How a Write a Warning Letter for Employee Conduct
When employee behavior or poor performance don't shape up after verbal warnings, its time to get formal. Here's how to do it right.
Sometimes employee behavior or performance gets so bad that you have to draft a formal warning letter explaining expectations and outlining consequences.
The CEO of a small company has a wide range of performance-management tools at his or her disposal. The warning letter is kept at the back of that arsenal, only dusted off when there is a serious or chronic problem.
Typically a warning letter would be preceded by verbal conversations between the employee and his or her supervisor, both at performance reviews and in the course of the job. However, "the written communication, by its very nature, suggests that things are more serious at this point and also suggests that maybe [the supervisor's] prior communication wasn't clear enough," says Steve Kane, a human resources consultant based in Hillsborough, California. Here's how to write, deliver, and follow up on a warning letter telling an employee to shape up.
How a Write a Warning Letter for Employee Conduct: Does the Situation Call for a Warning Letter?
Though each company may choose to handle employee infractions differently, and the protocol will obviously change depending on the severity of the misconduct, there is a conventional progression for issuing increasingly serious warnings to the employee. "A lot of employers will start with a documented verbal warning, then they'll move to a written warning, and then a final written warning, and then termination of employment after that," says Darren Reed, a special expertise panel member at the Society for Human Resource Management.
If the warning letter is being issued in response to a serious one-time offense rather than a problem that's been developing over time, it makes sense to bypass the initial verbal warnings and proceed straight to the written reprimand. However, giving your employees continual positive and negative "feedback on their performance is the most important thing because any warning should not come as a surprise," says Kane.
But a written warning is often an indication that there has been some miscommunication on the employee or the employer's part, or both. "The issue with the employee may be that they're not understanding the importance of what you're telling them," theorizes Michele Williams, a professor at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations in the department of organizational behavior. A warning letter "cues them in that this is not something you're telling me in passing but this is really critical to my job performance."
Dig Deeper: How to Write a Warning Letter for Excessive Absence
How a Write a Warning Letter for Employee Conduct: Common Problems
There are as many reasons to write a warning letter as there are types of behavioral and performance problems with an employee. That said some problems are far more common than others. "Attendance is the most common [problem] for relatively small businesses," Kane says. "Because, at the end of the day, as Woody Allen used to say, '80 percent of life is just showing up.'"
Other common causes for drafting a warning letter include how employees treat their co-workers, inappropriate dress, and electronic communications the company deems inappropriate, such as visiting social media or pornographic websites.
Yet another type of problem is more common still than any of the issues listed above, and that is the quality or quantity of an employee's output. The quantity of work an employee does can increase with additional effort on his or her part but the same is not always true of the quality. For example, "if somebody just doesn't have artistic talent, it doesn't do a whole lot of good to give them 17 warnings," Kane says.
As a result, a sympathetic employer will attempt to be more accommodating of an employee's repeatedly failing to make their quota. If it's a certain skill that the employee is lacking, you could help them secure training within the organization or even reimburse them for outside classes. Kane explains, "it's expensive to terminate employees so you want to help them succeed."
Dig Deeper: How to Writing a Warning Letter for Poor Employee Performance
How a Write a Warning Letter for Employee Conduct: Who Should Write the Letter?
Whoever writes the warning letter, and they are often ghostwritten by a human resources specialist, the letter itself should come from the employee's direct supervisor. However, "the actual decision to formally write [the letter] up might involve more levels of the organization," Williams says. "The direct supervisor may actually be too close to the situation to see some of the structural or supervisory factors that may be influencing an employee's behavior." When multiple people at the managerial level consult about an employee's situation, they can bring more nuanced insights to bear on factors inside and outside of the organization that might be causing the problem.
As for whether to consult a lawyer when crafting a warning letter, in most cases it's a good belt-and-suspenders measure if you can afford it, but some experts say it's unnecessary. Instead, the time to consult a lawyer is when you are first putting your disciplinary policy in place.
In certain circumstances, however, getting the input of an attorney can be crucial. When you encounter situations that are completely outside of your ken, or need to be handled delicately because of a confluence of factors, it's time to get your general counsel on the horn. For example, Reed says that if the employee in question recently "made complaints of racial or gender discrimination, yet the behavior or performance problem does exist, it's a good idea to talk to an attorney about how you might approach that person."
Kane notes that another reason to consult an attorney is "if you have reason to believe that there's some legal defect in what you're asking [your employees] to do." This is not to say you're asking them to do something illegal, but maybe you have a stringent policy that others might find unreasonable, Kane gives the example of a Hooters franchise having an unwritten expectation that the wait staff behave in a coquettish manner. The lawyer will sit down with you and say, "'gee, let's see if we can figure out a way to defend your potentially goofy policy," Kane says.
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How a Write a Warning Letter for Employee Conduct: Document Everything
Documenting your written communiqués is simple enough (just start a file and print duplicates of everything), but keeping track of your verbal communications can be a chore. Still, it can be useful both for reminding an employee of what you've already told them and when, and for protecting you in the event of a lawsuit down the road.
