Sign Wyoming Terms of Use Agreement Myself

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a plus benefit learners and welcome to another a plus benefits webinar offering so shout out to our new attendees we note that we have some people attending from Idaho Wyoming and good old Utah here so a warm welcome back to our webinar returning learners this is Elizabeth Burt I'm a member of your a plus benefits HR team I serve as a senior leadership consultant and I have my webinar buddy here hi everybody I'm Jeff Eng nice to be here with you glad everybody could be here today and thanks for coming from several different states this is exciting today yes so our topic today is performance documentation made easy so don't let documentation be your downfall so if you have questions let's get some logistical things taken care of if you have questions during our session you'll notice there's a Q&A section feel free to text those questions as we go along today's content we have some webinar helpers that will be there to respond and if we have time at the end of our time our content will address some of the text questions that we have but just know that anything that's asked will be answered in a follow-up communication and in that follow-up communication we'll have a link to the recorded session and we have a handout about today's topics as well so we are happy to have you here and we're going to go ahead and get started with our content and to get us thinking about our topics I have a story to share woohoo let's hear four stories so our story is once upon a time there was a happy Kingdom that's helped the dragon ate every the end woohoo you had about that story all right what does that story have to do with our topic today well topic being documentation going to be telling a story and this story here is very incomplete and complete you think so I mean the bathtub in the draggedy every so tell us what we're gonna be talking about today Jeff yes so with documentation last month we talked about CeeCee's see something say something so now you're going to do part 2 which is documenting the incident so you've already seen something you talked to the employee and now you're going to be doing the documentation and in that documentation we're going to be talking about how to do it so that you tell a complete story complete alright so the first thing you're going to do is you're going to ask yourself does this documentation provide the complete story with that is it giving all of the details is it factual is an opinion based these are all the questions you're going to be going through as you're asking this but you're definitely going to want to make sure that it's telling a complete story yeah when it comes to complete story because it needs to stand on its own so your story needs to stand all by itself because when it comes to the work environment and your workforce it's evolving so time passes your memories will fade so those things that seem like I will never forget the details of this incident it was so upsetting or it was you know the employee was so out of line but at the end those little details start to fade away and your workforce were changed so those people that were involved with the documentation initially or the incident they may not be there to be that historian to share with you what happened so our focus today is about solid documentation so you can just lock that up it's going to stand by itself and we're going to focus on what does that look like so the idea is that you prepare for the worst case in their era your documentation might end up in court months years after the fact however Jeff what's the most likely thing that clients with employee documentation will experience so a lot of times they are going to go into an unemployment hearing or a possible wage claim dispute or EEOC claims things like that those are the most common things that documentation will be used for okay and the bonus was not only being prepared for those compliance type things you get employee experience bonuses for this so employees want that positive and constructive feedback from their leaders so for those of you that attended lessons we talked a lot about how your employees are longing to have that connection even if it is constructive feedback so by putting into place that implementing solid performance communication and documentation into your daily leadership practices you're going to hold yourself accountable help the employee accountable and at the end of the day remember it costs you a lot less to take invest in some time to those employees that you already have and develop them into the ploys that you want versus going out and finding and training a new employee so Jeff what makes up our solid documentation how can our clients and our learners here today have a solid piece of documentation so there are several pieces for solid documentation and the first one is recording names that is very important to record the name on any documentation but not just the name the full name like you mentioned before memories fade management changes things like that so you definitely want to put the full names so that you can remember who you're talking about but in addition to the name you want to put their ID number if they have an ID number their position title possibly their manager title that way if there is a management change and something comes up you can go back to the documentation and see oh this is the person that they are asking about so you want to put make sure you put full names any other identifiers so that you know exactly who it is you're talking about okay all right our next thing we want to do is record what type of communication type was this so when you're putting into place your performance management was this a verbal communication if it's written but that their final with it the termination you want to record that type of information to record for later the use of verbal written final and termination documentation is a standard progressive discipline process which is what does that mean Jeff we learned about that last time what's our standard progressive discipline process so you're going to start with a verbal new two written and the final and then termination following that and how does this help our clients when it comes to if they are in an unemployment claim or a wage dispute what does yes not the wage this year but the unemployment claim what does how does this yeah so for with the unemployment claim it's going to show that the company did their due diligence they trained the employee they gave the employee multiple opportunities to improve and then ultimately if termination does happen they will show yep they gave multiple chances wasn't working out termination can be and will be justified in that case all right so these formal steps will help you by following a progressive discipline because that's what they're going to ask what is your progressive