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Essays on documentation, discipline and the calls you'll one day have to defend. Written by an operator who has run the floor, for anyone who manages a team that works in shifts.
Kyle Kirkland
President, Brick HR
Eyewitnesses are confident, sincere and often wrong. If your employment decisions rest on recollection, they rest on sand.
Kyle Kirkland
· 3 min read
The archive
Culture
They photograph their lunch, screenshot their group chats and never return anything without a receipt. Here's how to point that instinct at the job.
Leadership
Calling your employees family feels good and sets everyone up for disappointment. Great teams run on data, candor and consistent calls.
Claims & appeals
Deflategate wasn't a scandal. It was physics nobody wrote down. What the NFL's most famous footballs teach employers about experts and the record.
Claims & appeals
Good intentions don't survive discovery. What happens when a termination turns into a claim, and the file you'll wish you had built.
Culture
Three things every manager knows they should do more often. Only one of them will save you in a hearing, and the excuses for skipping it don't hold up.
Leadership
The Titanic had a gym with an electric camel and lifeboats for about half the people aboard. A lot of HR software makes the same trade.
Claims & appeals
In years of reviewing surveillance, I can't recall one incident that matched the first version we were told. That's why the record matters.
Operations
Every floor mistake costs more than it looks: in comps, in labor, in guests who don't come back. Tracking them is the fastest margin you'll find.
Culture
Your managers already know how to document. They do it on their phones every day. Here's how HR can borrow that habit and turn it into a record.
Claims & appeals
An unemployment ruling went against you and you think it's wrong. Ten ways to walk into a California appeal hearing prepared.
Leadership
Most of your crew runs itself. A small slice doesn't, and how you document that slice decides whether your hard calls hold up.
Documentation
If you employ people in California, someone will eventually ask you to prove a decision. Four habits decide whether you can.
Who's writing
Written from the floor, not the conference room.
Written by
President, Brick HR
Kyle Kirkland is President of Brick HR, Inc., the company behind HR PaperTrail. He has led Club One Casino in Fresno, the card room where HR PaperTrail was first built, and has served as president of the California Gaming Association. He writes about the unglamorous side of management: documentation, discipline, and the decisions you will one day have to explain to someone who was not there.
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HR PaperTrail turns write-ups, incidents and attendance into one timeline that helps you defend every call. Tell us about your operation and we'll set you up.