Coffee Talk: Navigating Leave Laws: Discipline, Documentation and Termination

Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's session of Ramon's Coffee Talk. I'm Christine Whitnaben, Senior Human Capital Business Advisor here at Ramon, and I'm happy to welcome you to this informative discussion on the subject of discipline, documentation, and termination. Joining us today are Tara Hummer, Employment Law Partner at Ramon, along with Barbara DiMatteo, Human Capital Business Advisor and Associate Certified Coach. During the course of today's webinar, should you have any questions, please use the Q&A portal and we'll do our best to get to all those questions. Before we get into the program, please note that today's discussion does not constitute legal advice and does not create any attorney-client relationship. Also remember that past outcomes do not guarantee future results. Now let's jump right into today's program. I want to start with Barbara and I want you to kick us off today by talking about some of the important expectations about setting expectations that we need to do for our employees. Sure.

Thank you, Christine, and hello everyone. From a human resources and business perspective, let's begin with a fundamental truth. Hiring an employee is one of the most costly investments a company can make. Once the employee walks through the door, the responsibility really falls squarely on the shoulders of a supervisor or manager to provide clear guidance in 3 critical areas. Number 1, job responsibilities. What job the employee is expected to do. Number 2, performance expectations. How the employee's success will be measured in clear, objective, and observable terms. And this includes the quality of work, productivity, and established standards. Number 3, workplace behavior. What appropriate workplace conduct looks like in your department and in your company. This can include things like attendance, reporting time out, timekeeping, and working as a team. Without this guidance, the employee is being set up to fail. It's so important to start documenting performance and behavior from day one. This includes both positive progress and any concerning behaviors or performance issues. The documentation should be used constructively. To engage in a meaningful conversation with the employee and to lay out a clear, supportive plan for improvement or to recognize good work performance. Documentation can be in an email to yourself, a written note on a calendar, a note with a backup in an employee's folder. While formal documentation is always preferred, as long as the documentation is consistent, reflecting the date and specifics of the situation, It really doesn't matter the format that's used.

Now, Barbara, let's take it a step deeper. What makes this more complex when we apply it to real life?

Well, human resources often hears that managers assume that employees should know what to do because they have experience or they came from a similar role. Human resources also hears managers often say that they don't have time to document conversations or job-related issues. I want to be really direct here. If you're a manager, documenting employee performance is your job. It's not an extra. It's not optional. It's part of the managing people responsibility and setting up your team for success. I learned a long time ago, quote, "He or she who documents better is going to win." And I know Tara is going to talk about that today. You know, one of the most common barriers I see is that many managers have never been trained on how to have productive performance-focused conversations with their employees. And as a result, they assume that these discussions are going to be adversarial, that they'll create tension or lead to conflict. So managers tend to avoid them altogether. But it doesn't have to be that way. In the training that I provide, we teach managers how to document and how to approach these conversations constructively and with confidence. You know, I really believe that most employees come to work every day really wanting to do a good job. And when a conversation is framed the right way, it really becomes a support for, a tool for support, not for confrontation.

I hear what you're saying, Barbara. Could you just elaborate a little bit more about what you believe and when you believe a manager should really step in and have that conversation with the employee?

As soon as possible. Don't wait. When a manager notes that an issue with an employee is happening with a job performance or behavior, they should identify the root cause of the problem and deal with it appropriately. The manager should never assume that the problem is caused by the employee's lack of effort or carelessness. You know, it's important to understand that there are possible causes of poor performance, which could include inadequate or insufficient training, poor work systems, out-of-date policies or inadequate procedures. There can be inadequate tools or equipment. There can be poor quality or inadequate supervision. An employee's lack of understanding about their job duties, their priorities, their goals, and unclear work instructions. Additional possible causes of poor performance can be excessive workload due to short-staffing or an increase in workload, unrealistic targets or deadlines, poor work relationships. There can be bullying, there can be harassment, there can be challenges with physical or mental health and external personal problems. We're all employees. You know, the manager has no control over some, but some potential root causes of performance issues, such as an employee's health physically or mentally, or their personal problems outside of work. The manager has responsibility for the employee and is accountable to initiate a conversation to determine what the problem is and how it can be resolved. This is called employee engagement. Which is really a topic for another day. There are obviously situations where you have employees who are careless or who are not putting the effort in, and these situations need to be addressed by way of performance management and potentially disciplinary action as well.

Thank you. Thank you, Barbara. Tara, so when we take a look at all of what Barbara's saying, could you tell us from an employer's perspective what we need to consider from the legal side of things?

