Answer: Verbal warning are just that verbal. Its the employer letting the employee know that he's headed toward trouble and to get his act together. This verbal warning can be given formally or informally with the ultimate hope that the conversation will not have to be repeated again.
But, as we all know verbal warnings usually spiral into more progressive disciplinary measures including termination. This is when having a paper trail of all of those "verbal warnings" comes in handly. Employees quickly forget those talks. Both managers and employeed give fuzzy accounts of what the conversation entailed if they can even agree that the "verbal warnings" happened in the first place.
A good manager or business owner always makes that verbal warning talks concrete by documenting them. This doesn't actully make the offense a written warning. Those terms only describe the level of serverity and/or the level in the disciplinary system that the employee has reached.
This also does not have to be a laborsome process. If your organization does not have a form to record verbal warnings, simply create your own or compose an email and send to the employee.
All you really need to include is the employee's name, the date and time of the conversation, the location, and of course the counselling manager's name. Then summerize what the employee warned of, future consequences and any response that the employee may have offered.
If you choose to record on paper, make sure to give a copy to the employee. They don't need to sign it, but you will want to note that they received a copy of the summary. Then immediately file a copy in the employee's human resources file.
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