4 ms·

Also if pips are constant it will just create a nasty culture which is very hard to turn back.

aestetix 3y ago
Well it seems that PIPs are not actually improvement plans. An honest performance improvement plan would identify key areas that can reasonably be improved, steps to improve in those areas, and a timeframe to achieve that improvement. Ideally with occasional check-ins to ensure the employee is on target for reaching the goals. What I hear about American PIPs is that they are unrealistic or impossible goals for anyone to achieve, and presented falsely as an improvement plan because the company is too cowardly (or incompetent) to either fire the person or give actual feedback. In other words, it sounds like an extremely passive aggressive way to avoid confrontation, and also serve as a shield in an overall toxic climate where the legal system won't just tell the person with the frivolous lawsuit to go blow sand.
- me_me_me 3y ago
  PIPs (at least in europe) are a way for company to prove employee was fired because they are incompetent. We tried to help employee X, see the paperwork? But they are not good enough. Its a system to shield company from local laws and lawsuits. Its not a sign of cowardliness or incompetence. Its cold calculation and foolproof process, that on scale protects corpo from multi-million settlements I have only heard secondhand of two cases where pip didnt result in being fired (but cant confirm it, could have been a propaganda stories passed on by gullible)
  - aestetix 3y ago
    But the point is, would a similar employee who made a good faith effort be able to graduate out of the PIP? If you give an employee guardrails for success and they flounder anyways, then it seems the employee was not a good fit for the role. It says more about the employee than the process.
    - blitzar 3y ago
      > would a similar employee who made a good faith effort be able to graduate out of the PIP 90%+ of the situations I have witnessed, extreme luck or act of god would be required to achieve the requirements. In the other 10% the PIP was an order from above that the line managers disagreed with and thus set a reasonable performance level. I have also had the misfortune to witness one where the employee didnt realise it was all a con to fire them; they got the miracle, 10x'd their teams sales but "failed" some pointless side quest to get coffee for the boss every morning by 6am.
      - re-thc 3y ago
        > In the other 10% the PIP was an order from above that the line managers disagreed with and thus set a reasonable performance level. An examples on how those played out? Curious if the line managers then get punished?
        blitzar 3y ago
        For the most part they looked like they worked out fine - generally it was a personal problem, people not "liking" people. The line manager gave the nudge and wink to be "extra nice" to the meglomaniac in the senior suite and after a few months cooler heads prevail, along with a documented performance. A lot of actual real world peformance and what people actually do isnt really visible when you are a few layers up (or in a different team). Sooner or later in an organisation large enough someone is going to assume simply because they dont like someone over there, that person does nothing all day long. If one was particularly skilled you could probably use these sorts of things to undermine upper management that is already on the ropes - but that is an advanced technique.
    - me_me_me 3y ago
      I would say it depends, if employee was set to be fired - there is nothing that they could do to avoid it, decision was made to downsize team, or they were assholes, had personal clashes with leaders etc. There are probably cases where pip is used to give a good person who is slipping a kick. That was probably initiated by their manager to motivate them back on track. However, a good manager would have a serious talk with that employee, rather than use formal HR process. So thats why (I think) pip is mostly used to get rid of people.
  - crote 3y ago
    Wouldn't that be extremely bad for the company? If virtually all PIPs result in firing, wouldn't it be trivial to argue that either 1) the company is misusing PIPs as a stealth way to fire people, or 2) the company is completely incompetent when it comes to providing PIPs that actually work. With most European labour laws, neither option is very good for the company.
    - me_me_me 3y ago
      Trivial, how? A corpo lawyer will tell judge they agreed with employee on improvement plan to guide and help them prevent firing. They did all they could to help them. How will you prove that you were fired before pip was put in place? How will you argue the whole pip system is set to fire people? (Similarly) It is open secret politicians steal public money, why don't we just lock them up for stealing?
    - jameshart 3y ago
      No, because there is actually such a thing as a bad employee. Labor laws are not a get out of jail free card for being bad at your job. Firing people is not actually illegal. PIPs actually work if they provide evidence that someone actually cannot do the job they were hired to do. That all the employees put on such PIPs fail would be evidence that they are doing a good job of identifying bad employees to fire, not that they don't actually know how to improve performance.

