PIPs Are Not Coaching

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Hey, it's Mark, and welcome back to the Employee Survival Guide. Today's topic, they're not coaching you. They're documenting your exit. If you work in HR or for an employer, you might want to turn this off. I want to talk to you about the document that means the firing has already started. They call it a performance improvement plan. They will smile when they slide it across the table. They will tell you this is coaching. It's not coaching. Here's the bad news. The odds are you are going to get fired no matter how you react to the pip. I have said that this show for years, and I have not changed my mind. I have never seen in 30 years of doing this that a pip was even remotely justified. The Society for Human Resource Management, the Employers Association, not yours, will tell you that a pip is a tool to give you a chance to succeed. A PIP is a tool to put you on a rotisserie and slow cookie for sixty to ninety days until they walk you out, or you quit. You already know the feeling. Every review up to that point was meets or exceeds. You were working 110, then a new manager arrives, or you asked for a leave of absence due to a medical issue or a disability, or you complained about something, maybe a good faith complaint about whistleblowing, or you turn forty-eight years of age, and suddenly you cannot do the job you've been doing for a decade. The goals in the PIP are goals nobody in that department has ever hit. And the extra coaching meetings, well, those pull you off the work they they were already grading you on. That's not an accident. So what is the story here? Is it your age, your gender, your race, a disability, the fact that you spoke up about something? Unfortunately, it is highly likely. Yes, I am jaded. At least I know how routinely this happens to people who call our office because I've seen it for so long. It's like patterns of behavior.

How Context Makes The Difference

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Rinse repeat. Courts do not love the second guest employers. They do not want to become super HR departments. That is why a pip standing alone often survives. The pip becomes useful to you when you can show the reason behind it is false. Prior reviews that say you are fine, colleagues who missed the same numbers and did not get a pip, a retirement question two weeks before the paper appeared, a complaint you put in writing, and then the temperature changed. Get it? It's all about context. Here's

Five Moves After A PIP

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what you need to do this week. Not next month, this week. Number one, do not sign the PIP. They will tell you you were that refusing to sign is insubordination. You are getting fired anyway, so why donate your signature to that narrative? Signing looks like consent. I have watched a federal judge hold a client to a pip she never signed just because she received it. Do not make it easier for them. Number two, write the chronology. You know, that narrative I talked to you about, hire the higher from the higher date to the today's date, put the whole thing in order. You have to tell the story. Every review, every complaint, every compliment, every time they move the goalposts, put the pip or pull the pip apart line by line and answer it with facts, not feelings. Don't be the victim as I always indicate to you. Save the document on a personal drive, not the company laptop, because they're watching you if you haven't figured that out by now. Number three, look sideways. Who in your group is missing numbers and still getting the good accounts? Who is younger or quieter? Who did not complain? Favorable treatment of other people is how you show the PIP is not about a performance. Number four, put the company on notice. A short email to HR, copied to your boss, your boss's boss, you're you are being singled out. You believe the PIP is discrimination or retaliation or both. Use the words. Do not try to preserve a bridge they already burned. People, I can't tell you have asked and said that to me, I don't want to burn bridges. You got to look back past that. There's no bridge left. An internal complaint does two things. It creates a record, and it often buys you paychecks while they figure out what to do with you. Direct stall tactics are actually what employers do initiate. You need to know that. Number five, talk to an employment lawyer like myself before you improve. The point of a pip is not to win the pip. The point is leverage for a severance negotiation when they finally do what they came to do. If you have no protected hook at all, and some of you will probably not have that hook, you need to hunker down, rebut the uh the writing in any way you can and start looking for the next job the same day you got the piece of paper. I would rather use it they just fired you, or at least that's the honest thing to do, but that's not what they do. What you should not do, don't accept the story, don't apologize for 10 years of good work, don't quit and panic because quitting is cheaper for them. Unemployment and severance get harder when you leave on their script. Don't create a situation that helps them. A pip is the writing on the wall, read it, then write back.

Write Your Rebuttal And Protect Time

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One more thing, because I hear the opposite on the phone every week. People tell me that they are going to just uh get through the next sixty next sixty days and prove them wrong. I understand that's an instinctive reaction. Uh you have a mortgage, you have a reputation inside the building. Here's what the 60 days are for on their side. They're writing you up. They're collecting the emails where you sounded short because they were you were drowning in their bullshit. They are building the file that says they were fair. Every extra week you spend trying to ace a test that was designed to be failed is a week you are not looking for the next job and not building a chronology to help your employment attorney build a case for severance. If they put a deadline on the rebuttal signed by Friday, treat that as a theater, send the rebuttal anyway, send it to the HR, the boss, the boss's boss, ignore the little comment box on the reform that gives you three lines to respond. Create a Word document on a separate computer. Use as much space and paper as you need to create your side of the story, your narrative. And after the PIP landed, and if the PIP landed at after you asked for leave, after you reported harassment, after a retirement question, after you've uh filed something internally, that sequence is the case. I uh it's it's proximity of time. The the PIP is not the case. The sequence is the case, right? The sequence first, then the pip second. I hope that helps you understand the document called the PIP, how to deal with it. Thank you for letting me be of service. Have a good week.