Explain how a supervisor can make discipline progressive

What will be an ideal response?

Punishment should be applied in steps. That is, penalties should get progressively stronger if, or when, an offense is repeated. There are two reasons for making punishment progressive: 1. stronger penalties for repeated offenses discourage repetition and 2. progressive discipline is consistent with court and arbitration rulings that mitigating factors be considered when taking disciplinary action. The four components of progressive discipline are: 1. immediacy — the more quickly the discipline follows the offense, the more likely that the employee will associate the discipline with the offense rather than with you as the imposer of the discipline; 2. advance warning — this means that the employee must be aware of the organization's rules and accept its standards of behavior. Disciplinary action is more likely to be interpreted as fair by employees when they have received clear warning that a given violation will lead to discipline and when they know what that discipline will be; 3. consistency — discipline should be consistent which need not result in treating everyone exactly alike because that ignores mitigating circumstances. It does put the responsibility on the supervisor to clearly justify disciplinary actions that may appear inconsistent to employees; and 4. impartiality — discipline should be directed at what the employee has done, not at the employee personally.