Sure, absolutely. And hello everyone, my name is Tara Hummer. I am an employment partner at Ramona, as Christine said. Before I address that though, I do want to just kind of follow up on what Barbara said with regard to talking to the employees, right? So, a lot of this is kind of just, you know, if something's coming up, you want to have a conversation. You don't want to kind of sweep things under the rug, so to speak, because you're not gonna find out the answer if you don't ask in a lot of cases. So communication and documentation kind of go hand in hand, and communication is kind of the first part of that. So as a manager, you should be communicating with your employees. It proactively solves a lot of issues, and it just allows you to better manage the people who are your subordinates and the people that you're managing. So why all of this is important from a legal perspective, there has been a significant rise over the years in claims made by employees against employers. With the internet at everyone's fingertips on your smartphone, employees are more aware of the ways in which they can challenge employment decisions. For example, I handle claims made by employees against employers every single day in my practice. They are extremely costly for employers. So that's one of the main reasons why doing these things the right way is so important so that as an employer and as a business, you don't then later on have to be expending your limited resources on paying to defend a claim that an employee brings. Or, you know, most of these cases, as many of you may know, they never see the inside of a courtroom. They are settled outside of court. I think something like 96% of all cases or 97% of all cases are settled prior to getting in front of a judge or a jury. And so that is an additional cost as well. And part of the reason why most of these cases settle is because it is more costly to take a case through to the end than it is to pay a sum of money to resolve it. And so cost is one of the main things, main reasons why employers should kind of be paying attention to these types of things. In addition to that, the cost of, you know, if you do misstep and take an action based on something that you're not supposed to and the employee, you know, wins their case, employers can be on the hook for paying an employee's back pay and front pay. Money for emotional distress damages, the employee's attorney's fees. In most of these employment cases, they're called fee-shifting cases. So if an employee is successful in bringing one of these claims, then the employer is then on the hook to pay all of the attorney's fees that they've incurred in, you know, prosecuting the claim. There are other categories of damages potentially that an employer could be on the hook for if an employee is successful in these types of claims. So I say all of that to say that cost is a really important reason why employers should kind of be cognizant of all of this and make sure that you're taking the steps and doing things the right way in order to prevent lawsuits, claims made by individuals. And so this is with regard to both disciplinary actions, which we'll talk about, and when you get to the ultimate step of terminating an employee, you want to make sure that you're doing all the right things, taking all the right steps to avoid these types of lawsuits from employees.

Thank you, Tara. Now, when we're addressing employment employee issues, performance misconduct issues, whatever be the case, what do you suggest and how do we move forward in a compliant and consistent manner? Can you expand on that? Sure.

