How to Approach Tricky Performance Improvement Plans
Last updated: July 21, 2021
Estimated reading time: 5 min
When a staff member is struggling, awritten performance improvement plan (PIP)在明确员工必须达到的期望和如果业绩没有改善你将采取的行动方面会有很大的帮助。(But first, make sure you’ve actually been clear aboutRole Expectations—the goals, duties, and approach that you use to define success in this job—and that the staff member understands what you’ve laid out. A written PIP shouldneverbe the first way your staff member hears your concerns. In fact, it should really come after a good deal of substantive feedback, inquiry, and coaching—as the final layer of formal support.)
A standard PIP assumes you have reasonably easy-to-measure expectations, opportunities to measure them, and a solid period of time to assess the person’s performance. But what do you do when that isn’t the case?
Here are some tricky PIP scenarios our clients have encountered, and suggestions for designing a responsive performance improvement plan.
在开始之前，一定要查看现有的政策，并咨询人力资源或法律顾问。一些组织有员工手册或集体谈判协议，承诺组织遵循特定的渐进式纪律步骤。就像任何涉及到法律问题的雇佣问题一样，考虑与律师交谈。
The skills in question are core to the job butcan’t be easily tested in the trial context of a PIPbecause the work is so high-stakes.
确定一些低风险的设置来测试相关技能。
Issue:You’re managing amajor gifts directorwhose role requires high-level presentation skills and on-the-spot thinking. In presentations to major donors they need to be able to clearly make the case for the work, and answer questions comprehensively. Significant funding is on the line.
Action:Evaluate their skills through some joint presentations to major donors and 1-2 presentations to a lower-stakes audience.
Timing is a complicating factor, such as when the person is responsible for the success of work that happens in long cycles and you need to decide whether to enter a new cycle.
Identify and test for skills you think are contributing to the issue but don’t require significant time to unfold.
Issue:You are an academic dean and you are concerned that one of yourteachersis not holding students to consistently high expectations. You know that if you wait for the results of the first interim assessment to confirm your concerns, there is a risk that the students will lose valuable learning time.
Action:Evaluate and debrief their weekly lesson plans and revisit implicit bias training and role expectations. Sit in on their class several times over the course of the PIP to observe student engagement and progress toward goals.
The problem isinconsistency or recurring cycles, where someone improves for the duration of the PIP but then performance falls off again later.
Consider the totality of the person’s performance, not just the PIP period, when determining the outcome.
Issue:Yourcommunications associateis not handling the volume of mentions your issue is getting, resulting in missed opportunities to leverage attention for your cause and shape the public conversation. You put them on a four-week PIP about this issue last quarter and they met all expectations. Now—3 months later—this problem is recurring.
Action:Review your notes from check-ins, annual evaluations, and the prior PIP. If overall performance has been good, reinstate the PIP for another 2-4 weeks, or consider a verbal warning. If there are consistent or additional problems, follow through on the consequences you outlined during the last PIP.
There ismore than one issueinfluencing the staff member’s ability to meet expectations (lack of follow through from other staff, unclear decision-making processes, your availability, the need for medical or family accommodations, etc.) and those issues need to be resolved before or alongside the PIP.
Get clear on the factors and focus on what’s in their sphere of control, as you work to address other issues.
Issue:Yourbudget analystis not giving you timely, accurate, or helpful data to inform strategic, equitable budgeting. Based on conversations with the analyst and your own knowledge of the larger context, you know that it’s been very challenging to get accurate figures in a timely manner from the national team and field offices. You also see ways that your budget analyst could be more proactive in getting information along with opportunities to better organize and present the data they do have.
Action:Revisit expectations about managing up and sideways. Use the PIP period to develop sample emails and escalation steps the budget analyst should take to get the information they need, and co-create a template that demonstrates how they can share the information they do have in more helpful ways. Choose a reasonable timeframe to monitor follow through on these expectations and use weekly check-ins to make adjustments as needed.
Theproblem area isn’t in the role expectations(for instance, the person isn’t taking feedback well, is generally disorganized, or is undermining decisions after they’re made).
确定这个问题是必须的(并更新角色期望)，还是值得注意的价值观、团队规范和文化的问题。
Issue:You have acampaign directorwho is great at the core duties in their role but you’ve heard from two other directors that they responded defensively to questions during a recent meeting and have been giving unhelpfully brief updates during team report backs. You provided direct feedback and coaching when this pattern first came up, and learned that they have historically worked in organizations where they were often the sole person driving work forward. Since then, they have canceled three of your weekly check-ins, and indicated in passing that they feel they have everything under control.
Action:Acknowledge their strengths and past experience, and clarify the values, norms, and competencies you expect of all directors: openness to feedback, collaboration, and the ability to delegate well and build rapport up, down, and sideways. Develop a PIP with time for coaching on delegation, communication, and relationship-building. Provide samples of model report backs. Scheduleskip-level meetingsso you gain insight on staff experience.
Check out other scenarios in ourFrequently Asked Questions About Performance Problems, along with these resources in ourPerformance Problemsseries: