As an HR manager, if you ever encounter performance issues with your employees, you have two ways to go about it. You can either take a hard-line approach and penalize them by issuing a formal warning, or worse yet, fire them right away! Or you can go the softer route by calling them in for a counseling meeting to talk things over, so issues can be resolved less formally at an early stage.
A counseling form is the crux of that meeting. Filled out collaboratively by the employees and company representatives, it creates a paper trail of the discipline process, so it is used for both companies & employees. Not to mention lawyers, courts, and external auditors who might have a stake in the information it records, for instance, in labor courts.
In our template, we seek to formalize this second (usually!) step in the employee discipline process. The first being a verbal, off-the-record, friendly discussion! A counseling meeting, however, is not off-the-record. It is properly documented, signed by relevant parties (employees, HR managers, supervisors & witnesses), and serves as a record of notable details about an issue. It ends with a counseling note served to the employee.
As a motivational tool, our template encourages employees by directing them to a specific action plan while also being a healthy reminder about the need for discipline in professional conduct, behavior, actions, and work ethic!
A typical counseling form like ours records the following:
- Employee details
- Supervisor details
- Date and time of incident
- Reason for counseling
- Incident details
- Impact of the issue or incident
- Corrective action plans
- Desired outcome of corrective actions
- Follow-up date
- Employee feedback/comments
- Supervisor feedback/comments
- Employee signature and date
- Supervisor’s signature and date
- Witness signature and date
Usage Profile of this Form
- Users: HR Managers, Senior Management and Executives, Individual Employees, Lawyers, Judges, Legal or Compliance Teams, External Investigators or Consultants
- Company Use: You can think of this document as the first recorded step in the disciplinary process. HR officials use it to tackle any performance or behavioral issues among employees in their early stages. It also acts as a healthy way to motivate and encourage employees to improve their behavior, performance, or work ethic.
- Legal Use: This form protects the company in case of future legal issues, say, a disgruntled employee suing you for violating one of the local labor laws. On the other hand, it also protects employees who can use it to come back to any statements made by themselves or the company (See Additional Comments below). Either way, it’s always good to have a paper trail if your company faces any claims or lawsuits in the future. A signed and dated copy of this form can be crucial information for judges and juries to consider as evidence of each party’s innocence or guilt!
- Documentation: The purpose of this form is to formalize the counseling note. Make sure copies of this form are given to both the supervisor and the employee for personal records and future follow-ups. Depending on your company structure & policy, this document will need the dated signatures of the employee, HR manager, supervisor, and witness (if any) to be considered valid.
Now, let’s explore our template in a bit more detail:
Employee Details
Add basic details about the employee and the broader company hierarchy they’re a part of:
Your filled-out section should look like this:
Name: John Doe
Employee ID: john123
Department: Design
HOD: Jack
Position: UX/UI Designer
Supervisor: GM – Alan Grant
Reason for Counseling
There’s always a solid reason why someone at work is called in for a counseling meeting. As a written record of the first step in the employee discipline process, it’s a vital document for HR managers, workers, and company owners. Especially in case of a lawsuit by an employee down the road, when you want to be able to prove that the employee in question was given a fair and reasonable amount of warning before strict action was taken against them.
For practical ease, we turned this section into a checklist, adding some of the most common reasons why employees are called in for a formal counseling session. But these are only ones we liked, you can always change the default categories using an editable version of the file.
We have also added a miscellaneous ‘Other’ category in case your incident or issue does not fall under one of our built-in categories.
Incident Details
Before you delve into the nitty-gritty of what happened, it’s important to first identify when (Date) and where (Location) it happened. This information is crucial for both internal record-keeping and legal purposes.
Nature of the incident
This section forms the factual basis of the warning, ensuring all parties have a clear understanding of which specific issue, incident, or behavior is being referred to. This creates a clear basis of communication between the person responsible for said behavior and the company managers or owners who find an objection to it, making sure everyone is on the same page about what happened.
Impact on the Workplace
Use this section to show how an incident or issue has affected your work environment or productivity. When detailing the impact of the incident, look at psychological, professional, or social impacts to create a comprehensive case for why they need to get back on track. Remember, the management reserves the right to bring any issue to the notice of the employee if it has a negative impact on the interests of the organization.
Names of Witnesses, etc.
In the next two sections, list the names of any witnesses or other people (say, coworkers or external consultants) who were part of the meeting. For company owners or managers, this creates an additional avenue to confirm what was discussed, and how the employee took to the feedback.
Because companies have limited resources, it is not practical to keep on counseling someone if the results are not worth it. That’s why nour next step is to find out if a similar counseling session for a similar issue has happened before. This helps you know if the disciplining process is working or not.
Correction Actions
Let’s say an employee was counselled for the same reason a few months ago. Did the session result in the creation of a corrective action plan?
Use this space to highlight actions designed to prevent a similar incident from happening again. For example, if an employee wilfully damaged an office camera, they may have been asked to get it fixed at their personal expense, hence ‘correcting’ the loss or damage they caused to the company.
Desired Outcomes
Each correction action should be tied to a specific desired outcome. DOs are directly tied to how much time & effort employees put in to change their ways.
Use this section to enlist the company’s expectations, as shared during earlier counseling sessions, so you can easily monitor their progress against them.
Add a Follow-Up Date
Right at the end of this section, we have space for adding a follow-up date. This is when the outcomes of the counseling process will be reviewed by the HR manager or senior company management to judge how well the employee has responded to the feedback and constructive criticism detailed in the counseling note.
Employee Acknowledgement and Signatures
As with every official document, you need dated signatures to verify the legal status of the document as valid and authentic. Depending on your company policies, you will need the following people to sign the Employee Counseling Form to make it valid.
Add the name and dated signature of the following:
- Witness (if any)
- Supervisor
- HR Manager
- Employee
By signing this form, an employee acknowledges the fact that there is an issue in their performance or conduct, and should they fail to address it, they will have to face disciplinary action such as demotion or termination.
Other signing parties also agree to participate in the session and provide their input to the process while understanding that any false or misleading information can lead to disciplinary or even legal action against them.
Why Do I Need a Counseling Stage in My HR Process?
It is good HR practice to have a formal counseling meeting before a written warning is issued to the employee in question. There are many reasons why a formal counseling meeting and a written record of it are good for your company’s HR process:
It helps you:
- Document the employee discipline process for internal records & legal purposes
- Improves performance and boosts productivity levels
- Improves employee retention
- Acts as a healthy reminder for employees to stay on track
- Builds employee trust and confidence
- Supports compliance with local laws and company policies
