Performance improvement plans are often a precursor of dismissal but workers can make themselves harder to fire. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about large, corporate customers is that trying to get anything done with their employees between 15 December and 15 January is impossible. Nearly everyone’s on vacation. And, c’mon, let’s all agree: the ones who aren’t on vacation aren’t working very hard.
You can’t blame them. They’re getting their paychecks. They’ve earned their four weeks of time off. Most small businesses can’t do this. We have cashflow challenges. We don’t have the luxury to sit back and collect our pay. We need to get contracts signed, bills paid and products approved and that’s made infinitely more difficult when our corporate counterparts are still drinking eggnog and watching Hallmark movies instead of being at work. But if you work for a big corporation, you better be careful. And don’t say you haven’t been warned.
There’s been a significant rise in Pips, and even though it’s the “most hated” way to fire an employee it’s still the most popular one. A Pip is short for a performance improvement plan, which is nothing more than a roadmap of steps and objectives that aims to turn an underperforming employee into a better worker. According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, 43.6 workers out of every 1,000 involved were in “formal performance procedures” in 2023, up from 33.4 in 2020. That’s more than a 30% increase in just a few years.
