Because of employee feedback, Saia has announced some significant changes to the company’s policy addressing work conduct and discipline.

Effective July 23, the old policy, “Professional Work Conduct and Discipline,” was renamed and split into two separate policies. The first, “Coaching and Progressive Discipline,” as its name implies, centers on coaching and increasing levels of discipline.  

Specifically, this policy will be our standard, company-wide process for coaching employees and will encompass the following steps or actions:

1. Verbal Warning
2. Mandatory Retraining
3. Written Warning
4. Final Warning
5. Termination

With regard to “Professional Work Conduct,” your manager can provide more information on what is covered under this policy.

As you can see, we have added a “Mandatory Retraining” step to our process and, with rare exception, eliminated Decision-Making Days (DMDs) from the policy. Adding this additional step, and eliminating DMDs, satisfies our ultimate goal relative to coaching, which is to alert employees of negative behavior and actions that may adversely impact their performance and productivity, and not solely use a policy as a means of punishment. We want to assist employees in overcoming conduct or performance problems so that they may fulfill, or even exceed, job expectations.

Note that the policy is not retroactive and does not affect anyone already on the old policy’s progressive discipline plan; you will have to wait for the old steps to expire or fall off.

In closing, we believe these changes are important for a number of reasons. Mostly, it reflects that our focus, at all times, should be on coaching, that is, talking, discussing, and review, rather than discipline in the negative sense. At Saia, our goal is for every employee to be successful. It is also our duty to ensure that employees are properly trained and provided with the tools to succeed. This new coaching policy is designed to ensure every employee achieves the required knowledge and competency to meet and exceed their job requirements.

As always if you have any questions, please reach out to me or your regional human resources manager.