Employee Warning Notice Templates
Introduction to employee warning notice:
Being human, we are allowed to make mistakes. Mistakes that we make in our personal lives, only affect us or our family members but when we make a mistake at work, it’s suddenly a much serious problem and there might be others who get affected by a small behavior problem that an employee has. Employers especially HR department deal with complaints on regular basis. Some of these complaints are from employees regarding their coworkers while some are from supervisors and HODs and higher management regarding particular behavior and performance mistakes of employees. Being an employer, you have the right to ask the employee to take corrective action and change his behavior before terminating him and this warning or caution is done with a warning notice. This notice includes the reason of sending the notice, details of previous notices if applicable, details of violation and what the employer expect after the employee receives the notice.
Key elements of an employee warning notice:
- Reason of warning
- Details of previous warnings
- Specific rule or company policy that was violated
- Expected steps to be taken
- Timeline or duration for improvement
- Consequences after failing to respond effectively
Importance and uses of employee warning notice:
First and the most important aspect of issuing a warning notice to workers is that being an employer, you don’t have the right to fire any employee without a solid reason. It doesn’t matter if you work in a government department, private sector, small company or a global organization, being part of a work force comes with particular rights and regulations. As an employer, you shouldn’t tolerate mistakes and misbehavior of employees but terminating an employee right away might cause a legal dispute. In order to fulfill laws and regulations, whether the mistake is small or big, you should issue a proper warning letter to the employee and give him some time to come forward and explain himself. If it’s the first time and the mistake is not very serious, maybe after he ensures that it won’t happen again, you can allow him to keep working.
Another aspect of this warning notice is that if an employee receives such a warning letter, he is not the only one taking notice of it. Being employees, we make mistakes on daily basis. Some of these mistakes are intentional while most are unintentional. Still, if we see a colleague receiving a warning letter, we will take extra care from that point forward because we know that company or the employer is taking notice of employees, their behavior and their performance. Taking 10 minutes extra during lunch break doesn’t seem unfair but if an employee receives a warning notice for this action, others will also notice and will try to go back to work as soon lunch hour is over. In a way you can say that with a warning notice, not only that you correct the action of an employee but you also give some margin to other employees to notice mistakes in their behavior and performance and correct them in time.
For getting good and competent workforce, your company needs to have good reputation in the market. Believe us that if your company fires employees on the spot without proper notice, you will lose your reputation and respect in the market. Not only that experienced people will avoid joining your company but you might lose lots of good employees just because they don’t want to stick till the time they make a small mistake and get humiliated by termination right away. When you issue warning notices to your employees, it shows them that you care for them. You don’t want to lose them but you will try your best to correct the mistakes and still keep them. This is something that you can’t just put in minds of your employees but this type of thinking comes from the overall behavior and atmosphere of the workplace.
