Keeping notes on the people you manage
A manager who keeps notes on the people they lead is doing something ordinary and slightly uncomfortable: writing down opinions about real people, in a file those people don't see. The discomfort is useful, because it points at the 2 questions worth settling before the file gets long: what belongs in it, and who else can read it. Both have workable answers and neither is "don't keep notes", otherwise you'll end up relying on memory, which keeps the last 3 weeks, but thinks it's the full year.
What goes in
The test I use for something to jot down is whether it would belong in a conversation with the person about their work. Their work, their working relationships, what you've noticed and what you make of it: in. Health, family, politics, religion, anything about who they are rather than what they do: out, even when it seems relevant, even when they told you themselves.
If a health issue explains a rough quarter, the note is "rough quarter, known reason, not a performance question", and the reason stays out of the file.
Two kinds, kept apart:
- what you saw, with a date: "asked to own the migration", "design doc at half its usual depth";
- what you make of it: "ready for more scope", with how sure you are in words.
The first kind ages well, because it stays true.
The second is ephemeral by construction, which is the whole point of writing "likely" next to it: a read on the record can be wrong and revised, which is more than a read in your head is ever likely to get. The method page has the whole habit, this one is about the file.
Write it as if the person will read it. Not because you're hiding nothing, but because it makes the sentences better: specific, about the work, honest about how sure you are. And because in some places they can.
Who can read it
None of this is legal advice. It's what I managed to gather and read, at the links in each paragraph, and it changes; check your own jurisdiction before you rely on any of it.
This is the part most managers haven't checked, I suspect, and the answer usually depends on where you are.
In the EU and the UK, notes about an identifiable person are personal data, and the person has a right of access to it. That covers opinions and assessments, not only facts. GDPR Article 15 gives the right, and the UK regulator's guidance for employers works through notes about a worker's performance as an example of what a subject access request can reach.
Are there exemptions? A few, and they're quite narrow: UK law exempts management forecasting and planning, to the extent that disclosure would prejudice the business, and confidential references. A running file of observations and reads is neither and you can assume a request would be valid.
In the US there's no general right of that kind, and it varies by state. California is the clearest example: Labor Code section 1198.5 gives current and former employees the right to inspect and copy the personnel records their employer keeps on their performance. Whether a manager's private notes count as personnel records turns on how they're kept and used, which is really a question for HR or a lawyer rather than a page like this one. But the practical rule comes out the same as the European one: don't write anything you'd be embarrassed to have read back to you by the person it's about.
None of that is a reason to record less than you need, though. A dated observation and a read marked "uncertain" read just fine to the person they describe. What reads badly is the line that shouldn't have been written, and the stale verdict nobody ever revised.
Where it lives
Where should the file live? If you ask me, not in the shared team workspace, where a stray permission might make it readable by the people it's about, and not in the company's performance system, where it becomes part of a record you don't control and that outlives your read of it.
A personal space: a notes app in your own account (the Notion setup is one), a folder of documents, an app that keeps it on your machine, and so on. Passcode on the device, disk encryption on, and if the machine belongs to the company, assume the company can reach what's on it.
The place also decides what "delete" means. A cloud notes app probably keeps versions and backups you don't see; a local file is gone when you delete it. Neither is wrong, but you should know which one you're in before you write the first uncomfortable line.
Pruning
A note you wouldn't say to the person's face has no business staying in the file. Once a quarter, I read each page from the top and ask of every read whether I'd still say it. If not, I revise it, date the revision, and keep the reason; if it never applied, I delete it. Old observations can fade too. Something you noticed once in March and never again shouldn't still be shaping a read in December.
When someone leaves your team, the file has done its job. Keep what you'd need for a reference you've agreed to write, and delete the rest.
When a note stops being private
The moment a note is going to be used in a formal process (a performance plan, a dismissal, a grievance) it stops being your private working file and becomes evidence, with everything that implies about who sees it and how it's kept. That's the point where I'd hand what's relevant to HR, in their format, and be clear with myself that the private file was never the official record. It was the thing that helped you manage well enough that the formal process rarely arrives.
More guides in Managing people over time.
Full disclosure: I make Continuum, a Mac app built around exactly this file. Everything stays on your Mac, with no account and no sync, so the only way a note reaches anyone else is you showing it to them. Reads carry their sureness in words and keep every earlier version dated, so pruning is a revision rather than a deletion, and it never scores anyone. It changes where the notes live and who can reach them by accident, not the legal position: a request for access reaches a local file like any other, which is the reason to write the notes the way this page describes. Free for up to three people, Pro is a one-time purchase if you'd rather not subscribe.