discipline process this is a standard way that companies operate as well founded and our unemployment claim system okay what's the next thing Jeff so the next step is to record the violation type so you can see here these are just some of the violation types there may be others what you're going to want to do is you're going to check your policy guidebook first to see if they actually are in violation for example attendance somebody is constantly late do you have a policy in your handbook that says something about being late multiple times hopefully that's the case if not you can reach out to us and we can help you write a policy book or you can use the a plus benefits policy guidebook but you're going to want to record specifically what the violation type is and what that entails okay so you're recording your violation type that's like the see that's the incident that describes what happened or why you're having recording any kind of documentation so what supports this is recording the details so there's four areas that will help you in as far as supporting whatever action you're taking as far as the performance management so there's the description of the violation so with this keep it simple stick to the facts and just remember think like you're a reporter just stick with the five W's who what where when and why if you can answer those and simple don't get too carried away with the information just stating the facts this will really help support the violations why you took the action the plan for improvement what what will the team member do to improve how will you as a leader support them when will all this need to be completed that talks about you as an employer working to improve so if you have to do any further the progressive action it shows that hey not only did we see something and say something this is what happened this is what we agreed upon for that plan of improvement and if the employee fails at that point or doesn't follow through it shows that you as an employer are trying to work to get that employee where they need to and then there's that part for the employee to share their comments allows them to include their perspective of the documentation and then the further action part this is going to show what are the consequences so if you take this time to have this conversation and develop your employee what's the consequence for not meeting the plan of improvement what is the next step so the employee and you as a leader are very clear about what the expectations are the next step is to review the timeline so when an incident happens you can go back into the employee file and look in there and see have we documented this before and then you're going to confirm signatures okay with these signatures when you are sitting down with the employee with the documentation in front of you hopefully they're going to sign it but they don't have to sign there is a clause in there it's just like getting pulled over by a police officer for any of you that have had that happen to them I have a couple times but there's a clause at the bottom of that that states you're not admitting guilt you're just admitting that the conversation took place so it's the same thing with the documentation there should be a little clause down there so they don't have to sign it but they should be signing it if they choose not to sign it make sure that there is a witness or a third party somebody in there as well that can sign off stating that the employee refused to sign you want to confirm those signatures but review that timeline to see if further or if other documentation types have occurred previously okay all right so now we've gotten to all the details that make up your documentation to make it solid documentation woohoo yes we are ready so let's talk about common documentation misses so there are five that happen a lot so based on our work here at a-plus benefits when we hear from clients they get really close and there's just these little things that miss out so let's look at some examples so we can ask some practical ideas of what we may be doing where we're just missing having that solid documentation so our first one is incomplete details so many documentation problems arise because documents are unsigned undated illegible so every piece of documentation that your managers create should be signed and it should be clear who signed it date with full date including year you know otherwise who knows whether it's from 1998 or the 2012 it should be legible and free of any marks and comments remember that oftentimes your document it may not need to make an appearance in court for like months or even years after it was written so quality checks have somebody else look at your documentation and ask yourself that best business practice that Jetts shared with us at the beginning does this documentation provide the complete story or does it sound like our fairy tale at the beginning or we're not sure what our bats or dragon what that was all about if your documentation can stand on its own and tell the complete stories that's a that's a win for you so let's look at what this looks like so we have let's look at what's going on with Mike Jones here so his position as a representative and dear Mike I'm writing to you about your attitude Adam Torture ABC distributors incorporated co-workers on February 6 I spoke to Mike about his bad attitude and it appears that he is spreading rumors about co-workers so as advised in our meeting if your performance does not improve and your attitude continues to be unsatisfactory your employment may be terminated so our friend from last session who we want to start off right with you you asked about how you would address gossip so we're going to start off with it with an example that falls into this and it's signed by EJ Smith so based on that what they do what they do well on this Jeff okay so there's a few things that they did well they have the date on there they have a name not necessarily complete name but they do have a fairly good story but there is room for improvement on that okay so let's point out the ones we just saw here just in general we have the name so there could be more than one Mike Jones a mystery of the company it is a common name and that we have the attitude this is subjective and what when you have subjective words like this just what happens with your documentation there's a potential for discrimination in there there is yeah so it's one of those things that using a word that like attitude is like you really want to support it with things that that provide the full story versus attitude because what you made you as a bad attitude I might think is wonderful or otherwise and then it appears so this is another subjective and it's opinion based and again it goes back to we all have our opinions about how things are but when it comes to performance we really want remove the subjective part or the opinion based facts from there