Dick Grote has written many books, his most famous being “Discipline Without Punishment.” He has also written “The Complete Guide To Performance Appraisal.” Both of those were major Book Club selections and they have been translated into various languages including Chinese and Arabic. “Discipline Without Punishment” is something of a management classic now, and has recently been re-issued as a second edition. Strangely enough, Paramount Pictures bought the movie rights to it; I say ‘strangely’ because it is rare for management books to become a film.


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DC: Dick, can you tell me a little bit about how the film industry took an interest in your work?

DG: Yes, it is every author’s dream to sell the movie rights to a book, and as you observed, it is very rare for a business or management book to have that happen. But Paramount Pictures has a business division. They bought the movie rights, and in fact, actually went about producing the film. So, there is a two-video series called “Respect and Responsibility” that we filmed in a darkened Broadway Theater with screen actors’ guild actors. It is a very effective way to give supervisors training in how to deal with the issues that we are talking about today. The easiest way to access it is to go to my website, www.groteconsulting.com.

DC: Why don’t I just turn to the topic at hand, which is “absenteeism and bad attitude.” With ‘sophisticated’ issues like engagement or productivity being popular these days why are you focusing on absenteeism and bad attitude?

DG: Every time I am conducting a training program on dealing with people issues in the workplace, and I ask a group of supervisors, give me a list of the most common, most difficult, most vexatious people problems that you encounter, invariably, the two that come up on the top of the list are absenteeism and bad attitude. My empirical data says that these are real, and there is good solid data. Just last month, the magazine, Human Resources Executive, reported on a survey saying only 35% of unscheduled absences come as a result of personal illness.

Where do all the other unscheduled absences come from? It turns out, 24% of unscheduled absences are a result of family issues, 18% of them are from some personal need, 12% are reported to be caused by stress, and 11% from an entitlement mentality. Now, this is serious, and the fact is that unscheduled absences right now are at the highest level that they have been since 1999. I saw one estimate that says for a large company, unscheduled absences cost $850,000 per year. This is serious business.

DC: HR is a highly regulated area. There are lots of laws like FMLA and ADA that constrain us. To what extent do we have freedom of action in this area?

DG: While FMLA and ADA and other legislation does have an impact on what we can do, the fact remains that the thing that really turns supervisors’ hair gray is not issues that are controlled by FMLA and ADA and other laws. It is here and there, once in a while, unscheduled absences. You don’t know on any given Tuesday, whether Mary is going to show up or take the mental health day. ADA and FMLA have nothing to do with those.

DC: Managers are the core client of HR practitioners, and if we are able to address the issue that is really on the managers’ minds, not the issues that we find interesting, but the ones that are vexing them daily, then obviously we will be doing our job as well as building credibility. So if HR managers should be looking at this, which I think you have made a good case for, what are they doing wrong right now? Why aren’t they resolving these issues?

DG: Let’s talk about some bad ideas, starting by talking about absenteeism and attendance itself and then a little later, we will switch over and talk about how you deal with attitudinal concerns.

Probably the biggest mistake is simply ignoring the issue of putting up with random unscheduled absences, telling themselves it is no big deal and thinking that nothing can be done. That is absolutely false. There is a great deal that can be done.

For example, let’s say that Suzy is out one day. The next day she is back and the supervisor typically asks the single dumbest question that the supervisor could ask. He asks, “Why were you absent?” Or if she was tardy, he asks, “Why were you late?” Suzy comes back with some excuse, and the supervisor says, “That is not a very good excuse.” What is the message to Suzy? The message is, “Come up with a better excuse.” And she does, and these persistent malingerers are geniuses at coming up with good excuses.

Supervisors who focus on cause are missing the point. What we need to focus on is the effect. Whatever the cause may be, that is beyond the supervisor’s realm of expertise. Supervisors are not doctors. Don’t focus on the cause of the absence; focus on what the effect was when the person wasn’t here.

Let’s talk about another bad idea. If there is one phrase I could abolish from the vocabularies of HR professionals, of line managers, it is that phrase “excessive absenteeism.” Supervisors and HR pros use that phrase all the time, and it is a mistake. Here is why. If you say that George has a problem with excessive absenteeism, and particularly, if you take disciplinary action or terminate him, what you are really saying is that in effect there is some acceptable level of absenteeism, which the individual has exceeded. What the third party will ask you is, “What is that acceptable level of absenteeism?”

