If you're around me much, you know I preach consistency when making HR decisions. However, now I'm going to flip that around and say that the same action does NOT work in every situation. Am I being inconsistent in my teachings? Not at all!

Consistency is needed when making decisions to ensure you aren't being discriminatory. If you are making a decision that will create policy, you must be consistent in how that policy is applied. I think the problem with remembering to be consistent comes when you are too focused on solving the problem without backing away to see what or who else your decision may affect.

Here's an example of a narrow focus with attendance. You have one employee, Roger, who always shows up late to work and you're trying to figure out how to make Roger arrive on time. This is only one of the problems you have with Roger, but it's the one you're currently going to fix. So you think, think, think. Aha, you'll tell Roger that in the future if he is late to work again, he'll be written up and continued tardiness will lead to termination. Perfect, right?

Did you give any thought to Joe, the fabulous employee who is late every once in a while due to childcare issues? You can't discipline Roger without applying the same discipline to Joe or you run the risk of being charged with discrimination. You have to find solutions that work but that can be equally applied to both your best and worst employees.

The flip side of this is applying the same solution to similar but different problems. Confusing, huh? I worked with a client to create what turned out to be a series of three memos related to a specific attendance issue with one employee. The first memo laid out the problem and the "rule" this employee was to follow. At the same time we enhanced the policy in the Employee Handbook to match the rule in the memo. The other two memos were follow-ups based on continued poor attendance and a disregard for the new policy.

Where the problem came in was a few months later. I discovered the company was continuing to use my "three memo sequence" every time they had any issue with an employee. If the employee ended up receiving all three memos due to a continuing problem, they were terminated. Yes, even some of my clients act without asking me first! Go figure! Now, can you guess where my concern lay?

The fact that the company was consistently using the three-memo sequence for disciplining employees could easily make that sequence a policy. This means the company could be prevented from immediately terminating an employee or using another method or sequence for disciplining employees. Once your actions become a pattern, employees expect to see that pattern every time and can call foul when it's not applied.

Human resources isn't like accounting where everything is black and white. Legally, there are a lot of gray areas that we have to tip-toe around. Always take a look at what you're doing when it comes to employee relations and ask yourself two questions: Am I willing to use this same treatment on both the best and worst employees? Am I using this disciplinary method because it best fits this particular situation?