There is something we need to talk about when it comes to performance improvement plans. When many companies put an employee on a PIP, everyone involved already knows what it really means. HR may call it a Performance Improvement Plan, but the employee hears something very different: start updating your résumé.
You keep using that term. I do not think it means what you think it means.
A PIP should not automatically be a highway to termination. It should be what the name actually says it is: a structured plan designed to help someone improve their performance. After all, you hired them for a reason, right?
Before the PIP, Ask Three Questions
Before putting an employee on a performance improvement plan, leadership needs to do some uncomfortable evaluation of its own. There are three questions I believe every supervisor should ask:
- What part of this employee’s lack of performance is on them?
- What part of their lack of performance is on me as their supervisor?
- What part of their lack of performance is on the organization?
It is easy to focus entirely on the first question. The employee missed the goal. The employee failed to hit quota. The employee did not produce the expected results. Those things may all be true, but performance rarely exists in a vacuum.
Each of these three areas can make a legitimate contribution to poor performance. If we are going to call something a Performance Improvement Plan, we should probably understand what is actually causing the performance problem before deciding how to fix it.
What Part of the Problem Belongs to the Employee?
Sometimes the answer really is the employee. Maybe the expectations were clear, the resources were available, the coaching happened, and the opportunities were there. The employee simply did not execute. Are they making the calls? Are they asking for the business? Are they following up? Are they consistently doing the work? Are they coachable when someone points out what needs to change?
Those are legitimate performance questions. If someone understands the expectations, has the ability and resources to meet them, receives reasonable support, and still consistently chooses not to execute, a PIP may be exactly what is needed.
But even then, the goal should be improvement. A legitimate PIP should clearly define the performance gap, establish measurable expectations, provide a reasonable timeframe, and explain what support will be available. The employee should walk away knowing exactly what needs to change and what success looks like. If they cannot tell you what they need to do differently tomorrow morning, you probably have not created much of an improvement plan.
What Part of the Problem Belongs to the Supervisor?
This is where the conversation gets more difficult. Managers are often responsible for administering PIPs, but how often are they asked to evaluate their own contribution to the employee’s performance? Was the supervisor available? Were expectations clearly communicated? Was meaningful training provided? Did coaching happen before performance became a major problem?
You cannot disappear for months, provide little guidance, and then suddenly become intensely interested in someone’s performance when their numbers decline. Management is part of the performance equation. A supervisor should not be expected to do someone’s job for them, but leadership carries responsibility for creating the conditions in which employees can reasonably succeed.
Good leadership is not about lowering expectations. It is about making those expectations clear, providing appropriate support, and addressing problems early enough that employees actually have an opportunity to correct them. If the first meaningful conversation about someone’s poor performance happens when the PIP document appears, there is a good chance the process failed long before the employee signed anything.
What Part of the Problem Belongs to the Organization?
Then there is the third question, and this one may be the easiest to overlook. What changed inside the organization?
I have experienced this one personally. As a sales representative, I had organizational decisions wipe out roughly half of my existing business overnight. It happened twice. Losing half your business is difficult. Being expected to completely rebuild it in 30 days is even harder.
Organizations change territories, compensation structures, pricing, policies, products, marketing budgets, lead distribution, staffing, and sales processes all the time. Sometimes those decisions are necessary, but those decisions still have consequences. Imagine telling a business development representative that a major referral channel is no longer available and then measuring their next 30 days against the same historical target. Or cutting marketing spend and immediately questioning why the admissions pipeline slowed.
The goal may not have changed, but the environment certainly did. Performance management needs to account for that reality. Holding people accountable is necessary, but accountability without context can quickly become an excuse for ignoring larger organizational problems.
A PIP Should Diagnose Before It Punishes
The best performance improvement plans begin with diagnosis. Something is not working, so the first question should be: why?
If the problem is effort, address effort. If it is skill, provide training. If expectations are unclear, clarify them. If the manager has not been providing adequate coaching, fix that. If an organizational decision materially changed the employee’s ability to perform, acknowledge it.
Sometimes the diagnosis will still lead to the conclusion that the employee is not the right fit. That happens. A legitimate performance improvement process does not guarantee that everyone keeps their job. It means the organization makes a thoughtful attempt to understand the problem and gives the employee a reasonable opportunity to address their portion of it before deciding the outcome.
There is an important difference between those two approaches. One uses the PIP to create a path forward. The other uses it to create a paper trail backward from a decision that has already been made.
Stop Using the Same PIP for Every Situation
HR templates have their place. They provide structure, documentation, and consistency, and those things matter. But a generic PIP document cannot diagnose an individual performance problem for you.
If two employees are underperforming for completely different reasons, why would their improvement plans look exactly the same? One employee may need stronger activity expectations, while another needs additional training. Someone else may need better access to leads, clearer territory definitions, or more frequent coaching.
The document should reflect the problem you are actually trying to solve. That requires managers to think beyond the template and create expectations that correspond to the circumstances. Otherwise, the process becomes an administrative exercise rather than a legitimate attempt to improve performance.
Define What Improvement Actually Looks Like
A strong PIP should make success obvious. Instead of saying someone needs to “improve sales performance,” define the behaviors and outcomes that demonstrate improvement. What activities need to increase? What numbers need to change? What skills need development? How frequently will the manager and employee meet? What support will the organization provide, and how will progress be measured?
Most importantly, is the timeline realistic? A 30-day goal may make perfect sense for correcting daily activity. It may make very little sense when asking someone to rebuild a territory, repair major referral relationships, or recover from a substantial organizational change.
The timeframe should fit the problem. The employee should be able to look at the plan and understand what success means, how it will be measured, and what resources are available to help them get there. Otherwise, you are not creating a road to performance improvement. You are documenting a predetermined exit.
Decide What You Actually Want From the PIP
Before handing someone a performance improvement plan, ask one final question: What outcome do we actually want?
If the organization has already decided to terminate the employee and the PIP exists primarily to document the process, leadership should at least be honest internally about what is happening. But if you genuinely want the person to improve, build a process that gives them a reasonable opportunity to do exactly that.
Remember why you hired them. Remember the strengths you saw. Then determine whether those strengths can still produce results with clearer expectations, stronger coaching, appropriate resources, and accountability from both sides. Sometimes the answer will be no, and organizations have to make difficult personnel decisions.
But sometimes you may find that the person was not the only thing that needed improvement. The employee owns their part, the supervisor owns their part, and the organization owns its part. A meaningful performance improvement plan starts by being willing to examine all three.
Anything less?
Inconceivable.
Until next time, have fun storming the castle!
