Violations
A violation is a defined threshold at which the employee's accumulation of points warrants some type of action, such as a verbal or written warning. A violation definition specifies the number of points that trigger the violation, such as three points, and the period within which the points must be accumulated. For example, a violation might have a threshold of three points and a period of one rolling year. These conditions are met if an employee has three single-point events spanning an 11 month period. If that same employee recorded two single-point events over an 11 month period, and another event two months later, the conditions are not met because more than a year has passed.
Each time a violation's conditions are met, an entry is created in the violation log with a PENDING status. A workflow item is also generated and sent to the appropriate role.
See Setting recipients of violation notifications.
After the supervisor acts upon the violation, its status changes to PROCESSED regardless of whether the violation was authorized. If the violation was authorized, it is updated with the name of the user who authorized the violation and the date and time of the authorization. The authorization can also contain additional information about the reason the employee gave or any notes from the supervisor.
Electing not to authorize a violation does not affect whether any future violations will be created. If an employee incurs another event, the manager will still get notified accordingly.
Violation processing
Unless explicitly marked as "exclude," each event in the log is considered when violations are determined. For example, two violations are set up: a verbal violation at three points (priority 2) and a written violation at five points (priority 1).
In this example, events are processed in this order:
- When the employee reaches three points within the time period, the verbal violation is triggered.
- When the employee reaches four points within the time period, the verbal violation is triggered again.
- When the employee reaches five points within the time period, the written violation is triggered. Because the relevant events are now associated with the written violation, the verbal violation is not triggered.
- When the employee reaches six points within the time period, the written violation is triggered again.
It can also happen that the same event triggers more than one violation in the same day. By default, if an event triggers more than one violation in the same day, then only the violation with the highest priority is used. You can also configure the system to allow multiple violations for the same event in the same day.