and then EJ Smith we have no idea whether is this person's authority could there be more than one EJ Smith in the history of the company so just a small tweak that we could do for this is it was concluded that you have exercised poor conduct in the workplace by participating in gossip and rumors about your coworkers as advice in our meeting you're expected to stop participating in any or all gossip and rumor activities about co-workers any future violations of this policy or any other company policy or procedure will result in addition it additional excuse me disciplinary action up to an including termination of employment so we have some power words or power statements in these Jeff what we have going on why are these are power words okay so concluded that is a power word because in the documentation itself it is showing that an investigation took place and the decision was made or it was concluded that the employee was engaging in gossip and rumors so that is a power word a very good word I mean again it shows that you've done your due diligence you did investigation something you might want to consider putting in there okay great invalid dates is the next step so with invalid dates what you need to do is when you see something you're going to say something like we talked about last month you do not want to let a lot of time pass because the more time that passes the more chances the judge in any case will probably throw that out and they will dismiss it the reason for that is they are going to ask you why did you wait so long why did you choose now to document them why did you not document them when you first had that issue or first had that problem the judge is going to see that as will you as an employer are not necessarily following your own policies and procedures so it was probably going to get thrown out so invalidates never back date always take care of things when they happen so with that we have an example here you can see from the example right there in the middle it says in the written portion says on December 17 2016 but then it's dated down the bottom February 7th 2017 so they let a lot of time pass by there something again you don't want don't want to do you should have taken care of this shortly after December 17th when the occurrence took place so with this one best business practice Jeff said write it up when it happens if at all possible but don't let too much time go by and don't back date roll assignment that will be more r less employee and if you were to go to court at George would most likely throw it out throw out the documentation because it would seem like well it could have been that much of an inconvenience you waited this long to address it right all right so let's talk about unsupported or exaggerated conclusions they make for great storytelling that parties and other things like that but no place in documentation so often managers will arrive at conclusions they can't support so absolut such as never always end up appearing as lies and three often used but somewhat vague terms that can be viewed as proxies or like for discriminations are things like you have a bad attitude you're not a team player you don't fit here those are words that can send off down the wrong path so avoid I should they don't include absolutes that's a safer one okay so let's look at what's going on with Xander Xander is lazy his work performance causes low production he never gets his work done on time and then we moved down to here for his plan for improvement he needs to get his numbers up by the end of the quarter or we're going to move to final warning so we have Xander's name where he works the dates written warning all that's in there but this you little subtle things let's break down what we have for Xander and see our documentation may not be as solid unsupported exaggerated statements and this include lazy this is a strong negative label that requires evidence to validate we're looking at causes low production the employee is this employee the sole factor for low production could you was or if there's if there's not anything else if you're sure there's not anything else at the plant like maybe you were low on supplies you had employees out do you have other things that can contribute to low production or is it truly just a Xander Wright problem at your plant right now that's affecting low production so you have to be pretty ready with that to support using a word like this is exaggeration it never in all ways are commonly used but rarely true that makes me just think of our five-year-old at home I always have to do this you've never let me those types of things so you have no place there that's kind of it shows that commonly untrue I'm getting tongue-tied over here Jeff and then let's look at our other here vague goal so it says here he has to have his numbers up by the end of the quarter so you're setting yourself up here is it up by one percent then we have to produce one more widget so he could get its numbers up even if it's by a fraction if you're not specifically to get in trouble so let's look at some power words we could use or statements for this how about this Xander has not mastered the new standard operating procedures that's an opening statement there after three weeks of training the rest of his crew has implemented the new standards and they are meeting david production goals Xander has not met a daily production goal since the rollout of the new procedures on January 2nd how's that for a complete story that tells a great complete story right there yeah well I would have no problem if that was what was on there if you sent me this documentation saying up looks like you've done your due diligence with moving on to a progressive action so let's look at another thing we could do as far as his goals or his next Vander is expected to approve his production by 5% each week he will have eight weeks to meet this goal if he's not able to meet production goals by April 7th 2017 his employment will be terminated seemed clear to me if I was an der I would know exactly my date I need to improve every week by 5% and if I'm not where I need to be by the 7th of April I'm no long I'm a former employee yep all right so step 4 use of jargon a couple things with jargon a couple things that I have seen in my HR career is people tend to try to tell a story that does not make sense they try to use big words because it's an important document so they want to try to make it seem more important than it is so they come up with all sorts of words that is not necessary all you have to do is tell the story it can be plain it can be simple it can be a one sentence story but so long as you're telling the story you don't have to use big elaborate words things like that or another thing that I have seen I've seen managers write these up where they try to make it sound more professional or like they're so smart they're using all these big words and things