That is not what you want to be talking about. The proper phrase is “failure to maintain regular attendance.” What is regular attendance? It is showing up for work on time every day, and so, it is the person’s failure to maintain regular attendance that we need to talk about, not excessive absenteeism. Another bad phrase is this noxious little phrase that almost everyone uses called “sick leave.” When people hear about sick leave, and particularly when HR managers and line supervisors talk about the fact that you have got 14 days of vacation, nine paid holidays, and six days of sick leave, what we are doing is placing into the employee’s mind the notion that I have got six days of sick leave, which means I can take off six days.

This is why employees, at the end of year, say to themselves, “Oh my, I didn’t use up all my sick leave, I better call in sick,” and that is where the entitlement mentality comes from. Sick leave is an insurance policy, and the best phrase we could use for that is to talk about our income protection policy, because that is what we are really talking about. Finally, another bad idea is asking for doctor’s certificates. When companies ask for doctor’s certificates, typically there are three reasons why they do. One of those, which is probably the real reason and maybe one half of 1% of all cases is if an employee has suffered some illness or accident, to make sure that the person is physically capable of working while he or she returns.

Another one half of 1% of all the cases is in case the employee has had some contagious illness, to make sure that the employee is no longer in an infectious state, and it is not going to infect other employees. But in the other 99% of the cases, it is simply to make life difficult to the individual, and I don’t have any real problem with that. The difficulty is we don’t do a good job with it. I think if it is important to have a way of controlling this, what companies should do is make up their own doctor’s certificates and have the employee take one of the company’s doctor’s certifications and have the physician fill it out.

It should say something like, “this is to certify that _______ (name of employee) was under my care and was incapable of working on _______ (the following dates) because of ______ (whatever the condition was).” The second paragraph says, “I understand that this certification may be used in an arbitration or legal proceeding in the event that the employee is terminated for failure to maintain regular attendance.” Now, under what conditions is that doctor going to sign that? Only when the person was physically incapable of working.

DC: What was interesting about those bad ideas is that first of all, they are not bad ideas at first sight, I mean people do them and no one is going to immediately jump up and say, “well that was a bad idea.” It is only when you go to this analysis and particularly the idea that focusing on cause is a bad idea. We are all trained to be problem solvers, we are all trained how to zoom in on what is the underlying cause, so that insight that you have is a particularly interesting one and particularly counter-intuitive for managers. Can you tell us a little bit about good ideas?

DG: Let me first mention something you said I think is very insightful. We pride ourselves on being good problem solvers and the first step any time you have a problem solving course is to focus on the cause. It turns out in this single area of attendance, cause is irrelevant. Only the effect counts.

Now, here are some good ideas that you can use in managing this area of attendance. First of all, make it a priority. Make sure that people know that coming to work is critically important and focus on perfect attendance. Let me give you an example of a company policy in this area, it comes from a hospital I worked with.

“Because of the critical nature of hospital work, regular attendance is mandatory in order to furnish excellent patient care.” That’s good because they are talking about why it’s important. I think they really nailed it with this paragraph that is headed “What We Expect” and it says, “Our attendance expectations are simple and clear. We expect every employee to be at work on time for the full duration of the scheduled work shift everyday the employee is scheduled to work. All employees are expected to strive for perfect attendance by maintaining reasonable health standards, taking precautions against illness, not permitting minor indispositions for inconveniences to get in the way of job requirements, attending to personal affairs and obligations at times outside their working areas.”

That takes some courage to say that but they have done a beautiful job. Another good idea is to abolish this nasty little phrase sick leave and talk about our income protection policy, because that’s really what sick leave is. It doesn’t really have anything to do with time off from work. What it has to do with is the company’s provision, if you are unable to attend for whatever the time is, for these particular reasons, we will protect your income, your salary, but it has nothing to do with our expectation that you will have excellent attendance. It’s appropriate to recognize that it is possible and a good idea to discriminate on the basis of good attendance. For those people who do a good job, they should be the ones that get first choice of the training program; they should be the ones who get the ability to work on a special project.

