If you’re a boss, part of your job is documenting the behavior or performance of the people on your team. You do documentation to be able to justify your decisions to someone else.
That someone else might be your boss or someone from HR. In today’s litigious business world, that someone else might be a union rep or an attorney.
If that happens, your adversary will be looking for anything you did wrong or left out. So it’s important to do the job right. Here are 8 tips for doing a better job of documentation.
1. Save it for the important stuff. Most of the time, a simple word from you is enough. So don’t write everything up. Save time and energy for writing up things that will matter at formal evaluation time.
2. Record behavior or performance. Behavior is what a person says or does. Performance is the measureable result of work.
3. Don’t wait. Human memory is a fleeting thing. Make notes as soon as you can. Don’t go more than 24 hours before completing the full write-up.
4. Be specific. Write down the details of what was said or done. Or write down the details of performance measurements.
5. Leave the adjectives at home. I call this the “Joe Friday Rule:” just the facts.
6. Tell us when. Be specific about your dates and times things happened. Write down the date and time you made your notes.
7. Use regular paper. Don’t use scraps of paper. Don’t use odd-sized paper. If your organization uses standard letter size paper, that’s what to use. That makes filing easier and prevents small bits of paper from getting lost.
8. Connect it to what happens next. If it’s important enough to document, it’s important enough to follow-up on. Write down what agreements were made between you and team members about how things will be different.
Documentation is the key to helping your team members solve performance and behavior problems. If you need to discipline, or even fire someone, you need good documentation to make sure what you’re doing is fair and that you can support your decisions if you’re challenged.
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