An earlier post made the point that medical leave doesn't grant immunity, but that timing alone can invite scrutiny and shift the burden onto you to prove the decision had nothing to do with disability. The practical question that follows is how you build a file that actually does that proving, and the answer is that you build it long before termination is on the table, ideally before any leave begins, and certainly before anyone in your business utters the word "termination" out loud.
Documentation is one of those words that sounds like bureaucracy but is actually about memory. Yours fades, theirs sharpens, and a tribunal or court deciding a dispute two years from now will rely on what got written down at the time rather than what anyone remembers having said. The file you create contemporaneously is the file that matters. Notes drafted after the fact, even accurate ones, carry a whiff of reconstruction, and reconstruction invites the question of what else got reconstructed and why. The employee's lawyer may notice that every memo is dated in the same two week window just before the termination letter, and so might the adjudicator.
What belongs in that file is specific, dated, factual description of what the employee did or failed to do, not characterizations of who they are. "Missed the March 12 client deadline by three days despite two reminders on March 8 and March 10" is useful. "Has a bad attitude" is not, because attitudes are in the eye of the beholder and because that phrase tends to attach itself to employees who have also raised health concerns, accessibility requests, or complaints about management, which creates exactly the inference you're trying to avoid. The same applies to phrases like "not a team player" or "lacks commitment." They sound like performance issues but read like pretexts, and pretexts are what tribunals spend their days sniffing out.
The documentation should also show that the employee knew about the concern and had a chance to respond. A written warning that lands in a personnel file the employee never sees is not a warning, it's a diary entry. The purpose of progressive discipline isn't to accumulate evidence for a future termination but to give the employee an opportunity to improve, and that purpose disappears if the employee doesn't know the clock is running. Whether you call it a coaching conversation, a performance improvement plan, or a formal written warning, the employee needs to receive it, acknowledge receipt, and have a reasonable period to demonstrate change before the next step occurs. Courts and regulatory bodies aren't impressed by employers who hand over six months of undisclosed concern in the same meeting where they announce dismissal.
None of this means you need a binder thick enough to stop a bullet. Quantity is not the point. A single clear memo summarizing a single clear conversation, dated and saved, is worth more than a hundred vague notes scribbled on the back of an envelope and shoved in a drawer. And the memo should be written close enough to the event that you still remember what actually happened, not weeks later when you're trying to reconstruct why you felt uneasy at the time. If you find yourself saying "I should have documented this," you have already identified the problem, and the solution is to start now rather than to pretend the past can be rewritten.
The goal is a file that tells a coherent story about legitimate business concerns, addressed openly and fairly, with the employee given notice and opportunity at each stage. That story may not prevent a complaint, but it might make the complaint much harder to prove, and it will make the early resolution conversation much easier because everyone can see what the evidence actually shows. Businesses that wait until a crisis to start documenting find themselves explaining gaps and coincidences to people whose job is to notice gaps and coincidences.
This is the kind of work that doesn't require a lawyer on retainer or an HR department down the hall. It requires something watching for the pattern before the pattern becomes a problem, and something prompting you to write down what happened while you still remember it clearly. That is what Binder is for: a quiet presence that keeps you from having to explain, years later, why no one thought to write anything down. If you or your business been through this before or have a question about where to start, drop a thought in the comments below.