If you get to the point that you're on a personal improvement plan, you should immediately look for other work. There are no circumstances in which it will turn around.
If it gets to the point of a PIP, you're in very hot water at most places. But that does not necessarily mean you are going out the door.
If you care about keeping your job, step one is to ascertain whether your management is truly willing to invest in working it out, or simply going through the motions. It's time to level with them and have some very probing conversations on what's going on to get all the cards on the table.
Most managers do not want to fire their reports, if they can help it. But a PIP is often the last breakpoint before they have to do the deed. And to be honest, even managers that want to make the PIP work often don't really know how to. So, yes, it's hard for both sides, but it's not hopeless.
If you decide management is being sincere about their desire to keep you, here's my advice:
- Stop whatever it is you think you need to do to do your job, listen to what they're asking of you, change your behavior, and ask for feedback when you think you've done well. A PIP is a sign that implicit expectations and communication have failed, so you need to fall back on being unnaturally explicit.
- Prepare for a rift in your personal relationship with your manager that is going to take some time to repair. It's likely a very awkward situation for both of you, and you are going to feel attacked. No easy way around that. Even if you succeed at getting out of the doghouse, the rift will persist until you start to rebuild the 2-way trust.
It's a bad spot to be in, and it's only going to work out if both parties believe it can work and are truly committed to doing some hard reflection and behavioral change.
All that said I suppose if things really did change I would approach what happened next with an open mind.
In at least one company I worked at having PIP in your file meant that it would be impossible to switch teams ever again. What manager wants the potential liability.
Also if there are is stack ranking with a curve people are going to have to be PIPed just to make the numbers work (not justifying it, just saying it happens). Having watched people be hired on to teams for the sole purpose of being let go it is really important to know what is actually going on.
As someone said, it varies from company to company. Many managers treat it as a step to firing. And if you listen to employees who've been through it, many will have stories about how unfair it was - unfair in that others who had worse "infractions" were given a pass. To them, it was clear the boss just wanted them out of the team and was using some pretext (not the real reason) to get rid of them. Very often, that pretext is not maintaining appropriate work hours.
From Netlfix's former HR manager:
>One Netflix manager requested a PIP for a quality assurance engineer named Maria, who had been hired to help develop our streaming service. The technology was new, and it was evolving very quickly. Maria’s job was to find bugs. She was fast, intuitive, and hardworking. But in time we figured out how to automate the QA tests. Maria didn’t like automation and wasn’t particularly good at it. Her new boss (brought in to create a world-class automation tools team) told me he wanted to start a PIP with her.
>I replied, “Why bother? We know how this will play out. You’ll write up objectives and deliverables for her to achieve, which she can’t, because she lacks the skills. Every Wednesday you’ll take time away from your real work to discuss (and document) her shortcomings. You won’t sleep on Tuesday nights, because you’ll know it will be an awful meeting, and the same will be true for her. After a few weeks there will be tears. This will go on for three months. The entire team will know. And at the end you’ll fire her. None of this will make any sense to her, because for five years she’s been consistently rewarded for being great at her job—a job that basically doesn’t exist anymore. Tell me again how Netflix benefits?
"Maria, what you're doing today is X, Y, Z. We wanted that before, but going forward, we need A, B, C. My impression is that you like doing X, Y, Z. So, we've got two choices, and both of them are difficult, but we need to be upfront about this. We can part ways, and I can try to help you get to a place where you can do X, Y, Z. Or we can commit to work together to transition you to A, B, C. I believe you can do it. The question is what do you want. It's tough, but you have to choose."
And my advice to Maria would be:
- Make sure you know what your bosses actually want.
- Decide whether that's something you're into.
- Be sure of their commitment to actually develop you.
If she could answer all three of these things affirmatively, it could be worth a try. My only point is that it's wrong to say definitely that a PIP is a death sentence. It's more like a cry for help.
>My only point is that it's wrong to say definitely that a PIP is a death sentence. It's more like a cry for help.
Not completely disagreeing with you there. I don't believe in either extreme. I do not think most managers are doing it as a cry for help. I also do not think every manager is doing it to fire someone. Just pointing out that it very often (if not the majority of times) is the case in some companies.
To an extent, this is the prisoner's dilemma. The PIP is used for both purposes, but it's safer for the employee to assume the worst. If the PIP was never a path to termination, then employees would be more receptive to it.
But yeah, if you, as the manager, have decided it's a lost cause, it's best to just go ahead and initiate the separation. In that case, I agree with the HR guy.
And I certainly agree with you that in many instances, the PIP is a reflexive CYA move from management or HR.
About 15 years ago I was put on one, and it wound up working out. I've known a couple of other people who have beat the PIP as well. In the vast majority of cases though you are right. As time has gone on I've realized that the chances are so low it's not worth someone trying to beat it.
And I guess people are right. It might be that, in the majority of cases, the person will be let go.
But don't go without a "fight" (which I mean, trying to prove your worth, and improving yourself, and not by antagonizing the bosses) if you think it's worth it
I know others who have had similar experiences.
Whether or not it will turn around depends both on management's sincerity in providing the PIP and the employee's willingness to accept that he or she actually needs to change something.
Note that you used the passive voice, as though the circumstances are completely out of the employee's control.
Typically, employers would be much happier to see marked improvement in the employee's performance rather than to have to follow through on letting that employee go.
You shouldn't take it as a personal insult or grievance against you, but the "personal improvement plan" is what HR came up with when your boss requested that you be let go. If you've committed a crime or violated some policy (no matter how trivial) you can be let go immediately. But in most of the United States, it is simply a bad decision (financially) to just let someone go. It is much better to have some documentation of their inadequacy. Hence the weekly meetings.
The person conducting these reviews (be it your boss, or someone else) is probably bored out of their mind that they must participate in these meetings. The phrase "what did I do to deserve this?" probably goes through their head each time they complete one. They don't care about your performance at all at this point. They may provide an objective review, or they may just copy in some boilerplate. Something that sounds great like "fails to meet established goals". It doesn't really matter.
Again, it is completely pointless to take any of this process as any sort of rational feedback. At this point, the decision was already made that you need to go. They just need some documentation before you are let go. I would take the fact that you are being let go as feedback, but stop there. The "personal improvement plan" isn't about you. It never has been.
If you're in a financial situation where you can, just resign. If you can't, that is understandable. But no one involved is going to be upset if you just resign. I'd offer 2 weeks, but they'll likely just counter with an immediate resignation. If anything, everyone will be at ease.
I've been a manager with HR in these kinds of conversations. At the point that we decide to put an employee on a PIP, it's because continuation of the current performance is unacceptable - not that the particular employe "must go", just the current behavior. We typically have lots of other employees performing at a higher level or with better attitudes, so it isn't just some random whim where we have it in for someone and are unwilling to allow for them to rectify the problem.
If the employee were to improve his or her performance (typically improve his or her attitude), as an employer we would be more than happy to continue that person's employment.
It's a defeatist attitude that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you've been put on a PIP, it means your employer has decided if your work doesn't get better, they're going to fire you.
Provided you haven't been phoning it in, this means you have to give an unsustainable amount in order to reach what they want from you. Seeing as how that's unsustainable, you're going to fail eventually.
These processes aren't really designed to help rectify the issue, they're designed to cover the companies arse against union action.
How is that completely out of the employee's control?
Provided you haven't been phoning it in
And maybe they have, which means they can do something about it.
Employers often ask too much of their employees. It's why unions exist.