Contemporary Employee Discipline Policies an Example of the Topic Business Essays by

Contemporary Employee Discipline Policies Introduction Organizations have been in the need for discipline in the business environment. Effective performance requires the maintenance of discipline (internally and externally imposed) by managerial and non-managerial personnel. Workplace regulations typically are rigid and detailed, raising their costs for business yet reducing their effectiveness at protecting workers. Policies to increase the supply of skilled workers are important but may not be sufficient unless jobs are available that utilize the enhanced skills. Skills alone may not lead to high wages, high productivity, or even interesting work. We need labor market policies to enhance the trend toward workplaces that rely on high levels of skill, lifelong learning, and continuous skill improvement. Need essay sample on "Contemporary Employee Discipline Policies" topic? We will write a custom essay sample specifically for you Proceed These workplaces typically are quite different from traditional ones. They have been transformed so as to give employees greater ability and the incentive to improve their workplaces. Workers' ability to generate good ideas is often strengthened by high levels of training and information sharing. Forms of worker empowerment vary widely but often include work teams and forms of representative participation such as elected committees of workers or union representatives. Incentive schemes vary as well but typically reward individuals for learning new skills, reward groups of workers for their collective success, and build cohesiveness and solidarity more than individualistic competition. Motivation is also supported when companies ensure that the efficiency gains achieved by implementing workers' suggestions do not end up costing them their jobs. Positive And Negative Discipline As can be seen from various practical definitions, discipline can be positive and activating, or it may be negative and restraining. In either case, it is the force which prompts an individual or group to observe policies, rules, regulations, and procedures that are deemed necessary to the attainment of objectives. The positive type provides workers with greater freedom of self-expression. It promotes emotional satisfaction instead of emotional conflict and results in coordination and cooperation with a minimum need for formal authority. It can be achieved best when group objectives and procedures are well known and are a basis for individual behavior. Negative discipline involves force or an outward influence. This type of discipline need not be extreme, and it is used best in industry only when the positive type fails. Force will often cause a person to change outwardly but not mentally and emotionally. In fact, it sometimes results in "malicious obedience," whereby an aggrieved employee does exactly what he is told to do, even if he knows the order is faulty and will result in getting things fouled up. (Kochan, 350-366) Regulations do not work well for managers, either. Although the total benefits of workplace regulation probably outweigh the costs, often the tens or perhaps even hundreds of billions of dollars spent on workplace regulations are not cost effective. Few regulations provide incentives for managers and workers to discover the most effective means to accomplish the regulations' goals. Similarly, laws and regulations often require regulators to use similar enforcement strategies for companies with very different compliance efforts and records. The result is harassment of "good" employers and a lack of focus on "bad" ones (Clinton 20-28). Regulatory agencies often create different definitions, inspection schedules, and paperwork requirements with no coherence to the system. Employers also resent laws that discourage employee involvement that might satisfy the goals of both workers and managers. Finally, regulations do not work well for the regulators. Rules are difficult to modify even decades after the regulators realize they are out of date. Inspections are rare, frustrating many regulators' desire to ensure safe, legal, and nondiscriminatory workplaces. Discipline Measurement of Worker and Workplace Skills Discipline is a state of good order, resulting from the fair and impartial establishment and enforcement of policies, procedures, rules, and regulations. Coordination is considered to be one of the first principles of organization. One cannot conceive of an orderly arrangement of group effort without some form of coordination to achieve a meshing of the jobs, individuals, authorities, and responsibilities. Yet, it is difficult to have coordination without orderly employee behavior. Consequently, orderly behavior which is based upon knowledge and performance of duties is essential to organization, and thus, to management. The necessary condition to obtain this orderly behavior has been called discipline. Here we see an inseparable relationship: discipline is essential to coordination and coordination is essential to organization. It would be nave and unnecessary to elaborate on the matter of importance of standard system of rules. By formulating a general policy for the governance of conduct which can be advanced upon its merits and uniformly applied, we can expect the optimum of cooperation from our personnel. As applied to modern personnel management, judicial due process involves establishing "laws," or rules which cannot be violated with impunity; setting specific penalties for infringements upon these rules, with progressive degrees in the severity of penalties; and imposing the penalties upon infractors only after determining the extent of guilt, and taking any mitigating circumstances into consideration. The due-process concept is based upon four assumptions which are usually upheld by arbitrators. These are: (1) the rules must be "reasonable"; (2) the employee must have a clear idea of what is expected of him; (3) the employer has a right to have a well-disciplined, cooperative work force; and (4) he has the authority to administer discipline when rules are violated. (Wollenberger, p. 27) Disciplinary Procedure To Be Followed Once the grounds for disciplinary action have been established, it becomes necessary for the manager to follow the correct procedure in taking any action against a subordinate. Adherence to established orderly procedures is the essence of the due process concept of discipline. As injustice thrives on privacy, the best guarantee of truth is the free exchange of views between the accused, his accuser, and their representatives in an open forum. No method assures this exchange as well as an orderly disciplinary procedure. In order to meet the test of judicial due process, discipline must be properly administered by the superior in accord with previously promulgated rules. Penalties should be based upon specific well-defined charges, with notices given to the employee and union, usually in advance of management's attempt to take correction action. Penalties Imposed After the grounds for action have been established and the proper procedure followed, it becomes necessary to impose the penalty. Types of penalties: First, there is the simple oral warning which is not placed on the employee's record but can be recalled as evidence later on. Actually, it is inadmissible as a basis of proof and is usually only intended as instructional. The next type is the oral warning that does go on the employee's record and helps avoid the charge of gathering evidence after the fact. The written reprimand, which is the third type, usually comes from a source higher than the immediate supervisor. It is more official and may be challenged by the employee. Suspension, the fourth type, is an even more serious penalty, which usually consists of a layoff lasting from a short period of days to a number of months. Management must be consistent in its use of suspension and equate the layoff to the seriousness of the offense. The ultimate in penalties is the discharge. This constitutes a break in service and wipes out the worker's seniority. Most arbitrators are reluctant to sustain a discharge, because it is the economic equivalent to capital punishment, especially since it affects a man's family as well as himself. (Duffy, 1) Some other penalties used are demotions, transfers, and withholding of benefits such as promotions, raises, or bonuses. Demotion or transfer is generally used only if the employee is still of value to the organization but is involved in a personality clash or is on a job which is above his ability. Incentives for Managers The personnel manager's view of this control function has switched from the traditional one of discipline as punishment to the modern approach of internal self-control, orderly behavior, and the judicial due process. Discipline is not merely punishment; it is also training which corrects and strengthens. Unions have played a major role in bringing about this change in philosophy. Their impact shows up not only in company policy but also in the supervisor's role, regardless of whether the firm is unionized or not. But no matter how much influence unions have had on the disciplinary process, the right to discipline is still a prerogative of management; the main change is that personnel managers must be sure they follow the due-process procedures. Conclusion It is proper to conclude from the information available that discipline is necessary for the success of management. This chapter has associated discipline with leadership, communication, and motivation, for regardless of the way an individual visualizes the term, there can be no denial that discipline plays an important role in holding an organization together. Employee discipline is a process of control. As such, it is a method for the maintenance of authority by management, and this authority is necessary to keep the enterprise going on a profitable basis. Works Cited Clinton, William J. "The New OSHA: Reinventing Worker Health". National Performance Review 10, 1995 no. 1:20-28 Duffy, Shannon P. "Casellas: EEOC Suffering Backlash". Legal Intelligencer (June 20, 1995): 1. Kochan, Thomas A. "Using the Dunlop Report to Achieve Mutual Gains". Industrial Relations 34, no. 3 (July 1995): 350-366 Wollenberger, Joseph B. "Acceptable Work Rules and Penalties, A Company Guide," Personnel, Vol. 40, No. 4 July, 1963, p. 27