We need to send the message that good attendance counts and the best way I found to do it is to calculate what your average absence rate is. When you are talking to someone who has an attendance problem, you can talk to the person and say something like “Sam, the average absence rate for the whole department was 3.2%, yours was 3.8% and we know you can't be perfect. All we want you to do is just get a little better than the average, a little bit better than 3.2." That’s the reasonable expectation, but when you do that, then the average absence rate to the entire department gets much better.

DC: Obviously, it's going to come down to the supervisor talking to the person. What does the supervisor need to do to have that kind of conversation?

DG: You are right; it really comes down to effective conversations between the supervisor and the employee, in an area, quite frankly, that is difficult. So here are the tips and suggestions that I would give to a supervisor. First of all, when you are talking about attendance and the failure to maintain regular attendance, talk about the effect of the person’s absence, not the cause. The cause is none of your business, but talk about the effect that George's not being here has on customers, on co-workers, on projects, on the supervisor, him or herself. Also, be very clear about the difference between what you want and what you get, between desired and actual performance.

“What I need Sam is for you to maintain regular attendance which means showing up on time everyday. What I get Sam is, in the last month, there were four days when you were absent, there were two days when you were late,” That’s unarguable. You are not getting into why the person wasn’t there, you are dealing with facts. Focus on the impact of the absence, what difference does it make and then the key is to gain the individual’s agreement that in the future he or she will maintain regular attendance.

Audience Question: How much does job satisfaction have to do with an employee being absent?

DG: Although I don’t have data, people who are dissatisfied with their job may avoid coming to work, I think on the surface that makes sense. I think there are some things that supervisors may be able to do about increasing job satisfaction, but the simple fact of attendance is one that’s immediately measurable. It is absolutely one that supervisors can do something about.

DC: As HR, we can be interested in deep underlying causes. Are employees engaged? Are they satisfied? What is it that makes them want to come to work or not come to work? You are cutting through all that and saying let’s deal with the fact that this person is not at work. We know we may have inadvertently sent some signals that it is okay not to be at work when we talk about sick days, or excessive absenteeism (implying that this amount of absenteeism is okay). You are saying let’s sit down with the employee and come to an agreement. It’s very hard to imagine an employee who is chronically absent readily coming to agreement, and saying “Yes we have a deal, I will be at work everyday.”

DG: I am providing a script and while I have heard HR professionals and training expert say, “We don’t want to give them a cook book,” I think that’s a mistake. I think the more we can give our supervisors scripts to follow, the actual words to say, the more we make it easy for them to do the job right. When they get more sophisticated then they can alter this to reflect their own style, but to start off, here is the script that I would have the supervisor use. I would have a conversation where the supervisor basically says three things. The first thing is “George or Mary, (use the person’s name) may I have your agreement to come to work on time everyday?” When you ask for it, the likelihood is good that you’ll get it because all you are asking for is for the person to do what they are getting paid to do.

If you get excuses, if you get evasions, all the supervisor has to do is say, “I understand, but the fact remains, we need you here everyday. May I have your agreement?” Once you have got that agreement, you need to solidify it and the easiest way is to say something like, “I don’t think we are ever going to talk about this again, will we?” It’s hard for the person to say no, because again, all you are asking is for the person to do what he is getting paid to do. Finally, hold out your hand and say, “Do we have a deal?” There is magic in that handshake and by doing this, what you have done is got an agreement, you confirmed agreement and you have reinforced the agreement again. There can be no questions that the employee doesn’t understand what it is that’s expected.

DC: And I think the thing about scripts is that the managers who are better capable of dealing with this won’t need to follow the script, but there will be a lot of managers out there who, if you give them something to start with, will find that very helpful and in fact they may find that literally following the script line by line is indeed what they need.

DG: My feeling is, in our training of supervisors, we give them way too much philosophy and high level stuff, we don’t give them enough practical nuts and bolts information, scripts, step by step and that’s what I believe they need.

Audience Question: Do you feel that by just focusing on the effect of an employee not being at work, that may actually lead to a less than favorable job satisfaction? Maybe it leads to no one really cares about what's driving this. I have heard of employees being afraid to call in sick because their manager isn’t really concerned about their condition, they are only concerned about the work being completed.

