Disciplinary action is one of the most important articles at employment rules. The purpose of disciplinary actions is to maintain the peaceful order of the workplace of the employer by establishing internal rules and regulations in order to run its business efficiently. Disciplinary actions should be conducted only when they are part of an employment contract, where an employee is subject to disciplinary actions.
Based on the principle of legality (no punishment without law (Zaikei Hotei Shugi)) and Article 89 of Labour Standards Act, the employer is required to explicitly stipulate in the following in employment rules: ① what kinds of conduct/actions constitute grounds for disciplinary actions ② the specific methods of punishment that the company may impose on the employees as disciplinary actions
In this process, it is significantly important to provide a specific list of items, such as the methods of punishments (ex. warning, cautioning, wage reduction, suspension of attendance, demotion, disciplinary request for resignation, and disciplinary dismissal), and the specific kinds of conducts applied to disciplinary actions including: ① direct concerns over the company business, damages to the company’s reputation by SNS, actions against peaceful orders of the workplace ② conducts against confidential agreement, covenants of non-competition, harassments, bullying, and abuse of the company IT data.