like that that may not make sense you don't have to do that it's basic and simple to go along with that we have an example here for you and in this example we want you to see what's happening so we're going to give you a couple minutes to read through this and then there's going to be a polling question to go along with this tell us what you think is happening as part of this documentation right here yep happy reading we're gonna play some texting music for you [Music] you you ever get sports on that one Jesse yeah these are some comical answers yeah so with this again you can see from that we don't know what they're talking about it is some of you guys have a lot of great responses to this I'm not completely sure yeah we've been poor work performance administrative leave termination things like that mean yeah we're just not a hundred percent positive what it's talking about because they overstep overreached on this one it does not have to be that way you can do it very simply a few sentences use some power words and it'll be just fine you don't need to make it look like this okay so good thanks for being good sports on that so this we wanted to get a nice wordy examples and names have been changed to protect the the innocent there so let's look at our next one so hints of bias and discrimination so we talked earlier a little bit about some of those things like team player or other things so I wanted to give a different example outside of this that where bias could come up if you are in a discrimination claim so with this one interview questions so this is but this employed client started up well they have interview questions this is a good practice where you have a list of what you're going to use to ask your applicants or a pool of questions that you stay within and you put down the applicants name the date and then anybody that's involved in the interview process that's in there asking the questions but based on here just wrote up some examples of where your shorthand something that means something to you where you're not spelling it out could get you in trouble as far as having hints of bias or discrimination so let's look here 44 or 50 so maybe you meant they were 44 or 50 projects maybe they're 44 or 50 amount of I can't think of anything now I set myself up for failure there on that one job but we don't know what 44 or 50 could be but we do know that for the Age Discrimination Employment Act of 1967 that 40 or above is a protected class so if there was a claim that could get you in trouble to be misconstrued as being something that it wasn't intended so for this the AAA I just did a google search to say eight common acronyms for a a Alcoholics Anonymous came up aegeon American african-american and then we have here for most of us we may think PTA means parent-teacher Association but it's also Pakistan telecommunication Authority Prevention Terrorism Association as well so these things work in good faith if you're going to write something down spell out what you need if it's not a common acronym or there can be other uses and you can do like what I did and just Google acronyms for like your internal things that you use it's better to spell it out so that it's clear what you intended by your notes what do we have here Jeff all right so we have a brand new form it's our corrective action report form let's hear it for new forms yeah we're excited about this form many of you have used our previous form and you may have your own forms which is perfectly fine but we wanted to update it give it a new field but also with getting a new form this particular form tells the story a little bit better it starts at the beginning with the names what type of violation goes into the story telling it gives the portion down there for any corrective action history if they've got anything previous to that and then it has the signatures again it has the witness line on there just in case the employee does not want to sign with again which is just fine but we wanted to give you guys a new form a new look something to tell the story a little bit easier for you everything we've included so far this is your cheat sheet so and we even included that statement that says that part about further actions so all of this is included in here so everything we've covered as far as details if you're using our employee action report or corrective action report here you will be covering all the same things so but this would not be an a-plus benefits webinar if we didn't give you guys an opportunity to look at some scenarios and get involved with a process to give you a little taste of what this might look like and to prove that even though you have like a nice form we're going to use our own form that we've created to show you how there still room for error based on the details so Jeff you get it started what's going on here okay so on this here's our report and you can see here there's part of the report here so I wanted to take just a quick moment look at the report and then check anything that applies are they're incomplete details are they're invalid dates unsupported or exaggerated conclusions use of jargon hints of bias or discrimination check any of those that may apply and then on the other one how would you improve this documentation give us your feedback how would you improve the details of this okay [Music] okay thank you for taking the time to look at that I'm liking your answers that are coming in the unsupported exaggerated conclusions 100% yes that definitely needs to be addressed where it says Franklin is always behind on his projects and tasks is he really always that's one of those words you don't want to use I'm Franklin I could say hey when I first started I was on time for this project and this project so but always I'll really as Franklin all Franklin has to do is prove you wrong just even one or two instances that I've been on time right okay so let's look at our next example and we have Warren here so Lauren Davis she's returned her work after her lunch hour drunk and you sent her home to sleep it off so let's check out oh you guys are already on it look at you whoo-hoo you go so we'll go ahead and give you some time to respond to this and we'll come back together and talk about how we can improve [Music] you [Music] okay hey I'm liking where this is going you guys you guys describe this you're quick learners out there let's hear it for understanding so I saw a lot of really great feedback on here so I agree with you there's incomplete details it is exaggerated and the dates here so let's talk about how we can improve so drug or alcohol abuse that's checked in there so unless you're going to have a breathalyzer on side or you're medically able to describe that conduct would be a better way to go with this and then I saw one of the comments that you're talking about the behavior which is exactly you can say things like when Laura returned from lunch she appeared