SSA Leadership Discussion Series

By: SSA Consultants

Welcome to SSA’s Leadership Discussion Series. Our goal through this series is to engage the community in discussion over various topics and circumstances that managers and supervisors may face. We asked our followers to start the conversation by replying to a poll. At the end of the week, we closed the poll and reviewed the responses. Now, it’s time for us to weigh in.

This week, we asked our followers to answer this discussion topic:

If you found an employee sleeping on the job, what action would you take?

In the classic case of an employee sneaking in some z’s on the clock, we’ve found that the appropriate response depends upon the circumstances.

In most organizations, if someone is caught sleeping, then they would get a warning. With that warning would be an explanation that this is clearly unacceptable, and if it were to reoccur it could be grounds for termination. But, what if this has happened before? If the issue has been corrected previously, disciplinary action, and potentially termination, may be appropriate.

If you voted to terminate the employee on the spot, don’t worry. You’re not necessarily wrong.

There are careers where sleeping on the job could have drastic consequences for the organization. For example, if you’re on guard duty in the military there could be hundreds, or even thousands of lives at stake. If you find an employee in a situation comparable to this one, that would certainly justify termination.

We hope you enjoyed our first session of the Leadership Discussion Series. We look forward to discussing our next topic with you

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