Why is it important to identify the type of infraction and the link between disciplinary events? The answer lies in the perception of fairness. When a repeated violation of the same rule or type of rule occurs, further discipline is warranted. That’s fair to your workers and would be perceived as equitable by a jury.

What you don’t want to do, however, is create a record in which
the manager addresses employees’ isolated behavioral events. Sometimes our forms and policies create these problems for us. For example, one fairly common method of administering discipline is via a
‘‘performance warning’’ postcard. These postcards list upward of
forty individual infractions in a ‘‘check box’’ format. When an employee violates one of the forty specific performance areas, the manager checks off the corresponding box.

There are two problems with this method. First, giving an employee
a postcard is akin to giving him a speeding ticket. It’s a quick, down-and-dirty exercise that asks for little input or commitment on his part and offers no help on yours. As such, it has a demeaning element to it. Second and more important is the fact that disciplinary infractions are rarely identical. It is difficult to progress from a verbal to a written to a final written warning when there is little connection between events. You could end up issuing your employees two or three written warnings for different infractions rather than progressing to a final written warning for overall substandard
performance.

Instead of using this postcard method with lists of isolated infractions, simply tie specific incidents to one of the four broad categories listed earlier. It will then be much easier to demonstrate the link or nexus between events, and you will have the documented
grounds necessary to make your performance management system
effective.

Taken From : The Hiring and Firing Quention and Answer Book