Maintaining concise, complete and current documentation for employee performance to support employment/personnel decisions is essential for both line managers and the Human Resources Organization. Documentation is essential for evaluating employee performance, improving management feedbck, justifying and verifying actions by management, and assisting in employee training and growth. We document for two basic reasons.

To improve or maintain good performance. This outcome of documentation is the most critical and most productive.

To support personnel decisions. Clearly, we live in a litigious society and documentation is one form of protection.

The need for documentation is especially critical when termination decisions are being made. Documentation is also necessary for any adverse employment /personnel decision (i.e., Needs Improvement rating or Passover based on poor performance). Documentation is essential for producing accurate performance evaluations. The more complete and accurate the documentation, the easier to make (and substantiate) an evaluation.

Another good use of documentation is to improve a manager's ability to give employees constructive feedback. Ideally, feedback should be given immediately; in practice, this is not always possible. When feedback must be delayed, documentation provides useful and perhaps a necessary reminder of what occurred and when it occurred.

Good feedback, based on strong documentation, is key to helping employees improve performance before it becomes a problem. If performance becomes a problem, good documentation is imperative when a manager or an organization must substantiate or defend adverse actions to others (i.e., a higher-level manager, a jury, an arbitrator, etc.)

When should you document? "The sooner the better" is the rule of thumb. The longer a manager waits, the less accurate the documentation is likely to be.

How to document? See Documenting Performance Issues for an example of formal documentation. An example of informal documentation is available on the Discussion page.

Performance Management

Performance Management Process Flowchart

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