Win-Win Performance Appraisals: What to Do Before, During, and After the Review to Get the Best Results for Yourself and Your Employees

6 Legal Issues in Performance Management

Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 have covered the essentials of the Plan, Do, Check, React performance management cycle—Plan and Check. Before moving on to the React and Do phases, we need to consider legal issues.

There are two major reasons for putting this chapter on legal issues here. The first is that, whatever managers will do under the heading of “performance management,” it will most probably include evaluating their employees and meeting with them to discuss those evaluations. The second reason is that evaluations and performance appraisal meetings generate documentation— and legal cases are based on evidence, much of which consists of documents.

However, to state the obvious, legal issues are important ...