Performance Improvement Plan. It's basically the company's way of saying "We want to fire you, but don't have a reason on the books, so here you go. In six months, pack your bags and go."
I respect your view and while that may be true on a lot of cases that's not what the company represents a pip to be.
A PIP is a situation where you are told you are not performing at the desired level and needs to improve. In a respectable company being on a pip can be good for you. In my personal case I was not performing well due to personal issues. Getting on a pip saved my job. It gave me the resources and attention to turn the situation around. You get a clearer plan of what you need to do and closer relationship with mentors to help you on the way.
But again if you don't improve you are fired and you have that hanging over your head.
I've put people on PIPs. I genuinely wanted them to do better. They did. Like you said, they are a tool for laser-focusing attention on specific, well-defined issues.
There is no actual ass-covering need to put someone on a PIP. If a company in the U.S. wants to fire you, they generally don't need a reason.
Individual company cultures will, of course, vary. There are a lot of shitty managers out there.
> If a company in the U.S. wants to fire you, they generally don't need a reason.
That's only true if they can prove the reason isn't one of several prohibited reasons (racism, sexism, ageism, etc.). And how do you do that? Have a PIP system in place in which the acceptable reason is documented in detail and all employees are treated consistently.
That's why PIPs are effectively termination at many companies. Even if you survive it will be permanently on your record and your opportunities for advancement will narrow significantly.
It's still a risk. An assertion of discrimination, even without evidence, is going to be a painful court case. After all, "Soandso said he didn't like X people, and then fired me" is impossible to prove or disprove, but it sure can rack up some court time and lawyer fees, with the possibility of a loss in the event of an unsympathetic jury.
But a documented process, that was followed, that set defined goals, and recorded failures, is going to be a much faster and more sure trial.
Wrong. Google “Title VII burden shifting framework.” It will cost you tens of thousands to get a frivolous case dismissed. In wage/hour cases, the burden is almost entirely shifted to the employer.
Also with respect to the attorney fee provisions, in California they are almost entirely one way in practice even the ones that are loser pays in reality.
Right, that has also been my experience (granted, in another country where a company can fire you with no reason if they pay you 3 months severance).
For me as a manager, the PIP allowed me to set up an environment where the developer would be able to perform their job in isolation with specific, measurable and concrete tasks that do not depend on any third party.
I've successfully applied this for some devs that were doing really bad for more than 6 months, and it allowed me to find that the person was in the middle of a lot of shit. Once the developer was isolated and given specific tasks, they showed why we have hired them in the first place.
I also have let go a developer for whom the performance plan was more on the people skills side: This person was just not a team player, and was dragging the team along with him. A PIP allowed us to show him exactly why he ended up not being a match for the company.
And then there was another one who was just lazy... didn't do stuff, and after the 2nd month of the PIP he acknowledged that he was just being lazy, and waited for the PIP time to expire so that we fired him (with 3 months severance).
Legally yes but large companies generally have rules in place that go beyond legal requirements. One of those rules could be “you can’t fire someone for performance reasons without putting them on a PIP first and documenting why it failed”. Middle managers have very little power in bending those rules.
It's not that they need a reason intrinsically, it's that if the person being fired is of a protected class, the company wants to protect against that person suing for discrimination. Those sort of suits are definitely filed without grounds sometimes, and it's expensive to prove it's baseless, so the PIP can be a way to establish cause.
All that said I agree they can be genuine. They also can be ass-covering.
> Individual company cultures will, of course, vary. There are a lot of shitty managers out there.
Which is why I advise anyone who asks me about PIPs who I deem is sufficiently introspective to immediately secure another job and leave if they receive one. The pure game theoretic approach for employees to use is: unless they have overwhelming historical evidence their manager is someone like you, it is safer for them to assume they are in the majority lumped in with sub-optimal management (much less leadership, both activities tough as hell to pull off well), and insta-bail as soon as they can.
The challenge with PIP's is there are no governance controls around their deployment, so they are weaponized for purposes other than their purported staff development role: as budget controls (deliberately hire some people with the intention to PIP them to maintain headcount), as knife fighting, as political machinations, as compensation-busting tool, etc.
There are legitimate employees who need a PIP for the ostensible purpose they were created for. They're more rare in my experience than how many times PIP's are actually used.
This is true as far as it goes, but exceptions to the at-will rule include Title VII claims, so if they have an illusion of a dream of a identity-based claim, you need some documentation.
Since most companies don’t want to pay even the minuscule amount required to get a valid release, this is the alternative.
The one case I have first hand knowledge of someone put on a PIP, they had done some specific things and also clearly weren't interested in their primary job any longer. I'm pretty sure they could have recovered had they found a way to jump into their current (or another) role again. They had been quite respected for a lot of things.
But it was really a time for a parting of the ways at that point.
It's all perspective, and this simplification isn't accurate.
It's "I don't want to fire you, but you need to fix these things. Let's put this in the books so there's no disagreement over whether you're aware, and what you need to do."
In most cases at-will employment means the employer/manager can fire a person, so if that was the only thing going on, it would already be done.
> In most cases at-will employment means the employer/manager can fire a person
For anyone who is a member of at least one protected class (which everyone who has any [or where this is possible, no] race, sex, ethnicity, religion, or national origin unambiguously is for each that apply, and there's some others that are less universal, and that's just under federal law) there is always a risk that that they will file a claim to have been dismissed for that reason, and under the civil preponderance of the evidence standard, if they have any substantial evidence indicating that might be the case the employer needs to overcome it with superior evidence that it is not.
And that is what a PIP is for, to provide the evidence trail supporting that alternative reason. They also serve as notice to people to get out before they are fired, which (unless bungled bad enough to support a constructive termination claim) also avoids wrongful termination liability, because the departure is voluntary. PIPs have nothing to do with performance improvement and everything to do with liability containment.
For actual performance problems that the employer wants to resolve, regular performance reviews and informal counseling that occurs before a PIP is the means to address it.
A PIP is a situation where you are told you are not performing at the desired level and needs to improve. In a respectable company being on a pip can be good for you. In my personal case I was not performing well due to personal issues. Getting on a pip saved my job. It gave me the resources and attention to turn the situation around. You get a clearer plan of what you need to do and closer relationship with mentors to help you on the way.
But again if you don't improve you are fired and you have that hanging over your head.