Jonathan began struggling just weeks into his new job at a cloud service provider. The New York-based tech worker says he was offered a senior position: instead, it was a junior role, offering basic IT support at a call centre.
Following complaints of low ticketing numbers – records that document customer service issues – and failing to stick to the company’s call flow, Jonathan’s manager pulled him aside. “We had some conversations that they [later] said were verbal warnings,” explains Jonathan. “Then, they gave me a performance improvement plan (PIP).”
Unlike most PIPs, which offer struggling workers a formal, goal-driven structure and timeline to meet employer expectations, Jonathan says his plan was essentially measureless. “It had no end date – just until my performance ‘improved’.”
Jonathan says the PIP left him feeling nit-picked and micromanaged – ironically, it made him less able to perform in his role. It also convinced him that there was no future for him at the company.
“I felt I was being managed out of the organisation,” he says. “There were so many strict rules they placed on me, and there was so much hand holding. I left the following month.”
Fundamentally, PIPs are meant to help flagging employees find their footing again. If workers hit the objectives outlined in the plan, the general idea is they can keep their jobs. But often, say experts, these plans contain targets that can be extremely hard to meet, often requiring workers to completely turn around past behaviours or surpass hard-to-reach metrics against the clock.
Some employees can recover from this situation and eventually thrive in their roles. Yet PIPs may often spell the end for workers: a mere formality, which organisations issue to push unfavoured employees out the door.
Personality over performance?
PIPs have been a fixture of the workplace for decades – and are, theoretically, well meaning.
“The initial intention in creating a plan that sets clear, measurable goals in supporting employees and improving their performance was probably right,” says Lucy Adams, founder of London-based HR consultancy Disruptive HR. “But PIPs often make matters worse.”
Often issued as a last-ditch attempt by a manager to ameliorate a broken working relationship, companies typically set PIPs against a deadline, often ranging from two weeks to six months. They place underperforming workers against a wall to improve – and quickly.
Although PIP goals can be skills based, Adams says most plans’ criteria often focus on employee’s personality. A typical plan may include objectives such as being less difficult with colleagues, or having nicer interactions with clients.
“While some PIPs may highlight areas of competency, more often than not they seek to change someone’s attitude. Conversely, a skill-related issue with an employee that’s willing, positive and motivated is usually resolved without ever resorting to formal means.”
Because PIPs focus so much on individual behaviour, they can be hard to measure. “The issue may be an employee isn’t collaborating enough with colleagues – but how do you quantify an improvement?,” says Adams. “Asking the worker to change an ingrained behaviour is also difficult: what a manager may label as rude, the employee may consider fine. And in a knowledge economy, measuring performance is always hard.”
And with this focus on attitude and behaviour, whether a worker succeeds is ultimately subjective. “PIPs can be shrouded in clear, measurable goals but it often ultimately comes down to one person’s view over another,” says Adams. “It often rests on an individual manager’s judgement call.”
Experts say workers are often given subjective goals that make their targets even harder to reach (Credit: Getty Images)
Adams says that employers often use PIPs to protect themselves. “By the time it’s reached a formal, written process with a timeframe in which an employee must demonstrate a new attitude, informal conversations and warnings have already taken place. It’s likely the worker has already tried and failed to change. So, a PIP is merely due process, so a disciplinary process stands up at a potential tribunal – it reduces an employer’s liability.”
Alongside legal box-checking, managers may also employ PIPs to silently nudge underperforming workers out of an organisation.
“It’s often a formal, stressful process that essentially tells the employee off for their attitude,” says Adams. “As conversations progress, criticisms increase, frustrations are shared. It creates an adversarial relationship – it signals to the employee that their long-term future may be elsewhere.”
‘The sword of Damocles’
It’s not all doom, however: in some instances, PIPs can successfully help pull employees back from the brink.
“We recruited one employee right out of college and he lacked professionalism – but we could tell he was really talented,” explains Shane Hummus, the founder of a career-focused YouTube media company, based in the US. “He didn’t initially meet the goals we set, and he had issues with lateness, so we gave him a three-month PIP.”
The employee immediately responded to the performance improvement plan, says Hummus. One of its goals included performance metrics that were easy to measure. “Their numbers improved a lot and there was definitely a noticeable uptick in engagement – he’s one of my best employees now.”
Employers can use PIPs as a means of coaching and training workers, says Denise Rousseau, professor of organisational behaviour and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, US. But she says communication is key.
“The signal has to be that the organisation wants to help the employee, and these are the criteria that will enable them to improve,” she says. “If done well, it’s a problem-solving exercise, with the manager showing the employee that they have every chance of success.”
Even so, by providing a formal, written framework in which an employee must fight to prove themselves against a time constraint, PIPs sometimes create psychological conditions that harm job performance.
“The employee is under so much pressure to perform with a PIP: ‘If you don’t demonstrate these behaviours by this date, to our satisfaction, then you’re out of the job’,” says Adams. “When you want the employee to be open-minded to suggestions, it instead creates a flight, fight or freeze response. The worker has the sword of Damocles hanging over them, making it harder to suddenly perform at their best.”
Dusting off that CV
Once on a PIP, workers are faced with a choice: they can choose to strive to hit their targets, or simply look for their next role, says Rousseau.
“It depends how much they actually want their job. If so, they should ask for organisational support to enable them to meet their PIP goals. But if they’re facing formal disciplinary proceedings, that shouldn’t come as a surprise to them – they should already know they’re on a slippery slope and are vulnerable.”
Ultimately, the experts say more often than not, a PIP spells the beginning of the end for an employee at a company. The silver lining? This may give the worker a head start finding their next role while still employed, says Adams.
“Even if the employee successfully jumps through hoops in a short time frame, there are no guarantees that it will necessarily blossom into a more positive relationship for either party, longer term.”
Working in the crosshairs, it may be time to update that resume, after all.