So I think Barbara, you know, said it best when she talked about documenting. Documenting is so important when we're talking about preventing claims for, you know, employee performance, employee misconduct. I can't tell you how many times I have clients come to me and say, you know, hey, we want to terminate this individual. And they're trying to get legal advice as to whether they can or they should or what the risks are. And they'll say something like, this individual just came back from an FMLA leave. They've been back for 2 weeks. They're not doing their job. We wanna fire them. They had all of these performance issues before they went out on the leave, and they've just continued since they've been back, and we're at our wit's end, and we just need this person gone. And so the first question I always ask is, well, what documentation do you have of the performance issues before they went out on the FMLA leave? And many times the answer is that they don't have anything. And when asked why, there's a range of responses, right? We don't do that except for once a year. We're just not engaging in regular performance management for our employees. We had discussions with them on a couple of occasions, but we didn't put anything in writing to basically, you know, we were just planning to terminate them before they went out on the leave, and then they went out on the leave, so we couldn't. And so it's a risky situation to terminate an employee in that type of situation when they've just come back from a protected leave, even if that's not the reason. And in most cases, it's not. All cases, it's because they're performing poorly. But the fact that they've just come back from a protected leave kind of throws a wrench in the mix. And it allows then the employee to make an argument if they're terminated that it wasn't because of their prior poor performance, it was because they took a protected leave. And so the performance issues being documented prior to that protected activity and taking the leave gives the employer kind of hard evidence that this was an issue before any protected activity and mitigates the risk that a claim will be brought or should be brought. And the same is true for any type of protected activity. It doesn't just have to be a protected leave, you know, for employees who have reported harassment or discrimination or engaged in whistleblowing activity, if you have kind of the contemporaneous documentation of their performance issues, it's really impactful when you can say, hey, look, Judge, we didn't terminate this person because of this protected activity, and we have all of these emails and all of these disciplinary actions prior to them ever engaging in that activity. And so clearly they were terminated for a legitimate reason. Progressive discipline and performance management where appropriate is always best practice. And so I think a lot of employers get nervous when we talk about progressive discipline because, you know, they think, well, I'm an at-will employer, which means— and these are at-will employees, which means I can terminate them whenever I want for whatever reason, which is certainly true in most states. And in most cases, but progressive discipline, if you think about it, is something that as an employer you probably implement without even thinking about it or without maybe even having a formal progressive disciplinary policy or plan. And I'll tell you an example, which is if someone's late 10 minutes or 15 minutes one day, you're not going to terminate them in most cases for that. You're going to go and have a conversation with them and say, hey, look, you know, you can't, can't be late. If they do it again, maybe you'll send them an email and write them up, so to speak. So generally speaking, you're engaging in progressive discipline anyway, so it's just best to kind of have that as a general practice. Obviously, there are exceptions to that in cases of egregious conduct and things of that nature. In the same vein, it's important to treat individuals who engage in the same type of misconduct or performance issues in the same manner. And that comes up a lot in my practice where we defend an employer in a lawsuit where an employee is alleging discrimination or retaliation. And part of their argument is, well, I was terminated and employee X did the same thing 3 months ago and they were only given a written warning. And so it becomes my job to figure out why and figure out what the explanation is as to why one employee was treated differently than the other. In a lot of cases, it's because, well, the person who was terminated had 5 other disciplinary actions and the person who was not terminated didn't have any. And so that's a legitimate basis for why you would terminate one person for the same conduct and not the other. And so again, you just want to make sure that you're documenting the progressive discipline so that you have that to rely upon in cases where you're treating someone differently for the same type of conduct. or some other legitimate business reason for treating someone differently. Again, I, like I said, I see kind of the disparate treatment and discrimination claims that make those allegations all the time. So again, making sure that you have your ducks in a row and your documentation in a row as to why you're, you may be treating someone differently for the same type of behavior.

I agree, Tara. Sometimes employers fear the progressive discipline policy in their handbooks, but really shouldn't fear it because that step-by-step process really helps document what you're trying to achieve with the employee. Barbara, on that note, can you bring us through exactly what progressive discipline means and when employers should use it and when not to use it?

Yeah, certainly, Christine. So progressive discipline really means it's a set of disciplinary actions increasing in levels of severity. Generally, it includes a variation of verbal counseling, a written warning, a suspension, or a final warning. Sometimes it includes a separate performance improvement plan, which to me should be part of the verbal, written, or the final warning. And then there's termination of employment. So it's a series. Increasing in severity. Generally speaking, employers should really implement these steps when they are disciplining employees. First, have a conversation. Document it yourself that it's a verbal discussion, and if it is a warning, verbally tell the employee that and put that in your own notes. The employee doesn't have to sign that. Then it goes to a second, to a written warning. A third is a suspension and a final warning, and the employee should actually sign that document that they acknowledge that that conversation was had with them. And then lastly, it's termination. Termination of employment. Make sure though that the timing makes sense too. If attendance was an issue 3 years ago in 2022, which led to a written warning, and then it improved over the past 3 years, and a new attendance issue just arose today, which is 3 years later, it doesn't give rise to the next step of a final warning. That's just not fair. It's got to make sense. Again, hear people fully, treat people fairly, and it's going to go a long way in making sure that that open communication In a situation where the conduct is severe, employers can easily skip steps and potentially move straight to termination of employment. And some examples of where this may happen are if there is gross insubordination, there could be highly dangerous acts, there could be theft, there could be violence, sexual harassment, other criminal behavior. But be careful about on-the-spot decisions. Suspend the employee first. Think about it, document it, consult with human resources or counsel, and then take appropriate action. Because very often those on-the-spot decisions don't have all the information necessary to support the decision made.

Thank you, Barbara. Tara, what other issues do you see that could be coming up when we're going down this road?

