Documenting Discipline

Documenting Discipline

Corrective Action  - Documenting Incidents of Poor Performance and Disciplinary Action

There are two types of corrective action: verbal and formal...

Verbal corrective action is a conversation between a supervisor and a direct report warning that sustained improvement in the area of job performance or personal conduct must be demonstrated in order to prevent formal corrective action or termination of employment.

Even though this type of counseling is called a verbal and the employee is not asked to sign any documents related to the corrective discussion, the counseling should be documented.  Supervisors should make note of the reason for the verbal, the date, time, and location of the verbal, as well as the employee reaction to the counseling.  This information should be given to the HR Manager to be placed in the employee's personnel file.

It may surprise you that we said to put record of a verbal in the employee's file.  It is common to request that such discussions be noted in a daily planner or iPhone, but in practice, when compiling supporting information for formal corrective documents, or simply determining a course of disciplinary action, it is impractical to contact all supervisors that may have such information noted and then find a way of collecting it. Therefore, we advise you make it mandatory for all verbals be filed.  (We include a template for documenting verbals with our Employee Discipline templates).

Formal corrective action is a plan of action prescribed by an HR Manager or a disciplinary review group, fully documented on paper, formally presented to the "offending" employee for acknowledgement by signature, and placed in the employee's personnel file. (Our Employee Discipline templates offer example plans of action and language for formal corrective action documents)

Written by Darin Hanks - HRIT Inc.

 

---

 

Links to all articles on this topic....

 

	Employee Handbook. If you do not have an Employee Handbook with a tight code of conduct section; stop right there...get that in place now. (Be forewarned, the Employee Handbook link will take you to a page where we are unashamedly going to try to sell you an HRIT Inc. Employee Handbook Template.)
	Disciplinary Oversight; progressive discipline chain of command.
	Test your supervisors on how well they understand your Company Absenteeism Policy with this exercise
	Training for supervisors on Documenting Discipline and Employment Law.
	Access to a lawyer specializing in Employment Law.

---

 

 

Other Topics ...   Writing Company Policy for an Employee Handbook   Setting Job Standards and Managing To Them

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

www.hrit.com offers...