DG: I think you have raised an important point and that is we certainly want our supervisors to be models of leadership. Part of that is compassion, part of that is listening and part of that is concern. My belief is that compassion and concern need to be expressed very early on, the first time that Mary is absent, the first time that Sam is late, the supervisor should never let the absence or tardiness go by without saying to the person, “I know that you weren’t here, is everything okay? Tell me what's going on, can I do anything to help?” Those are the things you say in a compassionate way early on before it has become a problem, but once the situation goes on, the second time, even the third time, is when it becomes a problem, a failure to maintain regular attendance. Now the supervisor has to focus much more on the fact that you are not meeting our expectations.

Audience Question: Are you causing a burden on the health care system when you ask doctors to fill out those company certificates?

DG: If I thought that asking an employee for a doctor certificate was placing an unnecessary burden on America’s healthcare system, I think we would have bigger problems than we can deal with today. I don’t know how it is in all locations but here in Dallas, it’s not very difficult for someone to call in. The person never sees a doctor, they go in and for $10 or $15 they can buy a doctor’s certificate. That’s the thing we are trying to get away from. We are trying to get people to take responsibility, we are trying to build personal accountability. What happens is when we ask for doctor’s certificates, we are saying that somehow this confines an absence into the nether worlds of oblivion and it doesn’t count; that’s not true, we ought to be getting rid of it all together.

DC: Let’s talk about attitude problems.

DG: When I talk with supervisors about what kind of problems they face, the one that comes up almost all the time is this issue of attitude and how to deal with it. What is an attitude? An attitude, in fact, is some internal mental state that leads to behavior and the important thing there is that word behavior. The attitude is something that we have inside us, but the manifestation of that is through a person’s behavior, so let’s ask one more time, does it make any difference? And the answer absolutely is yes, it does, because people who manifest inappropriate attitudes have the capability of infecting large numbers of people around them.

Are we allowed to be concerned? We certainly are if we focus on the work. Now let me move forward and talk about what the first problem with attitude is. Attitude becomes the catch all phrase that supervisors use to diagnose and label virtually any behavior that they don’t like. There are probably 20 different inappropriate behaviors, all of which supervisors tend to label as attitude problems. George is egotistical when grabbing the project for himself - he has an attitude problem. If Suzy is socializing too much, she has an attitude problem. The first thing to do is focus on specifically what it is that’s causing you concern. How do you diagnose what an attitude problem is? Narrow the issue to the specific problem or concerns that you have got, now, here comes the key, write down the specific verbal and physical behaviors and actions that concern you.

You know that you are concerned about Sally’s attitude, but you are a long way from solving it. Start by making a list of exactly what Sally is doing, what she is saying. Also make sure you get the nonverbals, the arms crossed tightly across the chest, the eyes rolling, the scowl on the face. Keep track of exactly how often these behaviors occur. You are collecting the data that you are going to need when you finally sit down to confront the problem and get a change as a result of the discussion. And here comes one that I would put a star next to, identify the impact, the good business reasons why these behaviors must stop.

When we are talking about what we call attitudinal concerns, we should never use the word attitude and the reason is, people who genuinely have attitudinal deficiencies have probably been told that they have an attitude problem so many times over the course of their lives that our saying it one more time to them is going to have no impact at all. It is important that we talk about the behaviors. The things we can actually hear and see the things we can take a picture of and a tape recording of. So focus on behaviors, not on the attitude.

DC: When you say to somebody they have an attitude problem, it almost sounds like, “You do not like me.” You are trying to get us away from that impression and talk about the things that are observable, but I think the most important point was that last bit: identify the impact. Why does your behaviour matter to the business?

DG: Precisely. And this is one of the most common defenses that the person with the attitudinal problem is going to use. “You don't like me, my boss doesn't like me, my boss has it in for me.” The big question is, so what? If the person is doing these things, what difference does it make? What impact does this person’s inappropriate behaviors have on customers? What impact does it have on fellow workers? It may be the other people are less willing to work with the person. It may be that it is infectious and other people are doing the same thing. We can keep on going. What effect does it have on living in accordance with the company’s values? What impact does it have on the supervisor? Make sure you write down the answers to the “so what” question so that when the person comes back and says it’s no big deal you can say, “Yes it is a big deal and let me tell you why.”

DC: So it is easy for the supervisor to start thinking these things through. How do they actually communicate with the employee so that they turn things around?

DG: Let’s break it into two parts. The first part is done and that is the analysis part. That is what the supervisor does in the sanctity of his or her desk, taking notes, recording how often it happens, making the list of the impact.