Well it seems that PIPs are not actually improvement plans. An honest performance improvement plan would identify key areas that can reasonably be improved, steps to improve in those areas, and a timeframe to achieve that improvement. Ideally with occasional check-ins to ensure the employee is on target for reaching the goals. What I hear about American PIPs is that they are unrealistic or impossible goals for anyone to achieve, and presented falsely as an improvement plan because the company is too cowardly (or incompetent) to either fire the person or give actual feedback. In other words, it sounds like an extremely passive aggressive way to avoid confrontation, and also serve as a shield in an overall toxic climate where the legal system won't just tell the person with the frivolous lawsuit to go blow sand.

me_me_me 3y ago
PIPs (at least in europe) are a way for company to prove employee was fired because they are incompetent. We tried to help employee X, see the paperwork? But they are not good enough. Its a system to shield company from local laws and lawsuits. Its not a sign of cowardliness or incompetence. Its cold calculation and foolproof process, that on scale protects corpo from multi-million settlements I have only heard secondhand of two cases where pip didnt result in being fired (but cant confirm it, could have been a propaganda stories passed on by gullible)
- aestetix 3y ago
  But the point is, would a similar employee who made a good faith effort be able to graduate out of the PIP? If you give an employee guardrails for success and they flounder anyways, then it seems the employee was not a good fit for the role. It says more about the employee than the process.
  - blitzar 3y ago
    > would a similar employee who made a good faith effort be able to graduate out of the PIP 90%+ of the situations I have witnessed, extreme luck or act of god would be required to achieve the requirements. In the other 10% the PIP was an order from above that the line managers disagreed with and thus set a reasonable performance level. I have also had the misfortune to witness one where the employee didnt realise it was all a con to fire them; they got the miracle, 10x'd their teams sales but "failed" some pointless side quest to get coffee for the boss every morning by 6am.
    - re-thc 3y ago
      > In the other 10% the PIP was an order from above that the line managers disagreed with and thus set a reasonable performance level. An examples on how those played out? Curious if the line managers then get punished?
      - blitzar 3y ago
        For the most part they looked like they worked out fine - generally it was a personal problem, people not "liking" people. The line manager gave the nudge and wink to be "extra nice" to the meglomaniac in the senior suite and after a few months cooler heads prevail, along with a documented performance. A lot of actual real world peformance and what people actually do isnt really visible when you are a few layers up (or in a different team). Sooner or later in an organisation large enough someone is going to assume simply because they dont like someone over there, that person does nothing all day long. If one was particularly skilled you could probably use these sorts of things to undermine upper management that is already on the ropes - but that is an advanced technique.
  - me_me_me 3y ago
    I would say it depends, if employee was set to be fired - there is nothing that they could do to avoid it, decision was made to downsize team, or they were assholes, had personal clashes with leaders etc. There are probably cases where pip is used to give a good person who is slipping a kick. That was probably initiated by their manager to motivate them back on track. However, a good manager would have a serious talk with that employee, rather than use formal HR process. So thats why (I think) pip is mostly used to get rid of people.
- crote 3y ago
  Wouldn't that be extremely bad for the company? If virtually all PIPs result in firing, wouldn't it be trivial to argue that either 1) the company is misusing PIPs as a stealth way to fire people, or 2) the company is completely incompetent when it comes to providing PIPs that actually work. With most European labour laws, neither option is very good for the company.
  - me_me_me 3y ago
    Trivial, how? A corpo lawyer will tell judge they agreed with employee on improvement plan to guide and help them prevent firing. They did all they could to help them. How will you prove that you were fired before pip was put in place? How will you argue the whole pip system is set to fire people? (Similarly) It is open secret politicians steal public money, why don't we just lock them up for stealing?
  - jameshart 3y ago
    No, because there is actually such a thing as a bad employee. Labor laws are not a get out of jail free card for being bad at your job. Firing people is not actually illegal. PIPs actually work if they provide evidence that someone actually cannot do the job they were hired to do. That all the employees put on such PIPs fail would be evidence that they are doing a good job of identifying bad employees to fire, not that they don't actually know how to improve performance.