Posted on October 17th, 2019
Below find a complete transcript of this video.
What’s going on, fellow entrepreneurs? It’s Jon Fagerholm again.
Today I wanted to talk about the importance of documenting everything as it relates to your employees. I know I’ve discussed this before, but just the sheer importance of it.
I was in the Labor Board last week defending a claim and luckily for my employee because it was a very large claim, it was $195,000 claim in the Labor Board.
Luckily for my client, they were very good at documenting everything. This particular employee was just a terrible employee. He should have been terminated long, long, long time ago.
He wasn’t terminated simply because he was friends with one of the owners.
Now, this particular employee had problems showing up on time, had problems with leaving early unannounced, had problems with no call-no shows, and just was a bad employee.
He was never even terminated actually. What happened was there was a day that he left early without saying anything to anybody.
Then the very next day, did a no call-no show. The employer wrote him up and suspended him for a week and then he didn’t return ever and then filed a bunch of claims.
I mean did everything, every department that you could file a claim in, the guy did it.
We show up at the Labor Board and this guy is completely unreasonable. He starts talking about, I didn’t get these breaks, I didn’t get this, I didn’t get my 10-minute breaks.
The only thing he could really disprove was the 10-minute breaks because you’re not required to track those in California.
This guy wasn’t smart enough to take, not even claim that he didn’t get his breaks that he punched in and out for.
Luckily for us, because we had all of the documentation necessary, every time he said something, I would just push a document towards him and say, “Well what about this?”
Luckily our clients documented everything. Every time he did something wrong. every time he punched in, every time he punched out, everything. They avoided $195,000 claim.
In closing, document, document, document. I know it’s a pain.
Even if you don’t formally document, even an email to another supervisor or another owner or whatever, saying Joe was late again, or Joe forgot to clock out, or Joe left early, whatever it is, even if that’s the way you want to document it, document everything, because in the end it will save your business.
Until next time, be productive.