Now it is appropriate to talk to the individual. You discuss the situation with the individual, describe the behavior, note the behavior not the attitude, and if you have done your homework you have got a whole list of examples. Explain that this behavior is causing a problem.

Here is a good opening script that will make it easy because supervisors always are nervous, uncomfortable about bringing up this kind of discussion:

Again, use the person’s name. “Carlos, I have a problem,” and just in those five words you have done three good things. You have used the person’s name, you've taken personal responsibility by saying “I” and you have gotten right to the point. Then describe the specific desired and actual problem. And it might sound something like, “Jane, I have got a concern that I need to bring to your attention. It is important for everyone in our group to act as a team member and be a good team player. That is the desired performance. But Jane I haven't seen that and the examples I have, [and by the way the most powerful phrase you can use here is, ‘for example’] that make me feel this way is that this morning in the staff meeting everyone took part in the conversation except you and you turned away. When Betty asked you if you would give her some help with the Tompkins project, you said, ‘That is not in my job description.’ When George offered a suggestion you rolled your eyes and said ‘that is a dopey idea.’”

Those are the examples that we have got and then we can use that nice little phrase, “tell me about it,” or, “help me understand or explain to me what is going on,” which puts the conversational ball in the employee’s court. What you do as the supervisor is shut up and listen.

DC: Now there is no question that employees are going to be sitting and feeling very defensive when the boss is having this conversation with them. How do we deal with that unease?

DG: Well, there is no question that there will be some unease and frankly there will be unease on the supervisor’s part as well as the employee's. The most important thing is to expect it and allow it; it is normal. The best way to deal with it is to restate the individual’s position back: “Sally, as I understand what you said is…” and then repeating back. A lot of times just knowing that you are heard is all that the person really wants. Acknowledge their feelings. Say something like, “I am sure it must be uncomfortable for you to have me talk about this,” and get that head nodding in your direction.

Pause to allow your acceptance to sink in. There is power in silence and sometimes just allowing there to be silence is enough to bring a person to the realization that their behavior in fact has been inappropriate. The final thing is to ask for more information on their point of view. These are the reflective listening techniques. The things like simply nodding or saying tell me more, or I see, or what else can you tell me, allows the person to be really heard. One of the best things about using this model to deal with attitudinal situations is that people frequently rely on the niceness of others to allow them to get away with their mischief. The message, stop being nice by confronting it, is letting these folks know that we are on to them and often just the realization may be enough to turn them around.

DC: Now, a lot of bosses are going to have trouble sitting still for too long, so they have been doing their best to listen. Now what?

DG: Well, listening is difficult, but the thing to remember is that as the supervisor, whether you are the line supervisor or the HR professional, you are the person in charge and you need to have and probably do have the maturity to allow silences to go. But when you are listening to an individual what you are listening for is reasons, not excuses. That is, is there an understandable rationale for why the person is behaving this way? It may be simply the raising of the issue allows the person the opportunity to say, “I really do have a concern, I am glad you brought it up, let me tell you what is going on,” and all of a sudden what you thought was some lousy attitude becomes a real life crisis that this person is going through.

I find there is a magic question. It is a question that I use frequently and I recommend it to everyone: ‘what are your objectives?’ Whether it is dealing with someone who has an attitudinal concern or in many other arenas of life, asking that question really makes a person think about what they are doing. I find that question has enormous power in getting people to take responsibility.

DC: I know that is a very interesting question and one we usually don't ask. Okay, let’s imagine that we have talked it through and I think probably a lot of time there isn't going to be a good underlying reason, there is no life crisis going on. I know Robert De Niro would just say, “knock it off.” What is the right thing to do?

DG: Thinking in terms of stopping and starting, the supervisor may talk to the employee about the concern, but then not go to the important step, which is telling the person to stop doing this. As a supervisor you have the right as the representative of the organization to tell an individual who is acting inappropriately that he or she must stop, that this behavior is unacceptable and then immediately tell the person what that individual must start doing. Tell the individual what behavior is required. It is a condition of employment that every person who works for our organization be courteous, cooperative and helpful. If the employee comes back and says, “Well that is not in my job description,” grab their description and write it in.

DC: Getting back to the legal side, do you need to document these discussions?

