Positive Discipline

Positive discipline: a definition

Positive discipline (الانضباط الإيجابي) is a management approach to a repeated violation or a recurring shortfall in conduct. Instead of opening with a penalty, it proceeds through a graduated series of conversations, and each conversation ends with a specific commitment and a date on which that commitment will be reviewed.

Positive discipline describes how the stage before any decision is managed. It is not an alternative to the disciplinary track. That distinction runs through every section below, because writing about the method can present it as though it replaced the disciplinary procedure with a different one, and the method has no power to do that and makes no such claim.

In the sources we reviewed, we found no legal text that addresses positive discipline by name. The rules set out below are general rules that apply to any policy ending in a penalty, whether or not the policy is called positive. We also found no published measurement on which to base a statement about the effect of positive discipline on repeat violations or on employees leaving, so no such effect is stated.

What positive discipline changes

Positive discipline can change three things, and all three sit in an area that, in the sources we reviewed, no legal text governs:

• Who speaks first. The conversation opens by asking the employee what happened from their point of view, not by informing them of what will happen to them.
• How the conversation ends. It closes with a commitment the employee puts in their own words and a set date for reviewing it, not with a general reminder to comply.
• What is kept on record. The conversation is recorded as an administrative conversation and consulted at the review. That record is an administrative note, not a penalty, and the difference between the two is set out below.

The administrative note mentioned in the third point is written in four items and no more: the date of the conversation, the incident for which the employee was asked to attend, the commitment reached, in the employee’s words, and the date of its review. Anything added beyond that, whether a description of the behaviour or a view of the employee’s intentions, turns the note into a written accusation with no procedure to support it. A note of that kind can damage the organisation that wrote it before it damages the employee it describes.

Two things lie outside what positive discipline can change: the list of penalties that may be imposed if the matter ends in a penalty, and the procedure that must be followed before one is imposed. Both are fixed by legal text, and neither depends on the name an organisation gives its policy.

Positive discipline and the closed list of penalties

Article 66 of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) confines disciplinary penalties to six: a warning; a fine; withholding or deferring a raise, for a period of no more than one year; deferring a promotion, for a period of no more than one year; suspension from work without pay; and dismissal in the cases the Labor Law provides. Article 67 of the Labor Law bars the employer from imposing any penalty not provided for in the Labor Law or in the establishment’s work regulation (لائحة تنظيم العمل). It therefore names two sources, and a penalty found in neither has no basis. The same closed list is also set out in our glossary term on demotion.

Versions of positive discipline adapted from other settings can stumble at this point. One tool associated with the method is a paid decision day, given to the employee to decide whether to stay and to commit. In that form a paid decision day is not one of the six, so it cannot be imposed as a penalty on the basis of Article 66 of the Labor Law.

A penalty that is not on the list has one route, and only one: Article 13 of the Labor Law. That Article obliges every employer to prepare a work regulation following the model issued by the Ministry, allows the employer to add provisions that do not conflict with the Labor Law, its regulations and the decisions issued under it, and requires the regulation to be posted in a visible place where those it applies to can see it. A penalty outside the six therefore has to pass through the work regulation, not through an agreement with the employee or an internal policy document. The legal basis of the work regulation has its own sources, set out in our guide to the work organisation regulation.

Where a term conflicts with the Labor Law, its invalidity comes from Article 8 of the Labor Law, which provides that any term contrary to the Labor Law is void, as is any release or settlement of a right the Labor Law gives the worker, made while the contract is in force, unless it is more favourable to the worker.

There is a simpler course than any workaround. A paid decision day, and any measure like it, can be kept within the administrative conversation: it is not described as a penalty, and no consequence of a penalty is attached to it. Positive discipline operates in that space in any case, and the problem arises from moving the measure onto the list of penalties, not from its existence outside the list.

Positive discipline and the procedure before a penalty

If the matter ends in a penalty after the conversations, they replace none of the steps required by Article 71 of the Labor Law. No disciplinary penalty may be imposed until the worker has been notified in writing of what is alleged against them, has been questioned, and has had their defence investigated, with all of this recorded in a minute placed in the worker’s file, the employee file. The Arabic word in the text is «تحقيق», and it asks more than some summaries suggest: it is not enough that the worker has spoken, because what they said has to be examined and checked.

The same Article allows the questioning to be oral for minor violations whose penalty goes no further than a warning or a fine of no more than one day’s wage, provided the questioning is recorded in the minute. The exception is limited by the penalty imposed, and the minute is required either way.

One error in this area is to count three earlier conversations as standing in for the questioning and the investigation of the defence, on the reasoning that the employee has already been asked three times. The administrative conversation was not about an alleged violation notified in writing, and no minute of it was placed in the file. It is a separate thing from the procedure in Article 71 of the Labor Law, and holding it removes no step from that procedure.

