First-Document

A regular column, Personnel Vignettes is submitted by various personnel executives without attribution at their request.

At one of our smaller non-banking subsidiaries a few years ago, the supervisor of the accounts receivable department discovered that several of our customers' checks had not been credited to their accounts.

We had two people in the department who routinely received checks and their jobs were to enter the payments received on their terminals and credit customer accounts. Both employees had been in their jobs for 2-3 years and both had good records.

Investigating, the supervisor was told that neither clerk recalled ever receiving the checks in question. Most of the customers, however, were old customers and they assured the supervisor that the checks had in fact been mailed.

We might have checked the matter off to "lost mail" but, in a remarkable coincidence, the office in which the two clerks worked happened to have been undergoing some minor renovations and the painters were moving furniture to repaint the walls. Behind one of the clerk's desks several papers were found which had slipped between it and the wall. One was an opened and empty envelope from one of the complaining customers. The postmark indicated that it had probably contained one of the missing checks.

The supervisor happened to have been standing by at the time and she was handed the papers. Recognizing the importance of the envelope and the circumstances under which it had been found, she called the clerk into her office where he was confronted. Unable to provide a plausible explanation, the employee soon admitted that he had stolen the "lost" checks and he was promptly discharged.

A few months after that, the supervisor who had solved the mystery of the missing checks was stricken by a sudden heart attack and died.

Within a few weeks of that unfortunate event, we received notice of a complaint having been filed with the state Human Relations Commission in which the former employee, who was a minority, alleged that his termination had been due to racial discrimination.

Outraged by his gall and the allegations made, the manager of the subsidiary finally called in the Human Resources Department. We asked for a copy of the former employee's personnel file in order to begin preparing our defense against the complainant's allegations.

We were astounded to find that the file was bereft of any documentation which would have been helpful in substantiating the facts which had actually led to the termination of the complainant. There had been no witnesses to the confrontation in which the former employee had admitted the theft and no details were available from anyone with first-hand knowledge of the admission which might help us establish the facts on which the supervisor had acted. Even the empty envelope with which the supervisor confronted him had disappeared.

To make a long and sad story short, we had to "buy our way out" of the complaint by offering a cash settlement to an individual who had stolen from us!

It was bitter medicine to take and, by this time, we felt like passengers who had been on an elevator plunging toward the basement, a floor or two at a time.

The lesson to be learned is a simple one: document every personnel action you take in dealing with a problem and insist that those who have this responsibility do so?every time.

Preach documentation to your supervisors and practice it yourself. Whether the case seems open and shut, simple or complex, meaningful or trivial, you can never be completely sure of the future destination of any personnel action you begin. Good documentation will help assure you of a safe arrival.

Copyright © 1990 Bankers' Hotline. Originally appeared in Bankers' Hotline, Vol. 1, No. 12, 12/90