At their most basic, performance improvement plans are tools, just as pliers, plungers, pumps, printers, PowerPoint presentations, and PDFs are tools.
In order to be useful and effective, all tools must be the right tools for the job and must be used properly by people who have the necessary knowledge, skills, and experience to know when and how to use them properly. Otherwise, those tools are at best useless and at worst dangerous and destructive.
Trouble is, more often than not, performance improvement plans are the wrong tools for the job, are used improperly, and the people using them aren’t trained in when and how to use them properly.
One example of how performance improvement plans are used improperly is when they’re used to reduce headcount rather than address performance problems. Performance improvement plans are used improperly in this case because organizations want a way to make reducing headcount cheaper and easier than layoffs—not to mention to shift the onus to employees.
Or, unfortunately, they can be a tool just to cover the company against wrongful termination claims and "launder" those. It's often more honest just to give the employee in question some gardening leave and relatively generous severance if you need to let them go and you don't want them to jump to a competitor, but companies don't always see it that way.
Did you get the memo about the new cover sheet for the TPS reports, Peter?
So glad I got this discussion going and will cross post this thank you. You’re a good mentor like couple I chat to here.
At their most basic, performance improvement plans are tools, just as pliers, plungers, pumps, printers, PowerPoint presentations, and PDFs are tools.
In order to be useful and effective, all tools must be the right tools for the job and must be used properly by people who have the necessary knowledge, skills, and experience to know when and how to use them properly. Otherwise, those tools are at best useless and at worst dangerous and destructive.
Trouble is, more often than not, performance improvement plans are the wrong tools for the job, are used improperly, and the people using them aren’t trained in when and how to use them properly.
One example of how performance improvement plans are used improperly is when they’re used to reduce headcount rather than address performance problems. Performance improvement plans are used improperly in this case because organizations want a way to make reducing headcount cheaper and easier than layoffs—not to mention to shift the onus to employees.
Or, unfortunately, they can be a tool just to cover the company against wrongful termination claims and "launder" those. It's often more honest just to give the employee in question some gardening leave and relatively generous severance if you need to let them go and you don't want them to jump to a competitor, but companies don't always see it that way.