As a Supervisor one of your roles is to observe employee behavior and analyze the effects of that behavior on job performance. In this role one of your key tools is documentation. The quality of the documentation is critical to your success. This written record must contain:

• details of what you have observed
• times and dates of each observation
• names of all persons involved
• names of witnesses
• actions that were taken.

As with any disciplinary action, you must be fair and consistent in the way you handle this situation. When observing job performance, document the duration of the problem and the frequency. Compare what you are observing now to the employee’s past work history. Are there extenuating circumstances that need to be considered? For instance one of your workers has a persistent running nose but all her/his kids have been home with colds and the flu. Her/his performance has suffered because s/he is getting in late every day. This worker may just need some advance warning that you have noticed her/his job performance deteriorating. Or this worker may have alcohol and/or drug problems and is coming up with a variety of excuses. Whatever the situation, your role is to assist the employee on getting back on track with their job performance.

If you have reason to believe that the abuse of drugs and/or alcohol are occurring off duty, but it affects his/her on duty job performance, you should address this problem based on finding out the reasons for the decline in job performance.

While you are observing keep your eye out for anyone who is enabling the worker. Enablers know something is wrong but may not know exactly what is going on. They tend to enable the employee with the problem by taking on extra work, covering–up for the other employee’s mistakes or absence, and by shifting attention elsewhere. The intentions of the enabler are good, they usually don’t realize that they are allowing the progression of the alcohol or other drug problem. Enabling any behavior which shields the alcohol and/or drug abuser from suffering the harmful consequences of her/his abuse is a behavior that you will also have to address as a Supervisor.

Documentation can occur in a variety of ways. Some businesses videotape their employees in the every day performance of their jobs. Some have audio tape recordings of what employees are saying. Others have job performance calculations generated by computer. Even if your company uses one or more of these methods, you will most likely be doing your documentation in written form and using these other documentation methodologies as support. Remember to keep your handwritten notes even after you have typed up the final copy. You may need them in court at a later date.