Progressive Discipline

This policy describes the policy for administering fair and consistent discipline for unsatisfactory conduct at NCG Medical.

We believe it is essential that all employees are treated fairly and that disciplinary actions are prompt, consistent, and impartial. The primary purpose of disciplinary action is to correct the problem, prevent it from happening again, and prepare the employee for satisfactory performance in the future.

Although your employment is based on mutual consent, and both you and NCG Medical have the right to terminate employment at will, with or without cause or advance notice, NCG may use progressive discipline at its discretion.

Disciplinary action may be any of the following four steps: 1) verbal warning, 2) written warning, 3) suspension with or without pay, or 4) termination of employment. We will look at how severe the problem is and how often it has happened when deciding which step to take. There may be circumstances when one or more steps are bypassed.

In most cases, progressive discipline means that we will generally take these steps in the following order: 1) a first offense may call for a verbal warning; 2) a written warning may follow the subsequent offense; 3) another offense may lead to a suspension; and, 4) still another offense may then lead to termination of employment.

In difficult situations, some employee problems may justify either a suspension or termination of employment in extreme cases without going through the usual progressive discipline steps.

Using progressive discipline, we hope that most employee problems can be corrected at an early stage, benefiting both the employee and NCG.

Policy No.  716