In the past several years - meaning this is not a new development - all the people I know who were put on PIP were among the best and hardest workers. Every single one of them. I've worked with a lot of lazy as-----s who barely do anything all day and somehow they were never affected. So how can the management still be saying that this is only affecting low performers when that's a blatant lie?
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Bottom 10 percent have always been a focus...especially less than 10 years service. Even bottom 5% has been forced out, but usually...the zero pay raises for multiple years gets people to look elsewhere. XOM should continuously PIP bottom 5% AND no pay raises or promotions for bottom 5 % and eventually they just quit.
Years ago, most of the people pip’d were aware that they were not doing as well as expected. It was no surprise. I wouldn’t say most of them deserved it, but they were usually unhappy and treated like they dud the belong (right or wrong).
Now, there is no warning. I knew if people who only got praised until they had their review. All of a sudden, they were a “poor performer”. In 2020, it was a layoff pathetically & thinly disguised as a “performance review”. The majority of those folks didn’t deserve their PIP. The supervisors were told to get rid of a certain number of people REGARDLESS of their performance.
Both of the people that I knew who were PIP’d in 2020 deserved it. Neither would work consistently. If they were “on”, they were great. But, you could never reliably get them to do the work needed by the time that it needed to be done.
I know of one that deserved it, but also several others who were far from deserving it.
Zero
I don’t agree with “behavior” as a criteria for ranking. It’s all very subjective. For example, courage of conviction. For certain demographics, gender, etc. having the courage to speak up against bad ideas can be viewed as angry, argumentative, not a team player. There are supervisors who think that their direct report is to agree with whatever d-mb idea they come up with.
It was a layyyyoffff. Nothing more nothing less.
I know of one who was piped twice and survived both. He really deserved it though because of the attitude. Others who were piped did not deserve it as there were lower performers in the group. The low performers were liked and protected. Remember it is more about likability instead of actual work, productivity or performance. Protected People can work from home or come in and leave when they want and don' t have to work a full 8 hour day. They are the unpipable. Lots of people retired left today May 31st because of the interest rate.
Believe it or not, your behaviors and attitude are in fact skills that affect your relative performance as much as your technical ability. And they should be.
A fine summary and encouragement from @abc+1h07446k below.
Also an excellent example.
Quite often the most qualified in intelligence and skill are least likely to giddily participate in the ignorant unskilled culture surrounding them.
And that's a pippable offense in this company.
literally all of them
I know of a handful that deserved it, but it was a failure of the corporation and their supervisors for it to be a surprise. If someone is a relatively poor performer, it shouldn't come as a surprise. It should be part of a routine discussion with their boss and not a decision based on a committee from 2 minutes of 1 day out of the year. Most of the PIPs I know did not deserve an ultimatum, and most HiPos don't deserve to be thought of as highly as they are.
- Any corporation that focuses on a choice between 3 months severance and working 3 months on an improvement plan with the hope that you have a job afterward is immoral. A reasonable and honest company would have an improvement plan that worked to help employees improve without immediate considerations of "how will I feed my family?" They intentionally try to get employees to immediately sign, and it's impossible to work every waking hour over 3 months while also fully and competently implementing a job hunt. The discussions with management are not recorded, observed, and they are done without offering the employees the benefit of bringing legal counsel with them. Most people want to do a good job, and if you offer them real and concrete methods to do so will. The fact is only a small number of people actually receive counseling from their manager and supervisor about performance. Who they compete with is hidden from view, and consequently so are the accoplishments that are being compared to their own. I gladly left with Exxon highly rated a sociopathic coworker. I laughed on my way out because their system is so flawed that all the problems this person enjoyed causing would continue while a steady worker who caused no problems was offered PIP or leave with 3 months pay. In the first 2 weeks, I took my first real vacation. I could use a laptop to job hunt anywhere. I recovered myself and believed in myself because I was no longer subject to sociopathic criticism. I edited my resume which had years of valid accomplishments that Exxon should have valued beyond only this last year. Any company that throws away employees rather than developing them is suspect. Move on. The water is fine out here.
Very few. I was actually shocked when I found out.
They were the least liked definitely. However their technical ability was better than the low quality contractors we have in our office team now. The contractors are probably more expensive too.
In my experience, most of the recent pips I know about were the ones management liked the least for whatever reason (sometimes just because they were on neutral footing and the rest of the team was on positive terms). Maybe only loosely tied to actual work. I haven't seen legitimate technical rock stars get pip, but folks in the middle of the pack? Sure.
I also suspect lately some in middle management may try to target people they think are less likely to try to jump since they don't actually want the attrition, but maybe I'm just reading into things.
A corporation that must PIP 8% a year for three years in row needs to seriously look at our hiring practices. Hard to believe that we can hire so many incompetent people.
The PIP strategy is to reduce our regular employee head count from 75,000 employees in 2019 to ~50,000-53,000 employees in 2023.
Prior to 2016 PIP was used to unload the <10 year crowd but mostly the less than 5 crowd because they over hired. In 2016 they started PIPing the RE and the result was so great that they expanded it and it morphed into the mess today. Just realize you work for spineless a**holes and you will be fine.
PIP is just a lower risk way to dump employees. It has nothing to do with performance. If you are on a PIP start looking for a new job asap.