Yep. Yeah, and I think this kind of dovetails nicely into what Barbara just said, which is make sure that you're kind of investigating things fully. One piece of advice that I normally give is if an employer calls me, a client calls me and says, "Hey, we wanna terminate this person. Employee X reported that this individual said something inappropriate yesterday in the workplace." My first question is, "Okay, well, what did you do to look into that? Who did you speak with?" And again, a lot of times the answer is, well, the employee reported it, so that's the only person that we spoke with. And a lot of times when you rely and make decisions on that basis alone, the first initial piece of information that you receive, you're not getting the whole story. I've had situations where when the employer went back and kind of interviewed the person who was accused of making the inappropriate statement and the 3 other people who were present when the statement was made, that ultimately it wasn't what the first employee initially reported, and it was something totally different based upon the 3 witnesses and the accused, you know, telling of the events. And so I think most importantly, you know, when you have employees who are having performance issues or misconduct, type of allegations made, it's really important to make sure that you're confirming the facts and making sure that you gather all of the information you need to make an informed decision. You know, lateness and absence issues, those are usually pretty easy to confirm. But again, if you're a bigger company and maybe you don't know as a manager whether this person was just out on a leave or is on a leave, a protected leave, you might want to confirm those types of facts before taking disciplinary action to make sure that you're not imposing discipline when you shouldn't be. Same thing with misconduct and other performance issues. Just make sure, you know, if there is— are email trails that you're taking a look at them before you implement disciplinary action. If there are other witnesses to a situation, make sure you're talking to them. If the situation is serious and there are serious allegations made such as complaints of you know, harassment or discriminatory comments, things like that. As Barbara said, you may have the option of putting an individual on a paid administrative leave while you conduct an investigation, a more thorough investigation. And so just making sure that you're taking all the steps necessary to find out what actually happened before kind of off the cuff saying you're fired. That is important and actually mitigates risk from a legal perspective so that later if an employee does file a lawsuit, you can say, look, we went and talked to all of these people. We went and looked at all of these emails and documents. We reviewed our policies and we made a reasonable decision that this individual had violated, had been engaged in a serious violation. And that was the basis of our decision. You know, if you get in a deposition, into a deposition, and another lawyer is saying, well, what did you do to make this determination that you were going to fire this person? And the only thing that you can say is, well, someone emailed me that they said this, and so I just called them up and fired them. In a lot of cases, that doesn't come off very well and doesn't look good. So just kind of making sure that You again have vetted everything and looked into everything thoroughly before making decisions is really important from a legal perspective.

So, Tara, we're at the point where we've documented everything, we've done everything we can, and we're making the decision to terminate the employee. What pointers can you give me when we get to that point?

Sure. I think the first piece of advice is to speak with, if you have an HR professional in your organization, make sure you run these decisions by them. If you don't, there are outside human resources professionals available like Barbara and Christine who are very helpful in those situations to make sure, just to kind of give you someone to bounce ideas off of too. So, you know, hey Barbara, what should I be looking for in this situation? She can say, well, have you reviewed their leave of absence history? Have you taken a look at, you know, what email evidence you have of this? And so it's important to kind of have that. And maybe it's not an HR professional, maybe it's someone else in the organization that assists another manager or something like that. Obviously, an HR professional who deals with these things all the time will be best suited for that. But Just making sure, like I said, that you speak with your HR professional. If it's kind of a situation where there are a difficult situation, talking to a legal professional to understand what the risks are with regard to a termination. You know, there are a lot of factors at play. You know, in some cases you may want to offer an individual a separation agreement that includes some type of severance payment. Those things are all kind of legal matters that you should discuss with a legal professional. Be consistent. Like I said before, that's really important. If you have not terminated someone who has engaged in similar behavior in the past, why is this employee different? Making sure you have— the buzzword is a legitimate business explanation for the actions that you're taking. Make sure that the termination is not for an unlawful reason or retaliatory reason. A lot of employers, I think, you know, there are more and more reasons as the years go by why you cannot take an adverse action or a disciplinary action or a termination action against an employee. The leave one I see come up a lot where You know, it's like this employee is never at work and, you know, the frustration is rising, which I totally understand. But if you have an individual who is disabled or who is using protected leave, that's something that needs to be taken into consideration because you cannot discipline an individual for taking protected leave or taking, you know, having an accommodation for a disability, for example. The other situation that I see arise is when an employer calls and says, you know, we have this individual who is complaining about everything and they're just more of a headache than they're worth. We want to get rid of them. And so my first question is, well, wait a minute, what are they complaining about? Because certain types of employee complaints can be protected activity. You know, we have protected activity for someone who is complaining about harassment or discrimination. Protected activity for someone who may be complaining about employer conduct that is illegal, protected activity for employees engaging in protected concerted activity where they're talking about terms and conditions of employment or potentially complaining about terms and conditions of employment. So just making sure that you're not— you're thinking things through, as I said before, and taking all of this into consideration, I think, is really the most important thing when we're talking about both disciplinary action and a termination decision, creating a checklist, which I think is probably one of the most important things that an employer should do when they're engaging in a termination discussion. Talking points. So include in your checklist, you know, here are the things I have to go over as part of this termination meeting. And here are my talking points as to what I'm going to say to the employee. You'll be kind of going off the cuff when you're having this type of conversation with an individual. If it's, if it's based on progressive discipline and the employee has been disciplined a number of times before, this shouldn't be a surprise to them. So, You want to make sure that you're making sure that you're not saying the wrong thing, even if you don't mean it that way, or even sticking to the script. In these situations, sometimes the employee may want to ask questions. You know, why am I being terminated specifically? Well, I didn't do that. That's not what happened. Generally, we recommend that employers not engage in that type of back and forth during a termination meeting. You know, the decision has been made, we wish you the best, that type of thing. Not really getting into any type of tit-for-tat conversation. And from a risk mitigation perspective, keeping these meetings as kind of core is best because you kind of want people to part ways and do it in an amicable way, you know, in as much as you can. Obviously, things happen and situations occur that need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. But generally speaking, you know, creating your script and sticking to it, I think that's important.