disoriented that is something that you can observe that is something that others can observe she stumbled she slurred her words she was abusive to the receptionist or co-worker she smelled of alcohol there you're just saying her comment was inappropriate for what's going on at work but not making anything about drug or alcohol abuse that would be if you had taken some sort of drug test or other where you had that evidence to back it there so but you can speak to somebody's conduct while they're at work okay so those are our two examples of what we have okay so now that we've gone through the examples we've gone through documentation things like that now what do you do with it so we have another polling question do you have a file for each of your employees because these are supposed to go in a specific place so we just have a quick question do you have a file for each of your employees so take a second and answer that [Music] you [Music] okay so it looks like most of you do have a file for each of your employees oh yeah which is great if you don't we recommend doing that we're going to go through a couple pieces of documentation from here okay so you have your file for each employee or have the documentation going on next question we would like to know is where are you keeping your documents hey most of you may be looking at this and thinking okay that who took a picture of my desk so where are you keeping that information right now so to help with this we thought okay documentation is one things that we wanted to take time to give you the second piece of that so once you have this you have the solid documentation we wanted to put together a job aid for you in regards to now where do you keep these records so we put together a job aid that answers two questions what files do I need to create because there are a lot of these documents that should be separate and why would they want to have separate places for their records Jeff what's how does that help our clients so one of the biggest things and this will probably never happen but worst case scenario one of the biggest things is if you keep every single piece of documentation in the same file and you get audited and you present all of that the people that are auditing it don't need to see medical records they don't need to see corrective action they don't need to see things like that because that could potentially open you up again that's worst case scenario which is why you need to separate everything out so in this documentation it does break down how you can separate that information and then it also provides from a federal standpoint how long do I need to keep a document so it's a set up of tables and for those that are a plus clients that use our full service for our HR stuff we will also indicate there those things that A+ is doing for you so this job aid will come out and as you go through that if you have questions or concerns we're here to help you so here we are to our story we're going to start with the story we're going to end once upon a time there was a happy Kingdom of workers who created and followed an effective documentation process the Baths health and quality checked every document for completeness those crafty bats the dragon ate every document that did not pass the bass quality review we didn't even have bad documentation that's what's the diet for our dragon this created a happy workplace filled with workers who understood expectations and agreed with the documentation results be and all right okay so that tells a much better complete story thanks Elizabeth so that concludes our documentation series today we wanted to go over a couple of dates and things with you so next month our topic is going to be on FMLA and I have worked with some of you on this previously but we wanted to go over this with everybody what it looks like what the process is what are required for participation in FMLA things like that so even if you don't think you are qualified or eligible for FMLA we still want you to join so that you have options on how you can present some of these things to your employees so mark your calendars Thursday March 16th at 11:00 a.m. that's going to be our FMLA presentation and then on April 13th we're going to go over diversity and inclusion all right so we hope you join us again and as always if you need help with your employee documentation or records that's how we're here we're here to help you and we hope to see you all next month and there's a link that we're going to bring up because we're very excited woohoo we have a new webpage and that link will take you to our new webpage for HR resources and if you click that it'll direct you there and you'll have our all of the things at a fingertips so if those of you that didn't attend any of our past webinars the recorded webinars are out there for you to use and we are goi g to stay on the line and answer any text questions that we have just know that we'll have a follow up communication with all the Q&A from today but we are going to just hang on the line and just play music for your texting enjoyment but we're going to conclude this concludes our content piece and again we thank you for making time and we hope these are valuable and we'd love to hear back from you in regards topics or other things you'd like to see in the future because this is why we do these webinars we're here to serve you and we are happy to do it so woohoo let's hear for another webinar we look forward to seeing you next month oh this is a great question um your example is perfect when we we have a lot of leaders who try to be nice we want to give everybody a second chance a third chance a fourth chance but what happens when it comes to discrimination claims or unemployment hearings the judge will always ask if your policy says X then why did you do Y so if your policy is to terminate after three written warnings or a serious injunction in relation to your policy and you didn't do it the judge is going to ask and they're going to look for discrepancies as why were you treating this person differently than what your policy says so in that recommendation I'm sure you were trying to be kind and understanding and patient and loving like many of our leaders are and you really just feel free to call us when you get in a situation like that we can definitely advise you on when you should terminate how you used to terminate and that's one of our future webinar topics coming up this summer termination and the other questions out there guys I think that might be our last one so if you have questions please feel free to reach out to our HR team we like Elizabeth said we would love to serve you so big thanks to Jeff and Elizabeth they do a fabulous job on these webinars and we appreciate your time that you take to join us for these so if you have any other questions or ideas for content that you'd like to see we would love to help you with that have a great day Thanks