I am sure most of you have heard me say, document, document, document. I might also add, counsel immediately!
I know it is a very tedious task as it takes extra time in the day to stop and write something down and then counsel the employee. We always hope the employee will improve on their own. My advice is to at the very least document anyway. Little steps today will save you a headache in the future should that employee not improve.
Sadly, here is a scenario that gets played out very often.
An employee who has been there for a year is starting to come in late and/or sneaks out a bit early. The employer doesn’t take the time to document and discipline the employee because it seems like a little problem at first, but it soon becomes daily and the time missed is adding up. The employer finally decides to sit down with this employee and have a talk about attendance. The day before the talk, the employee claims harassment, whether the claim is valid or not, the employer must put the brakes on that discussion. Remember that an employee who has filed a claim of harassment is free from retaliation.
By counseling the employee now, after months of coming in late and sneaking out early, it will look as if the company is retaliating against this employee. According to all documentation (or lack thereof), this employee was a perfect employee before the claim of harassment. So now the employer must take extreme caution in counseling on attendance and forget about termination at all. The company’s little problem just became a BIG problem.
So how can documentation help in the scenario? Had the employer written this employee up when the employee was not performing up to company standards, the employer could have demonstrated that this employee had a history of poor attendance. The harassment claim would have been a stand-alone claim and not tied to the attendance issue. May not be 100% protection, but it will help build your case.
If I had one thing to advise every employer, new or long-standing, it would be to take the time to document and counsel.
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