Yeah, the termination is a very stressful situation for all parties, but being prepared is very key. Do you also recommend having someone present and speaking with your IT people before you do that termination meeting?

Yeah, so generally speaking, as an employer, you'll want to have, you know, whoever's running the termination meeting, whoever is going to be communicating, you know, to the individual that their employment's being separated or terminated. And then it's always good to have what I'll refer to as a witness present. You know, just, just, just best practice. And with regard to IT, you know, usually what we recommend, unless there's some, you know, weird circumstances, that the employee's access be shut down, you know, immediately prior to any termination meeting.

Okay, that's great. Barbara, Tara also, but I'll start with Barbara first. I want to get your final words as we, you know, come to wrap up. Our session today. Barbara, you go first.

[Speaker:BARBARA DOUGHERTY] I completely support Tara in developing a script or talking points and sticking to it. I also suggest practicing it out loud, whether it's a disciplinary conversation, verbal, written, final, or whether it's termination of employment. Practice it. Don't make the first time you're going to say it the actual meeting with the employee. Get comfortable with it. Understand that these meetings, especially the termination of employment meeting, should be no more than 6 to 8 minutes. It's not a negotiation. It's a decision that's been made, and you're making an announcement, and you're informing the employee of what's going on. Get comfortable with the language that you're going to use. So this way it becomes more natural. And again, as Tara said, I can't support her any more than stick to your script. Don't go off Make your documentation format just simple and consistent and train your managers on how to use this. Something simple as the employee's name, their title, their date of hire. It's a good point of reference for how long they've been with you, who their supervisor is, what's their infraction history. So you can see, was it something that happened back in 2022? Or is it recent? What are the specifics of the situation? What needs to improve? And be specific and make it measurable. And then have an acknowledgement of the— at the end of it that the employee is signing, that they acknowledge that they have received this warning and that they acknowledge that their potential next steps may include further disciplinary action and termination of employment. You know, if you've done your job with ongoing, open, proactive communication and clear documentation, This should not be a surprise to an employee. If you have provided the opportunity to improve and the employee didn't improve, you're not firing them. They're firing themselves. It's their decision that they decided not to take the steps to comply with the rules, with the regulations, and meet the expectations. New York employers also have to remember to send a termination of employment letter along with the New York unemployment form. The letter is not the place to explain the reason for the decision. Instead, Instead, it just simply confirms the last date of employment, outlines if there's any time off to be paid, which is in compliance with your policy, what will happen to benefits such as COBRA, and what will happen with any retirement or 401(k) plan that the employee was enrolled in. Employees who feel that they have been fully heard and fairly treated are less likely to file a claim and less likely to speak negatively about the manager and/or the employer on social media, with friends, and with family. You know, this word of mouth can go a long way with potential employees and even clients and customers. You worked hard to hire this individual, and employee engagement can last after the employee is gone. It all depends on how they were treated through their experience with you.

Thank you. Tara, final words?

Yeah, I think again, kind of just reiterating what we've said, what Barbara has already said. I think the main takeaways here from my perspective today and from a legal risk mitigation and compliance perspective is again, make sure you're documenting. Before you document any disciplinary action, make sure you're investigating, making sure you have all of the facts and know all of the information before taking action. And then obviously, when you do get to a situation where you need to terminate an individual, keeping it short and sweet and sticking to the script is very important. And trying to keep it as amicable as possible because, as Barbara said, I think kind of, you know, making sure that those meetings are not— aren't very emotional and and the emotions don't rise. And not getting into the back and forth is also very important from a risk mitigation perspective. And also just from a, you know, you want to part ways amicably just from an employee relations perspective. And from, as Barbara said, making sure everyone is kind of friendly as much as you can be after the fact. I think that's important too.

