PIPs are, Generally, Crap

In the past few months we’ve seen some back-and-forth between Quality Assurance folks under the employ of Activision, and their management. Specifically, QA is looking for some changes to the Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) process. Looking at their requests is some of the best evidence that PIPs are almost always a waste of time for all involved.

QA sent an open letter to management.
Management responded.
In this response, management recounted this request from QA, “A clear appeals process with the right to a coworker witness of the employee’s choosing, as well as a chance for the employee to present evidence that they have met job expectations.”

This is some next level leadership failure.

At this point I’ll state I don’t know any of the specifics that brought QA to send their letter. Activision has made it a corporate hobby to treat QA like garbage, so it’s not hard to make some educated guesses. Here’s what typically goes down in an underperformance scenario.

Employee legitimately fails to meet some measure of success for their role. It might be their Output (quality, quantity, timeliness) or it might be Behavior (they’re a jerk to coworkers or they sass their boss). A poorly trained manager gets fed up, asks HR for help, and the less-than-progressive-and-probably-hamstrung-by-corporate-policy HR person says, “Put ’em on a PIP.” Manager fills in the blanks in a form, describes how they’re going to micromanage the team member for 90 days, and hands that PIP to the employee. Employee fails to continually meet the standards under these conditions and is fired for cause.

Rarely…RARELY…does someone get put on a PIP, hit the targets, and regain all measure of trust with manager, HR, and coworkers, and continue a fruitful career at that same company. Even if they DO hit all the targets why would they want to continue at a place that just put them through that? So they leave voluntarily (which is frequently the unstated goal of putting them on the PIP…”problem employee” quits of their own accord and we don’t have the nasty paperwork involved in a firing).

Easily nine times out of ten, the whole thing is a waste of time. And ten times out of ten it’s a lousy employee experience.

Now, what could also happen is that the team member is doing OK but the manager doesn’t like them for some reason. Other than that one significant change to the scenario, everything else occurs the same way. HR. PIP. Failure to hit targets. Fired for cause. And reading the requests from Activision’s QA, this is what they’re most concerned about.

So the first level failure inherent in PIPs is relying on a form to do the job of a well trained, supportive manager. The next level failure evinced by Activision here is the creation of an environment in which QA has zero trust in their managers. It’s so bad, in fact, that QA is asking for:

• an appeals process to get out of being put on a PIP (because they believe they’re being unfairly targeted as underperforming)
• a witness – chosen by the employee! – to be present during the appeal (because they don’t trust their manager to be remotely objective)
• a chance to provide evidence that they’re meeting expectations (because the expectations haven’t been made clear enough and the employee’s output hasn’t been measured properly)

In one sentence, QA has outlined three major failures that are squarely on Activision leadership. Even if you’re dealing with the worst performer in the history of white collar work, none of those three things are their fault.

So what should a healthy company be doing instead?

• Train your managers to provide consistent, objective reviews of performance
• Train your managers to have frequent and regular 1:1s with their team members so they always know where they stand re: performance
• Train managers to provide coaching and mentoring to get underperformers on track
• Empower managers to stick with coaching and mentoring for a period of time and then make a clear statement to the underperformer that involves the phrase “…or you will be fired.”
• Have clearly documented expectations that managers will do all of the above
• Don’t put someone in a manager role unless they are on board with all of those expectations
• Verify in the performance assessment of the manager that they are coaching, mentoring, and handling performance well
• Have clearly documented measures of success for all team members

If your company does all of this and you have a team member who continues to underperform after several months, you should be talking about separation rather than a PIP. You were clear, you gave consistent and constant feedback. They knew where they stood the entire time. They couldn’t meet the requirements of the job. The company did all they reasonably could, and at no point in time would any rational employee have reason to ask for an appeals process with witnesses.

image courtesy of James Connolly via unsplash