Documenting Employee Actions

Documentation of an employee's performance is the most important document a supervisor is responsible for. The information documented provides evidence of the employee's performance, along with any disciplinary action. Accurate documentation of performance problems is absolutely necessary to justify decisions regarding discipline or discharge.

Unfortunately, not enough employers use these tools consistently to produce the accurate documentation necessary to defend against employment suits. In virtually every employment lawsuit, the legitimacy of the employer's decision to discipline or dismiss will be at issue. This article discusses the proper way to document employee actions.

Performance Evaluations: Failure to evaluate employees consistently can be the subject of a lawsuit, such as where an employee claims that s/he was treated differently because s/he was never given a proper evaluation. Employees also frequently argue that they never had notice of performance problems. You could end up in hot water if you attempt to discipline employees whose performance has not been consistently evaluated. If you aren't consistently evaluating employees, it would be wise to set up a schedule and stick to it.

Warnings: Unfortunately, too few employers regularly document the warnings given to employees. Many managers are hesitant to document trivial problems such as being late to work or taking extended breaks. Yet, in many cases, documentation of these problems would be very useful evidence in showing that the employee has a performance problem. Documentation of this nature should take the form of a short memo from the supervisor to the employee and be retained in the employee's personnel file.

All documentation of conversations with employees should include the date of the conversation, your name and title, and the employee's name and title. This sounds obvious but it is rarely done on a consistent basis.