Should You Fire A Tech For Repeatedly Not Labeling Cables?

Cliff, great comment! I made this its own thread to draw more attention to this problem and what to do about techs who don't do it.

I feel that would be sufficient in keeping up with good quality control. I think you should take it a step further and hang them for it... disagree and you've never spent 5 plus hours going through a bundle of cable with a toner trying to figure out what direction the dang cable even goes. 

If a tech won't even label wires correctly, what else are they doing wrong? I say warn once, send home twice, and fire the third time. 

If you have to ask someone to do something over and over and they still dont do it, then it should mean either a firing or demotion. Otherwise, you are simply wasting your breath.

Because I didn’t want to fire myself:

Who Offers The Most Distinct Colors For Category Patch Cables?

What if they label the cable and then it's wrong? We had a project where the electricians pulled and certified all connections. This is great, but when we went to install the camera, we plugged in our patch cable to find no link. We traced the cable to a port in the patch panel that didn't match the label on the other end.

I was extremely strict on the policies I set up for cable coloring, labeling, and documentation.

If a tech can't follow thru on those simple processes then they are probably costing me more hours than I can accept on each project and they have to go.

This really doesn't come to labeling cables, this comes down to not following directions. And if they can't/won't label a cable, maybe they are not doing other tasks as required.

Some items I cough up to skill level but something like this I would reinforce a couple times, then look for a new tech.

But new techs are not easy to come by so retraining may be the best option and have that tech in a position where he can't do much damage. Not labeling a cable costs you a few hours, not setting motion or record on a camera could cost you a lot more...

As a former cable guy, I can tell you labeling the cables is Day 1 stuff. It's the first thing they let you do on your first day on the job. Actually, that's the second thing they let you do. The first thing you do is carry all the stuff from the van. The second thing they let you do is label. You don't get to run cable or terminate until you know how to label.

Any cable guy that doesn't label cables is not a cable guy. It's someone who fudged their resume`. He was probably a cable helper at some point while doing other odd construction jobs. Pull this guy's resume and go back through all the references, I bet he doesn't know as much about cabling as he says he does. 

The days of undocumented work are over! Label and document or go to work for my competitor, please!

I started in the industry back when electricity was just invented right after copper wire and it was a different world as it pertained to alarm systems. In current times systems are immensely more complicated and diverse and the lack of documentation and labeling to match means ONLY the original installer can work on the system and that is not an option  in a growing organization.

There has to be a hand off to service that understands the standards of the installations teams to minimize time onsite while performing service which increases margins on service contracts IF there are in place. Next point of contention would be why is there no service contract in place. Never leave money on the table!

Employees not doing anything they are told to do especially repeatedly is a fireable offense they're being paid to do what their superiors tell them to do that's it.

Also speaking as somebody with horrific handwriting myself is tags are illegible then maybe you need to supply them with a label maker. Nothing you going to do about crappy handwriting

I think there's a dollar amount for all sorts of screwups that could be a firable offense. I guess it depends on the amount and what the employee is worth to you.

As an end user with in-house techs who perform basic repairs on our systems, I can't tell you how many of OUR hours we've spent troubleshooting b/c an integrator's tech was too lazy to label the cables.

I came into this thread ready to say "That's excessive!" but then I read some of the other comments, and several people made a good point. "If he/she is not labeling correctly, what else are they doing wrong?". And that's pretty fair. If you've been told to label cables, or use certain colours, and continue to not do that, chances are that person is doing other things wrong as well.

I am not a business owner, or a manager, probably never will be (by my own choice), so I may be more lenient, I feel like the classic three strikes is more acceptable to "One pass and the second time you're out!"

NO  

It is better to be trained , inspected, shown the company way of doing business until thier sick of being watched and then they follow process, procedures correctly

Some just have hard , ingrained habits , and a poorly trained past of accepted ways

Great Techs are extremely hard to find and loyalty is even harder

So cherish, Respect his or her ability s and delicately show , teach, train how your company does this correctly

You must establish a proper methodology for this or it comes back to byte you .