I’ve been talking about performance management recently. This week I specifically addressed a situation that’s in the news regarding the use of PIPs (performance improvement plans). Here’s an important summary of a typical performance situation:
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.
If we’re going to talk about firing someone, let’s describe a better method than replacing humane interaction with a form and 60 days of micromanagement.
There’s a timeline that starts when someone notices a team member isn’t meeting expectations. The end of this timeline is the employee separating from the company because things didn’t turn around. There are steps that should occur along this line, but there are also choices an employee can make that drastically accelerate their voayage to losing their employment. I had a client where a community manager thought it was a good idea to yell at their boss – an executive of the company – on the show floor of an event, in front of thousands of people. That choice led to “skip all intervening steps, take your personal belongings out to your car when we get back to the office.”
Assuming nothing that drastic occurs, here’s what should happen.
The team member’s manager – either in an instance of daily coaching or in their next 1:1 – talks informally about expectations. “Hey, I noticed this thing. Please fix it.” Manager keeps an eye on it, and if it remains an issue they bring it up again. “This thing is still a problem. Do you have all the resources you need to fix it?” Basically there’s a shift occurring from less formal to more formal.
Still a problem? Manager starts to put some more clarity around a calendar. “We’ve been talking about this for a while. It can’t take forever to improve so let’s timebox what we want to see happen. By this date we need to see this happening consistently.”
If that date arrives and performance isn’t consistently acceptable, another type of conversation is needed. “This hasn’t improved and we can’t keep you at this position if you’re not meeting expectations. Let’s talk about if we can find you another position where you can be happy and deliver on your responsibilities, or if we need to help you find someplace else that’s a better fit for you.”
How long does this take?
Exactly what does the manager say?
It depends.
There’s no single plan that works for all people in all situations in all companies. The key elements are to educate the manager before they take on the role. Set out clear expectations of how they are to handle performance. Train them on difficult conversations. Maybe even have them draw up a sample scenario describing how long they might work with an underperforming team member. Before the team member lands in their role, lay out explicitly documented measures of success so they know what they need to do. Train managers to have effective 1:1s, regularly and frequently, in which performance discussions can be had long before they turn into a big deal.
Don’t talk about performance only once a year.
Don’t assume everyone knows what it takes to succeed.
Don’t let underperformance continue unaddressed, thinking you’re doing them a kindness by “letting it slide”.
Don’t pawn off the manager’s responsibilities onto HR or a PIP.
Here’s what you owe the employee: clarity. At every step along the way they should be totally clear on what’s expected of them and how their performance measures up to standards. If they’re well along the perf management path and aren’t showing enough improvement, they need to know how close they are to further action being taken. I even suggest managers be prepared to lay out a particular statement that ends with “…or you will be fired.” Don’t sugarcoat the critical nature of the situation. The team member deserves to know if their livelihood – their livelihood – is being threatened by their failure to meet expectations.
If all of this does eventually result in separation, you want to be able to say the company did everything reasonable to help things turn around. Thinking of it from the team member’s perspective, you want them to look back and say, “Yeah I was let go. But they told me what they wanted from me, they gave me resources and coaching, and I just wasn’t getting it done. I knew where I stood the whole time and they treated me fairly.”