Estimating Oil and Gas Volumes Using Structure Contour Maps Essays

Estimating Oil and Gas Volumes Using Structure Contour Maps Essays Estimating Oil and Gas Volumes Using Structure Contour Maps Paper Estimating Oil and Gas Volumes Using Structure Contour Maps Paper The estimation of oil and gas reserves is a completely complex process which involves the integration of geological, geophysical, reservoir and production engineering data. In order to arrive at the most likely reserves, the reserves are estimated by using deterministic and probabilistic methods as there are various uncertainties that are involved in the estimating the reserves. In defining the hydrocarbon, Reserves refers to the quantities of oil and gas which can be commercially recovered from a given date forward whereas Resources are the reserves plus additional oil and gas that cannot be produced due to techno-economic factors. In the different stages of a field exploration and developments there are different reserves estimate methods that are generally used at the respective stages. One of the methods which is generally used from when the field is discovered up to when it is abandoned is the Oil and Gas-Len- Place method at surface conditions. As usually only some of the oil and gas-in?place can be recovered, therefore the total oil and gas-in-place must be multiplied by a certain recovery factor which depends on the individual field. Moreover, when oil and gas are brought to the surface it shrinks and expands respectively. Therefore if the surface volume of the in-place oil and gas were to be calculated, the Formation Volume Factor which accounts for the shrinkage and expansion factors, should be vided and multiplied respectively for the oil and gas. At 1280 ms is the lowest tested oil. IP category is where there is 90% confidence. For UP Oil Reserve so-pay, the Iso- pay value within the entire gas cap is mm and falls to zero at 1300 ms which is at ten 011-water contact penning on ten structural Tall. A a ten UP 011 Reserve has an so-pay value of mm in the entire gas cap area and reduces to zero at 1380 ms which is at the last closed contour depending also on the structural fall. The UP and UP categories have 50% and 10% confidence associated with them respectively. After the so-pay contours are constructed, the area between two respective ISO-pay contours is estimated by means of drawing the contours on a tracing paper and by inspecting the area by means of an underlying graph paper in units of centimeter square (CM). Once the area between the two ISO-pay contours has been estimated ND converted into kilometer-square (km) according to the given scale, the rock volume is estimated by multiplying the area converted to meter-square (mm) by the average thickness in meters (m) between the two so-Pay contour values. The above is done for all the IP Gas Reserve so-pay and the 1 P, UP and UP Oil Reserve so-pays. An example of the above is as follows. The diagram above shows the 1 P so-pay contour map of the Gas Cap. Figure 1: IP gas so-pay contour map As explained before the so-pay value ranges from zero to fifteen which depends on the structural gain which was from (1220 to 1205 ms). The three areas are divided into Area A, B and C respectively. Therefore in order to find the rock volume between the 15 and 10 so-pay values (Area B), the area between them is first calculated.