What’s HR’s strongest weapon in the fight against lawsuits? That’s right, documentation. But too often, documentation is weakened when managers make these common mistakes.

The biggest documentation blunder, of course, is not having any. But there are plenty of other little things managers do that can get companies in trouble.

Here are some common mistakes many managers make, according to attorney Allison West, who spoke at this year’s Society for Human Resources Management conference:

1. Using general buzz words — Statements like “The employee has a bad attitude” or “He’s not a team player” are worthless on their own — and are often red flags for discrimination suits. They make it look like the company’s fishing for reasons to fire or discipline an employee. The documentation needs to include the specific actions and behaviors that led to those descriptions.
2. Coming to legal conclusions — Managers must be sure not to accuse anyone of breaking the law. For example, documentation should never say an employee “sexually harassed” someone. Instead, the manager just needs to describe what the employee did or was accused of doing.
3. Not giving the employee a chance to weigh in — Employees should be able to make written statements about parts of the documentation they disagree with. It lets the employee know you’re being fair and can go a long way toward alleviating frustration. The supervisor may even learn something about how to manage the employee.
4. Using absolute language — Statements like “The employee never met deadlines” and “The employee was always late” are rarely true — employees will always be able to point to times when they made deadlines, or came in on time. And when documentation contains any statements that aren’t true, employees — and their attorneys — can use that to their advantage.
5. Giving timelines without following them — If a manager disciplines an employee and writes that she has 90 days to improve her performance, then he’d better give her 90 days to improve her performance. Supervisors must be absolutely sure the timeframe is appropriate before sealing the deal in writing.
6. Writing verbal hiccups — Meaningless phrases like “it appears” or “it seems like” often innocently appear in managers’ writing. But to an outside reader, they imply the manager isn’t sure what he or she is saying is true.
7. Including things the employee wasn’t directly told — Writing down critiques of an employee’s performance won’t do any good if you can’t prove the employee was told what was wrong and given a chance to improve. Where appropriate, have the employee sign off on the documentation.
   

Tags: discipline terminations, documentation, lawsuits, managers, mistakes, staying out of court