Today we look at the benefits of tracking and documenting the actions and behaviour of employees. It’s a vital responsibility for all leaders and without it your business can be exposed to a range of risks.

Have you ever had to let staff go because of performance issues or poor conduct? It’s not a situation you want to be in and it it’s not enjoyable for either party. But it can be even more difficult if there’s a lack of supporting material and evidence.

Behavioural and performance issues need to be managed effectively – and if they’re not they can negatively impact the rest of your team leading to poor productivity and turnover of high-performing staff.

Tracking performance issues and behaviours is essential for good conduct risk management, maintaining a high-performing team and employee engagement.

Appropriate documentation and tracking is essential for helping you to turn around more minor employee issues too ­ – before they become cultural, compliance and conduct risk issues.

Do you have a problem with poor documentation?

Managers are often told ‘you need to document everything’ but don’t know:

• what, exactly, needs documenting
• how to document the information, and
• where they should document the information.

Ensure your leaders are clear about the behaviours and issues they should be documenting, including information relevant to conduct risk regulations and organisational performance plan processes.

Even if your organisation is pretty good at tracking and keeping this information, if you’re still using paper-based systems or Word docs and spreadsheets saved on a shared drive then the information is not easily accessible. This makes it difficult to get a history of behaviours and can result in leaders needing to spend time searching for the correct information. It also makes reporting to HR teams or regulators more challenging.

Benefits of documentation

Good documentation of employee actions, conduct issues and behaviours will provide evidence not only of the issues, but also the discussions that have taken place around the issue and how the issue has been addressed, including:

• that a performance issue has been raised with a team member
• that a discussion has taken place about the performance issues
• that an agreement has been made about performance goals and expectations.

A record of decision-making conversations and agreements with an employee will provide evidence and justification for decisions relating to performance ratings and plans. Solid documentation is essential for supporting the termination of an under-performing employee and can provide invaluable data in the event of a lawsuit.

Documentation isn’t just for addressing poor conduct. It can help demonstrate why someone should be promoted too!

What should you document?

It’s important to track and document staff actions, behaviours and conduct as well as goals that have been agreed to. Leaders are often told to note important information in dot points – but it’s not always clear what is important. What is important will change depending on your organisation, so ensure that guidelines are made available to your leaders.

Generally, it’s good practice to:

• Stick only to facts when documenting observations. Opinions recorded in an emotive manner can worsen the situation.
• Document patterns of behaviour (if it happens more than once). Everyone has a bad day so focus on repetition of behaviour.
• Be specific in your language and refer to position descriptions that outline expectations.
• Don’t write anything down that you don’t want other people to see. Imagine that someone else – including the employee – is going to read it.
• Use clear, concise language with end dates in action plans.

These tips are great for managing conduct risk, but remember to use them when great stuff happens too.

YakTrak: a powerful solution for your documentation needs

Our software was designed to improve tracking, reporting and visibility. YakTrak keeps everything in the one place and provides:

• a central location for documenting employee behaviour and performance activity
• easy access to forms and dashboards
• access for team members to be engaged in the process
• reporting visibility to HR.

Want to find out more? Get in touch today.

Image by Sora Shimazaki from Pexels