Every employee deserves a second chance on making mistakes before directly being exiled from the organization. This ultimate opportunity comes in the form of a Performance Improvement Plan. It is a widely accepted performance management technique across the corporate sector and specifically aims at handpicking incompetent or underperforming employees. This way, the ones who require upskilling are given a chance to improve their caliber and those who are still unable to meet their targets are warned or expelled from the company in the worst case. Now, there is a gamut of reasons and a wide range of ways for issuing PIP to the manpower. Also, there are numerous queries asked by working professionals regarding the same.
Let’s have a look at a few of them:
- Why is PIP issued?
- How is PIP issued?
- Performing RCA (Root Cause Analysis)
- Defining Clear KPIs & Goals
- Deciding Time Frame
- Organizing Training
- Scheduling Frequent Reviews
Why To Issue PIP?
Not everyone you recruit is going to be a prodigy! Therefore, as an employer, you make a commitment to foster and enhance the capabilities of your human resources during their tenure. In order to facilitate this allegiance, if an employee is deviated from his path and repeatedly fails to accomplish the stipulated goals, a PIP is sent out as a corrective measure.
Let us now walk through the planning and considerations behind PIP and precisely understand how Performance Improvement Plan is issued:
How To Issue PIP?
If an employee is unable to maintain the expected level of performance during the first few months of joining, there is a great chance that his probation period would be extended. Here, a standard probation extension letter sample is designed and sent to the underachiever. And if the employee is confirmed, the PIP is sent as a warning and opportunity to overcome the issues. So, it needs to be elaborate and reasonable in both cases and there is a stepwise approach:
Perform Root Cause Analysis
As soon as you catch the performance of an employee consistently going down, investigate the reason for the same. It is crucial to first comprehend the cause of the downfall in order to plan the rest of the procedure accordingly.
Read to know how team HROne became 10X more productive from home during the nationwide lockdown: https://hrone.cloud/hrone-team-gets-10x-more-productive-from-home/
Define Clear KPIs/ Goals
After conducting RCA, reset and explain the targets and key performance indicators to the employee so that he can envision the new goals clearly. Once the expectations are set straight, it would become easier for the learner to work towards achieving the objective. Using HROne’s Performance Management Software, you can easily formulate KPIs and goals for your employees.
Decide Time Frame
Determining when to issue the performance improvement plan is as critical as finalizing how long is the total PIP span going to last. If you release it too early, the employees might be intimidated and if you get late, it might be impossible to get them back on track. Besides, there should be a predefined time slab for the underperformers to streamline their work again depending upon their level of performance.
Organize Training
This is the most important part of PIP for you as an employer. Orchestrating knowledge sharing, upskilling and counseling sessions/ events/training assists the employee on PIP to expedite the improvement course. As a result, the employee is not only retained but also becomes more proficient to successfully accomplish his targets.
Schedule Frequent Reviews
The job is not over just after giving a heads-up to the employee kept under PIP. As a final step, you need to track and evaluate the upgradation in the employee’s overall show every now and then. The report of the performance graph is matched with the assigned KPIs and it is then decided whether to retain the employee, issue another (more rigorous) PIP or terminate the employment of the employee.