Chapter 3 – Personnel, Training, and Employee Relations

33030.17 Applying the Employee Disciplinary Matrix

• Sufficient evidence establishing a preponderance is necessary before any disciplinary action can be taken. The Employee Disciplinary Matrix shall be the foundation for all disciplinary action considered and imposed by the Department and shall be utilized by the Hiring Authority to determine the penalty to impose for misconduct. No favor shall be afforded simply because of an employee’s rank, and managers, supervisors, and sworn staff may be held to a higher standard of conduct. Off duty misconduct for non-sworn staff requires a nexus between the employee’s behavior and the employment.

• The Employee Disciplinary Matrix is based on the assumption that there is a single misdeed at issue and that the misdeed is the employee’s first adverse action. The Matrix provides a base penalty within a penalty range. The base penalty (represented with bold and underlined text) shall represent the starting point for an action. The Hiring Authority shall impose the base penalty unless aggravating or mitigating factors are found. The Hiring Authority or designee is not required to impose an identical penalty in each case because there are a variety of factors which may influence the Hiring Authority to take stronger action in one case than it does in another. The appropriate level of penalty within the specified range shall be based on the extent to which the employee’s conduct resulted in or, if repeated, is likely to result in harm to public service; the circumstances surrounding the misconduct; and the likelihood of recurrence.

• A single misdeed may result in several different violations of the Government Code. It is the nature of the misconduct and aggravating or mitigating factors, as discussed below, which determine the final penalty included in the Notice of Adverse Action and not the number of Government Code sections cited in the Notice of Adverse Action.

• Multiple acts of misconduct may occur during a continuing event, contiguous or related events, or may be entirely independent of each other. When multiple acts of misconduct occur, the Employee Disciplinary Matrix shall be used to determine which single act warrants the highest penalty. The penalty range for the most severe charge shall be utilized, and other acts of misconduct are considered as aggravating circumstances that may increase the penalty up to and including dismissal.