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this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023
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Aren’t performance improvement plan’s really meant to give the employee a task that’s representative of what they are failing to do, so they will fail, and then you can fire them with proof of poor performance?
Correct.
I know exactly one person who ever survived that process. I know a lot who were fired and found the whole process to be humiliating from start to finish.
I got a PIP and my boss couldn't explain what it was for and what I needed to do to improve. So yeah, they're bullshit and I won $10k.
Kinda hilarious given that the name "performance improvement plan" explicitly says it is a plan, so it really needs to tell you, you know, what to do.
Good job getting that bag. Fuck em for treating people like disposable equipment.
Exactly. They exist to give legal cover so that the risk of wrongful termination lawsuits is minimized for the employer
Or even worse - PIPs exist as a paper trail that that shows the employee knew they were on the chopping block
I've rarely seen people's PIP fairly evaluated; they are just fired at the end of the PIP term
To be fair, with a half decent manager, PIP is a last resort. Therefore all the workers who could change, do before reaching that point. They've likely tried all the improvement methods beforehand. At that point, it's a final attempt, and to document the problems. It's unsurprising that they don't seem to help much.
To be fair, if they want you gone regardless of your actual performance, there's nothing stopping them from just saying you're under performing by giving you more work than is reasonable. My former place of employment did everything they could to get me to quit and I was too stubborn to do it. So they gave me the workload expected of my department when it was 5 people, but there were 2 of us. For better of worse, circumstance forced me to quit before I could see if they actually had the balls to go through with firing me.
Depends on how shitty the company or the specific organization inside of the company is. I had several team mates put in PIPs over the years and none of them ended up being fired.
A good manager does this when needed to show the person exactly what the expectations are so there's no ambiguity. As long as these expectations are reasonable and consistent, this should lead to the person meeting them not just through their own efforts but also through the organization specifically supporting this effort.
Termination of employment can follow but if that was the goal of management, the organization is broken (many are).
The question I have is why was the manager unable to explain all this before the PIP?
If the person was able to meet requirements during the PIP, I have to assume management just did a shit job explaining before that.
I've managed tons of people any only used a formal pip with three, that I recall. Two were people transferred from other teams to see if I could retain them because they were about to be let go. Another was someone I hired who was obviously going through some type of mid-life crisis about six months in... One if the first group took direction and turned into an ok employee with lots of coaching. The other two had to be let go.
The first guy just never worked, he was collecting a cheque until he got fired. He was hard to deal with because every time I addressed his lack of any work product he would act like we'd never discussed this before. Just a really weird guy. I think he'd dragged out other jobs like that and figured I was too nice to let him go?
The second guy was similar. He slipped up a few times and it became obvious he was working two jobs at the same time. He admitted it and said he was good enough to do all his work in half the time a normal person would. Great but his work product was complete crap and delivered late and incomplete every time.
I have no idea how many people I've managed or supervised in some capacity or other over the years. The vast, vast majority are doing what they can and if they get off track they just need a hand getting back on track (there's often something going on outside work that distracts them, this is usually temporary and a little understanding and accommodation goes a long way - we're all just trying to get through the day, sometimes that easier than others).
At the company I work for a PIP is the last straw. If you get put on one you've already been written up several times and had your failings explained to you (these writeups go through HR for approval to make sure they are clear). If you make it to the point that you're being put on a PIP you're probably a lost cause at that point anyway but it's a way for a manager to stave off actually firing you if they think you might be salvageable. I've never seen anyone make it through one but I would have fired them long before that if it was up to me.
Yeah, honestly, PIPs are dogshit in most cases. I'm for removing them as a barrier to prevent firing.
If you're going on a PIP, you're going to end up fired anyhow.
Double-plus-good assessment!