ensure uniform and
stable conditions of employment.