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When deciding whether discipline was biased, courts often seek to compare workers who have the same supervisor, not just those who have the same job. That’s because discrimination is often manifested by individual acts, not a systemic, organization-wide problem. That makes it important to track discipline by supervisor.

Documentation can protect your decisions—or undermine them. The difference comes down to a few simple habits. Here’s how to document discipline in a way that holds up.

The line between personal opinion and professional risk continues to shrink—and HR teams are often the ones left holding the rope.

Not everyone wants to spend their time deleting emails, blocking co-workers they don’t see eye to eye with or reading rants on message boards or “forward to all” emails. But employers sometimes don’t know when they can discipline over employees’ posts on and off company resources. Now, a federal appeals court has clarified some limits in a recent case.

Want to make sure discipline sticks? Then details matter. It’s far easier to defend a termination decision if you can show the court that you specifically pointed out the employee’s work problems and offered an opportunity to improve instead of simply terminating her.

Progressive discipline plans are great for correcting the behavior of employees in whom you have invested time and money and getting them back on track. But always leave yourself an “out” for those cases when retaining the worker just doesn’t make sense.

You’ve no doubt heard it again and again—the key to winning lawsuits is to document, document, document. Courts don’t lend much credence to documents that appear after the fact, often suspecting that such notes are made up to cover discrimination.

Set reasonable, objective goals that can be achieved with sufficient effort in the time allotted in the PIP. Don’t create impossible goals that can’t be achieved absent Herculean efforts.

Employees who take FMLA leave are protected from retaliation for doing so. That’s led to the mistaken belief among some employees that they can’t be disciplined or fired while on leave. That’s not the case—if you can show you would have disciplined or fired the worker even if she wasn’t on leave.

It’s fine to hold managers to a higher standard of conduct than regular employees. While a subordinate might be excused for a minor rule breach, his supervisor could legitimately be disciplined for breaking the same rule. Just make sure your handbook outlines this greater expectation.