DG: Yes, it is a very good idea. When you are documenting discussions, whether it is attendance or attitudinal situations or anything else, the best way to document it is with a memo to that individual that summarizes the discussion. This is one of the things a lot of people don't realize. When you are documenting disciplinary action or performance discussions what you are actually documenting is not the existence of a problem, you are documenting your discussion about the problem and the employee's agreement to change. So, in the documentation, there should be specific statements of the desired performance and the actual performance.

The impact of good business reasons: you have already identified why this behavior has to change. The consequences: what will be the logical outcomes if the problem continues? Now what immediately comes to most supervisors' minds is further disciplinary action up to and including discharge. But there may be a lot of other consequences too and finally if you get the individual’s agreement, make sure you reflect that in the memo to document your discussion.

DC: And just to round off on this, what is the next step if a conversation is failing? What do you tell supervisors then?

DG: There are two things in addition to formal disciplinary action following your policy that I find worthwhile. One that is extremely powerful, that very often supervisors never think of, is to call the person in and already have a written up performance appraisal on that individual, highlighting the area or concern and evaluating the person in the lowest category that you have got. Pass the person the performance appraisal and ask them to read it. Sally reads it and she is shocked to see this on a performance appraisal. Take it back, tear it up and say, “This is unofficial; this is not going to count. This is just between you and me, but if I had to appraise your performance today, this is what it would say. I am sure you do not want it to say this when the time for the official appraisal comes, but I did not want there to be any surprises.”

The other thing that is extremely useful is to use what I have developed called a “decision making leave,” which is a one-day suspension where the employee is paid but is not allowed to come to work on the following day. He must use that day at the company's expense to think through is this the right decision, the right job for me? Is this where I want to work? And he comes back the day after with a decision, either that he is going to change and get back to fully acceptable performance and remain with the organization or that he has decided to quit and go find greener pastures somewhere else. Now there is a tremendous amount more about that in my book, but I find a decision making leave to be enormously powerful in changing human behavior.

Audience Question: When the supervisor asks, “Explain to me,” does this give the employee a chance to start making excuses?

DG: Of course it does. It will also give the supervisor the right to come back and say, “George, what you just said to me is in fact an excuse. We are not interested in excuses, what I need is your commitment to excellent performance. That is what we expected when we hired you, that is what we want today. The fact is George, we are not getting it and I need you to agree that you are going to do the job that we hired to you to do.

Audience Question: Regarding decision making leave being paid, aren't people going to think ‘this is great - I am getting paid a day for doing nothing and haven't got fired?’

DG: Yes, that always is the initial reaction that I get to this counterintuitive notion of a paid disciplinary suspension. There are enormous benefits to paying the employee to take the day at the company’s expense to make a decision about whether or not he is willing to do the job that he is getting paid to do. But the biggest reason I would say for paying for the decision making leave is that if you ultimately do have to terminate, you could not be in a more legally defensible position because if you are challenged - and any termination today may be challenged - you can demonstrate to the EEO examiner or the arbitrator or whoever the third party is, that not only did you have a series of increasingly serious conversations but you also gave the employee a day at your expense to think about whether he could do what he was getting paid to do. He came back with a commitment and did not live up to his own word. You could not be on stronger ground for legal defensibility.

Audience Question: Any thoughts on dealing with staff who have been around for 30 or more years and have not really been managed before so they’re going to be surprised?

DG: While they have not earned the right to continue their mischief, the fact is what this reflects is a management failure over 30 years as well as an employee failure. The best way that I find to deal with that is to let people know that it is new day, new rules. A phrase that I particularly like that we developed when I was working to implement a new performance management system with a national security agency several years ago was, “that was then and this is now,” and also allow a small window of grace, let’s say 30 days or 60 days where if the person performs in an unacceptable way during this very short window, you have a conversation with the person and you say, “Mary, as we talked about, it is new day and new rules. I normally would take formal disciplinary action but during this period that we are allowing to you realize that what was acceptable in the past is no longer acceptable today. We are not taking disciplinary action but if we need to talk again that’s what we will be doing.” I think that is a reasonable way to give people who have been suffering under frankly managerial cowardice the opportunity to change within a reasonably short period of time.

DC: Any final words?

DG: I guess if I have one final word, above all the critical requirement is 'courage.' That more than anything else is what it takes - the courage to confront unacceptable behavior, whether it is absenteeism, whether it is attitudinal concerns and say, “This is unacceptable, you must change.”