The Written Warning, What and How to Make One

Besides firing someone, the one thing managers and bosses hate is having to write up an employee for breaking a handbook rule or company policy.

Here are things that you can have as a part of your written warning form.

First of course would be the full name of the employee receiving the warning. Some even list their social security number or employee ID number if they have one.
The date, maybe list the time this happened or shift number if needed, and their job position.
Next what type of warning this notice is, first, second, or final?
Then, what offense was committed by the employee? Can be a checkbox list or written in.

You then have a large space for what happened describing the offense or the companies side of the issue. The action plan as to what is going to be done to rectify the offense by both the company and the employee and to list what will happen with any future infraction of the same offense.

The form can leave space for the employee to rebut and make his or her comments but not all states require that the employee be allowed to make any statement. Then comes the receipt acknowledgment where both the employee and the person says that they understand the warning from the company and sign the form. A copy is given to the employee and the original is placed into that employee’s personnel file. This point too depends on your state, some do not even require that the employee gets a copy once they have signed the form.

Here are a few samples of the simplest to the most detailed type.

As I mentioned last week in my series of hiring posts, a Written Warning form should also be part of your program. Coming soon is the exit interview.