What is an Incident Diary?

An incident diary is a log containing notes about employee performance. You should maintain an incident diary with information for each of your employees. You may choose to keep a calendar for this purpose, where you record brief notes about each employee as incidents occur; you may keep a file for each employee where you add notes as needed; or you may have your own system.

So long as you are recording information about employee performance on an ongoing basis, the format that you use to record it is not significant. Be sure to store your incident diary in a secure place.

Include in an incident diary:

• Conversations about work assignments;
• Informal counseling or coaching sessions;
• Commendations, "good work" kudos;
• Customer complaints;
• Disciplinary actions; and/or
• Employee action and your action.

In the event that you need to address an employee's poor performance, your incident diary will be a valuable source of detailed documentation about that performance.