Thank you both very much. I know we do have one question that's sitting in our Q&A right now, and that's about the template about, I guess, an employee counseling document. Barbara, you had mentioned some key components of that. Could you just review that one more time for that individual?

Yeah, it should have the employee's name, the employee's title, what their date of hire was. That gives you a point of perspective. The date of the actual situation and the conversation, whether it is a verbal documentation, whether it's a written warning, a final warning, a second written warning, a performance improvement plan, if it's an unpaid suspension, a paid suspension, whatever it may be. I don't really suggest with disciplinary action it be a paid suspension. That's a vacation for doing something wrong, so I wouldn't go there. But it all should also include an infraction history. And you don't have to rewrite everything, but you can attach the attendance documentation, the copies of the errors, the copies of the emails, or whatever it may be that led you to have those discussions. And then the specifics of the situation, and be as specific as possible. Don't be general saying, well, Barbara just didn't do a nice job. That doesn't mean anything. What was it that I didn't do? What was specific? What was measurable? What wasn't time-bound? And be real particular about that. And then be just as specific with what needs to improve, what specifically needs to improve. So there's no ambiguity there. There's no question. So those are really your sections. And then at the end, a signed acknowledgment with a statement saying that the employee is signing and acknowledging that the warning was given to them. Now, the employee may refuse to sign. We've had that happen many times. I'm not signing anything. I'm not going anywhere. You're not getting my signature. I don't agree with this. You're coming after me for XYZ reasons. Well, then your witness can just be asked to sign on behalf of the meeting and state, "I was witness and this warning was given today." And that's fine. That's appropriate. And then the final statement should be that the employee understands in writing that this could lead to further disciplinary action up to and including termination of employment. And technically, I would give the warning form to the employee. Think about it. Give it to them. It's theirs. And that's why it's also important to make sure that your words are correct, that the language is specific, that it's not disingenuine, that it is accurate, that it's measurable, because that's the document if they're going to file a claim, they're going to bring to the court and to the lawyer and to the judge and say, see, I wasn't clear on what I needed to do, or one said something which contradicted something else. So that's your basic form. Just be consistent and be consistent across all of your managers, train them, and then develop that script. And help them with those conversations.

And following up on that, this isn't really about the question specifically, but part of this process and the main goal of this progressive discipline and disciplinary process is to help employees be better. We only get to termination if there's some egregious act or if there hasn't been improvement. And so the hope is that the employee's gonna take this counseling or take this written warning or take this performance improvement plan and use it as a guide or a tool to say, okay, these are the 5, 6, 7 things that I need to do better. And then we would, we never get to me and we never get to the point where an employee's filing a claim because they've improved and they are, you know, working out perfectly. And so I think it's important for employers to understand that, like, this isn't— in a performance improvement plan specifically, it's not just a, you did this wrong on X date and, and, you know, this is the result, this disciplinary action is a result of that. You want to make sure that you're putting in clear goals for what the employee needs to do to improve so that they, they can. Because if they don't know, again, like Barbara said, if they don't know what what issues you're having with their performance, then they can't really take that and use it as a tool to get better. And obviously that is the goal because you expend, like Barbara said, a lot of resources to hire people. And so, you know, making them good at what they do and making them be an asset to your organization should be the most important goal here. So I just wanted to kind of throw that in as well.

I've also just seen that when the documentation is done well and proactively, when the communication is with versus at the employee, and it is specific, it's measurable, it's time-bound, I will say in 85% of the situations, employees turn around. And that's a win-win for everybody.

Truly.

So it's all up to the manager and the supervisor.

And BARB provides amazing training for managers on implementing those types of things. So in case anyone is interested.

Thank you, Tara. Thank you both. Thank you, Tara, and thank you, Barbara, for sharing your insights today. And thank you to the audience for attending our session. Please note that each of you will definitely receive a link to the presentation by email along with the email addresses of both of our presenters today. The link will be posted to our website, ramonlaw.com. Our next Coffee Talk is not until September, so until then, please You know, take care of yourselves and, and have a great summer. Enjoy.

Thank you again for sharing. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you, everyone.