Article 71 of the Labor Law states a prohibition addressed to the employer. It does not itself state what follows when a penalty is imposed without these steps. The definition of positive discipline does not address that question, and the answer is not to be drawn by analogy.

Positive discipline and the time limits on discipline

Positive discipline carries a cost in time that can go unnoticed, because a graduated series of conversations takes days. The model work regulation (النموذج الموحّد), the model on which establishments prepare their work regulations, sets two time limits that fall within this same period:

• Article 66 of the model regulation provides that a worker may not be called to account in disciplinary terms for a violation once more than thirty days have passed since the establishment learned who committed it, where the establishment has taken no investigation step concerning it in that time.
• Article 67 of the model regulation provides that the establishment may not impose any penalty on the worker once more than thirty days have passed since the violation was proven.

Both are articles of the model regulation, not of the Labor Law, and their numbers coincide with Articles 66 and 67 of the Labor Law, which deal with the closed list and the bar on going beyond it. For that reason each of these numbers is given alongside the name of its instrument.

The Labor Law sets time limits of its own, worded differently. Article 69 of the Labor Law provides that a worker may not be accused of a violation more than thirty days after it was discovered, and that a disciplinary penalty may not be imposed more than thirty days after the investigation into the violation has ended and the violation has been proven against the worker. That Article states no exception for an investigation step taken in the meantime.

The arithmetic follows directly. Suppose an establishment learns of a violation on day 3, then holds a conversation on day 10, a second on day 24 and a third on day 38, and takes no investigation step at any point in between. The thirty days from the date of knowledge end on day 33, five days before the third conversation. A policy that requires three spaced conversations before any formal step can therefore set a timetable that runs past the limit in the model regulation, without anyone intending it or noticing it, because the limit is written in one document and the timetable in another.

The numbers in that example illustrate the effect of the time limit. They are not a recommendation or a standard: the definition of positive discipline sets no number of conversations and no interval between them.

The remedy is not to abandon positive discipline. It is to schedule the conversations so that no time limit, in the model regulation or in Article 69 of the Labor Law, expires while the matter waits, and to make sure the person running the conversations knows that the time available has a limit.

Establishments prepare their regulations following the model work regulation, and those regulations are certified. What a particular establishment’s regulation provides is found in that regulation, not in the definition of positive discipline.

What positive discipline is not

• A performance improvement plan. It addresses a shortfall in performance through a management tool with measured outputs, whereas positive discipline addresses conduct and repeated violations. The two can meet in one organisation and on one person, but they differ in subject matter, not in tone.
• A warning. This is a disciplinary penalty on the closed list in Article 66 of the Labor Law, with a procedure, limits and an effect that attach to it. A conversation under positive discipline is not a penalty, and calling it a warning on paper places it on a track whose procedure it has not completed.
• Continuous feedback. This is a general practice carried on with every employee about their everyday performance. Positive discipline is a track opened on a specific incident and closed with an outcome.
• Leniency. Positive discipline is called positive because it begins with commitment rather than punishment, not because it overlooks anything. An organisation that calls a failure to act positive discipline can reach the day it wants to take action and find nothing in the file.
• An alternative track the employee chooses. An employee cannot ask for positive discipline in place of the disciplinary track, and it is not something an organisation can promise. Positive discipline is a choice about how to manage the stage before a decision, not a right that is granted or a waiver that is accepted.

Statutory sources on positive discipline

The provisions relied on are those of the Saudi Labor Law as published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development: Article 8 (the nullity of a term contrary to the Labor Law, and of a release or settlement of the worker’s rights during the contract), Article 13 (the work regulation), Article 66 (the closed list of penalties), Article 67 (no penalty outside the Labor Law or the work regulation), Article 69 (the two thirty day limits) and Article 71 (the procedure before a penalty, and the oral questioning exception). Royal Decree M/44 of 1446H did not amend Articles 8, 13, 66, 67, 69 or 71 of the Labor Law; the consolidated text records an earlier amendment of Article 13 by Royal Decree M/46. The two time limits cited by article number from the model work regulation are Articles 66 and 67 of that model, annexed to the Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية).

Before a positive discipline policy is adopted

A positive discipline policy can be tested with two questions: where does the conversation end and the formal track begin, and what is written down at each of the two stages. An organisation that draws the line between them clearly gains from the method within its proper space and leaves the legal text to govern the rest. An organisation that leaves the line vague produces a document that mixes the two stages, and when that document is consulted later it proves nothing for either party.

This is an explanation of the concept and of the statutory provisions cited, not legal advice.

Related terms

• Demotion
• Employee File
• Performance Standards
• Buddy Punching
• Employee Assistance Program