PIHRA Scope - Fall 2008 - (Page 19) HR CONCEPTS PIHRA Conference Speaker 2008 DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT By Mike Deblieux, SPHR Willdan Management Services Every first line supervisor has a story to tell about a visit to HR to get help to address an employee performance issue. The story they tell is not as complimentary as most HR professionals would like it to be. It can be summarized in these words, “I went to HR to get some help. All I got is what I always get—document, document, document! What help is that?” Most supervisors know that documentation is important. What they often do not know is what to document and how to document it. Chelsea is a good example. She is a supervisor. She was really struggling with an employee performance issue. HR repeatedly told her to document the performance issues for the employee, but did not tell her how to do it. HR always seemed to want one more thing. Chelsea grew tired of always feeling like she did not document enough to make HR happy. She was determined to never again be accused of not having enough documentation. She went to an office supply store. She purchased 15 spiral bound notepads—one for each of her 15 employees. She then put an employee name on each notepad. She fi led the notepads in alphabetical order in the bottom drawer of her desk. From that point on, Chelsea made an entry in the appropriate notepad about every meeting, every hallway discussion and every phone call with each member of her team. She quickly became known as “Notepad Chelsea.” Chelsea was on overload. She spent so much time documenting that she lost sight of her role as a supervisor. She thought she was doing what HR wanted her to do. She was a victim of misunderstood or incomplete HR advice. Either way, she was frustrated. START WITH THE IMPORTANT A supervisor cannot document everything. He or she can and must document the important things. The Pareto Principle states that 20 percent of a group of tasks to be done make 80 percent of the difference. In other words, 20 percent of what needs to be done is really important. It is usually one of the items in that 20 percent of an employee’s work life that makes a difference between a satisfactory employee and a needs-improvement employee. The challenge for the supervisor is to defi ne the 20 percent and pay attention to it. So what is the 20 percent for each supervisor? The answer depends on the organization, the department and the work of the unit. Each supervisor should make a list of the three to five most important performance issues in his or DOCUMENT continued on page 20 Fall 2008 PIHRAScope 19
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.