The power of the paper trail

Professional The power of the paper trail

By Helen Olivieri Legal services case manager

Educators already have plenty of writing to do, on top of actually teaching classes. The last thing we want to do is document every little thing that might be important in some way during the working day. However, it is important to do so if we want to protect ourselves from unnecessary trouble, make good decisions, or maintain our work relationships and our sanity. It doesn’t have to be onerous, and once you do it as a habit, it will make much of your teaching life easier in so many ways. Many members can avoid a great deal of difficulty if they stop relying so heavily on what they were told, something they heard, or what was said in a meeting and get in the habit of writing things down. We are not talking about essays here; in reality, it’s about taking brief notes, or sending short emails. It also needs to be understood that this applies to many areas of our working lives, not just the business of asserting our rights or responding to allegations.

Getting good and timely information from payroll, staffing or employee support

Everyone is accountable for what they put in writing in their professional capacity and as a government employee. A payroll officer must exercise due diligence and give correct information on people’s pay and other entitlements when asked. However, only written information provides sure evidence as to what advice they gave. Putting advice in writing, therefore, usually makes people doublecheck and ensure their advice is correct. What we hear over the phone is not always what the speaker intended you to understand, but also, they can get it wrong. When you are seeking accurate information in relation to any aspect of your employment, never just ring. You need to rely on the accuracy of this information in order to make important decisions, like when to apply for leave for your next big holiday, or whether to ask about going part time. Always send an email query and ask for a written response. If you need them to respond within a timeframe, say so in writing. There is nothing wrong with a phone query, but never make important decisions based on information only obtained verbally. Follow up with an email confirming – to check for understanding and accuracy.

Covering yourself – work instructions and directives

These are usually given in writing anyway, and for a good reason: your line manager does not want the instruction to be forgotten or misunderstood, they want it to be followed. A failure to follow a work instruction or directive can attract disciplinary action. Therefore, if you find any part of an instruction is unclear or you find that, for whatever reason, the instruction cannot be followed, you must seek the required clarification (or explicitly point out your concerns with the instruction or directive) as early as possible. Do this in writing and be very clear and specific. Do not just tell your boss there is a problem. If you had to follow the instruction in a different way from what was asked for by your manager, you should note this in a brief email to them, including reasons why.

Covering yourself – workplace incidents

If there is an accident in the workplace, where someone is, or could have been, injured, there is a form you should seek out to complete (commonly known as an AIIR form – or Accidental Injury or Incident Report) as a requirement of any workplace occupational safety and health regime. This should apply regardless of whether the injured person is a staff member, student, parent or someone else. However, other kinds of incidents are wise to document also, even if your school has not put in place a process for doing so already. If you see, or are exposed to, difficult or escalated behaviour from any student, parent, staff member or other person at the workplace, you should document this in brief notes, including what steps you took to address the behaviour. Seeing and stopping a student bullying another student is one example of this. Depending on your school’s behaviour management policy, report it to the school if necessary. It’s a good idea to document any irregularities that might give rise to a concern during the working day. For instance, any incident in which you are aware you might have overstepped a boundary, or appeared to, ought to be documented – no employee has a perfect day, every day. Keeping a regular diary is a good way of documenting all incidents, writing down the what, as precisely as you can, as well as the time and date and perhaps also why you consider it was important. Every lecturer, every teacher, however competent, will come across students, parents or guardians who will be unhappy with how a matter was handled and may make a complaint, sometimes formally. If you have been keeping notes on any irregularities or incidents of concern, however minor – perhaps in a daily diary – this will help if you are later required to provide a written response to any formal allegations.

However, it will also assist your memory and your discussions in addressing the matter less formally and, if appropriate, more proactively. There may not even be a complaint; any diarised information will be helpful in terms of working with yourself or others to improve professional practices.

Productivity and professional development

You know about the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership standards, which are intended to capture, in essence, all the elements of what you are expected to be able to do competently as a teacher. TAFE lecturers have their equivalents. All workers are expected to complete their work in specified ways and to particular standards. There’s a difference between just doing your job and being able to, in addition, consciously track your progress against what you have planned and change practice wherever progress lags or workplace requirements change. Documenting and updating your plans, documenting lessons, tracking student progress in written records allows you to demonstrate your awareness of the standards you are expected to meet and to show that you are working to meet them. This written material is not just good professional practice. It is essential to demonstrating and developing your proficiency through the performance management process, and thus, to advancing or not advancing in your career or even, to keeping your job. It also allows to you to see and to express, in very clear terms, what professional development you need and why you believe this particular course, for instance, is worth doing for the benefit of your workplace and your own development.

Workplace relationships

Your relationships with your colleagues, parents, students are all an important part of your working life. Their quality can be the difference between work satisfaction and misery. So, if any of those relationships appears to you to be going awry – even if what you are observing your exchanges with them seems minor, but makes you uncomfortable – keep your dialogue with those others as cordial as you can and start keeping a diary. Use that information to get some advice from your union rep or line manager – or if that person is the source of conflict, the manager above them – about how best to address the situation. If you later find you definitely need more assistance from your union, what you document is extremely important, because the union will be relying on relevant, detailed and accurate records to be able to give you appropriate advice as to next steps, which might include making a formal complaint or having to respond to a formal complaint yourself. Diarising exchanges which you found distressing can also do a lot to help reduce the distress and to maintain some objectivity in the situation, so you can make good decisions. In other words, writing it down helps you to actually see the situation, rather than just suffer in it. This alone can make it much easier to work out what to do about it.