In a BLR webinar titled "Document! Document!: Easy and Effective Ways to Master This Crucial HR Activity," Gary S. Fealk and Bernice McReynolds gave some tips on documentation during the employee termination process.
Employee Termination Documentation
In part 1 of this article, Fealk and McReynolds outlined some of the reasons that employee documentation is important, and what to document when you're handling employee discipline that may lead to termination. Here they present some tips on how to handle the termination process and document the procedures effectively:
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- It is strongly recommended that trained staff and legal counsel review your discharge decision in order avoid liability.
- The reviewer should be dispassionate about the situation and may even play the role of devil's advocate.
- The reviewer should check to see if similar situations have been handled in a similar manner.
- Different supervisors may be consistent in the way they deal with similar misconduct but consistency between supervisors may be lacking.
- You should have sufficient documentation to convince the reviewer that discharge is a fair decision and that you can prove your legitimate business reasons for discharge if the decision is challenged in a lawsuit or a union arbitration. (See the tips above on what to document!)
- During a termination meeting, have at least two individuals involved. Have them take notes of the meeting and convert the notes into a termination report that includes what the employee was told, what the employee said, and perhaps what the employee did not say (i.e., if the employee did not dispute the reason for discharge, this should be noted). Then the employer representatives who attended the conference should sign and date the document.
The above information is excerpted in part from a BLR webinar titled "Document! Document!: Easy and Effective Ways to Master This Crucial HR Activity," with experts Gary S. Fealk and Bernice McReynolds. For more information on documentation guidelines, order the webinar recording. To register for a future webinar, visit http://catalog.blr.com/audio.
Attorneys Gary S. Fealk and Bernice McReynolds are shareholders at Vercruysse Murray & Calzone in Bingham Farms, Michigan, practicing in the areas of labor and employment litigation on behalf of both private- and public-sector employers.