Tips for Employee Counseling Documentation

In my last Insight, I explained that employee counseling documentation is a very important part of the overall counseling process. 

Now, I would like to share some tips to supplement what I said about employee counseling documentation: 

• It’s important for a manager to always follow the company’s employee counseling documentation procedures.
  
  For example, if one of the procedures is to mail the written counseling document to the HR department, then a manager should do that consistently for any employee who is issued a written counseling document. 
• Within the document, it may also be a good idea for a manager to note the impact of an individual’s poor performance. It’s important to focus on the impact of the employee’s actions.
  
  For example, an employee’s lack of follow-up resulted in a missed deadline which directly impacted the department’s budget. 
• With regard to verbal counseling, a manager should always keep an employee log (either in a notebook or in a Word document) that notes when a verbal counseling has taken place. This allows the manager to refer back to the incident, if necessary.
  
  This type of documentation is not usually sent to the employee’s personnel file, but is just for the manager to use when writing performance evaluations to determine if it’s time for a written counseling document, etc.
  
  Written counseling documents are usually sent to the personnel/HR file. 
• As a starting point, a manager should utilize resources available to him/her—the employee handbook, the company policies and procedures manual, and any reference guides to employee counseling documentation. 
• It’s important to keep the counseling educational and preventative, as well. It’s not just corrective.  The point of an educational counseling document is to help the employee understand his/her deficiency, or violation, and help him/her cure such a deficiency. 

So, no matter when, where or how employers utilize employee counseling, the documentation of such events is extremely important; it needs to be accurate and stored properly.

I would like to share some tips regarding employee counseling documentation.