Issuing a Verbal Warning for Poor Performance

Issuing a Verbal Warning for Poor PerformanceIssuing a Verbal Warning for Poor PerformanceSupervisors issue a verbal warning when an employees poor wertzuwachs warrants a disciplinary action more severe than supervisory counseling and coaching. Its purpose to get the employees attention when normal managerial discussions, meetings, and suggestions have failed to have a beneficial effect. Documenting a Verbal Warning The verbal warning is documented by the supervisor in his informal leides about the efforts he has provided to help the employee improve. If the verbal warning is not documented, with the employees signature indicating that he has received it, it may as well not exist. The verbal warning would be difficult to prove during any potential progressive discipline warnings or future litigation. But it also has another advantage Employees also tend to take any documented criticism of their performance to heart. This verbal warning documentation is included with any otherwrit ten documentation that the supervisor maintains such as employee goals, progress, backup information for the employees performance development plan (PDP) or performance appraisal, and so forth. These notes are not part of an employees personnel file they are private supervisory documentation of an employees performance. If the employees performance eventually warrants termination, however, the verbal warning paperwork may end up in the employees personnel file as a backup to proveformal progressive disciplinary action. Performance That Warrants a Verbal Warning Several types of behavior might make a manager want to use a verbal warning. Common ones involve time spent on the job or lack thereof An employee is consistently late for work, leaves work early, or doesnt work the required number of hours. Other performance issues The employee is failing to complete assignments on time because of procrastination and poor planning.The employee is interacting negatively with co-workers or customers.For no reason, the employee fails to gather important backup information and research necessary to adequately study and present solutions to a problem or process that needs improvement.The employee talks flippantly and nastily to his boss. Steps After the Verbal Warning The verbal warning is generally followed, in disciplinary action procedures, by a written verbal warning that begins the documentation of disciplinary action in the employees personnel file. The written verbal warning provides the beginning of the documentation necessary for an organization to fire an employee. Then, if an employees performance fails to improve during a series of disciplinary action steps, the employer has legally documented the steps taken to help an employee improve and retain employment throughout the process. The employer has also demonstrated that she did take necessary action to help an employee improve and that the subsequent disciplinary action was not arbitrary. While the step s in disciplinary action, including a verbal warning, differ from company to company- and even within a company, depending on the nature of the non-performance- a verbal warning is a negative event. The employee has failed to perform at a level that the employer determines requires disciplinary action. In keeping with the disciplinary action policy outlined in the employee handbook, a verbal warning may be the first, the last, or the only step required before employment termination, depending on the severity of the non-performance or the precipitating event. For this reason, employee handbooks should remain vague in terms of whether a formal progressive disciplinary action is always followed. If the employers havethe option to terminate the employee from his job much earlier, thats usually an advantage. You dont want an employee hanging around, for example, if he is having an impact on the work and the morale of the other employees or if he is actively interfering with progress in t he workplace.