The Problem with PIPs That Ain't Affiliated with Gladys

Image Description: A black and white photo of the singing group Gladys Knight and the Pips performing. Gladys is on the right side of the picture in a flowing white gown, microphone in hand. Her group members, The Pips, are hitting a dance sequence while wearing black tailored suits with white pocket squares.

There have been a lot of recent talks about performance improvement plans, their effectiveness, and whether or not they meet a legitimate need. The short answer? No. They aren't effective, and they don't meet a legitimate need. But, like most messy and workplace-related things, it's much deeper than the short answer.

Performance improvement plans (PIPs for short) are broken. We all know that. We've all known this for some time, even if we didn't want to admit it aloud. This isn't a sudden revelation. Performance improvement plans have been broken for a very long time.

Like most HR-related processes and functions, they were broken when conceived and created.

A relational performance support approach can help employees get the support they need to thrive in their job and build something more than a transactional relationship with their team members and managers. A more relational approach to discussing areas for improvement can help employees on all levels. It's the kind of modeling that can begin initiating areas of workplace culture change. PIPs, on the other hand? They don't model the need for behavior change in tangible ways or offer explicit support to employees in need. If anything, performance improvement plans are more harmful than helpful.

Real talk? Managers and supervisors only contact me about performance improvement plans when ready to fire someone. And "someone" is usually a person of color, a Global Majority employee, with intersectionality in a white supremacy workplace. White employees rarely face a performance improvement process for their actions. This is especially true for white cisgender heterosexual employees with privilege, power, and positionality.

And don't get me started on the layers and wrinkles that intersectionality brings into the white supremacist workplace culture equation.

When a manager or supervisor reaches out to me about a PIP, "corrective action" for a white employee is rarely the subject of the matter. And when it is a white employee? They've usually been so harmful to so many people for so long that we're well beyond the use of a performance improvement plan being able to change things for the better. I say all of this from experience,  after spending my entire HR career in white supremacist workplaces in a heavily white region of the United States, watching these "tools" in action. I also say this as an HR "professional" who was not the HR person I am today at the beginning of my career.

At the beginning of my career, I unwittingly wielded the concept of performance improvement plans as an oppressive weapon of white supremacy. I had decided to embrace many HR processes I had learned in college and hadn't begun questioning how imbalanced they were. I did not realize how I contributed to white supremacy by thinking of them this way.

It didn't take me long to snap out of that and return to reality.

My reality check happened while interning for a major sports team in the Pacific Northwest. I found myself, during my internship, placed on a performance improvement plan because the Director of Human Resources didn't like how I spoke about how we were treating Hispanic and Latine employees. What were the guidelines in that plan, the rules I had to follow to keep my internship? To consider how my language wasn't "professional" and to take action to rectify that.

I think most of us can read between those lines.

At that moment, if it wasn't clear to me before, I was sure that performance improvement plans were tools of the oppressor and that if I weren't aware of this, I too would be another tool of the oppressor. But while being a tool of the oppressor, I was also oppressed in multiple ways. If I didn't adhere to white supremacist workplace culture tenets, I would be PIP'd right out of a job. Since that moment, I've spent my entire career daring someone to put me on a performance improvement plan for bringing my views, my unwillingness to watch harm come to others, and my lived experiences to work ever since. No one has dared to go there.

They skipped the PIP and paid me settlements to leave instead.

Meanwhile, legitimately harmful and dangerous employees kept their jobs.

None of that has stopped me from keeping the dare front and center.

The beat goes on.

Real talk? PIPs should be the option of "corrective action" that every employer avoids the most. It should be viewed as a last-ditch effort. When you have legitimately exhausted every means of support and relationship-building with an employee, you may consider the possibility of a PIP. And that's a big “may.” What do I mean by exhausting every means?

• Do you have regular 1:1s with your employees to get a legitimate feel for how they are doing and what support they need?

• Have you built and maintained the kind of relational environment in that employees feel safer and braver?

• Can your employees and team members share their concerns without feeling like you will use their struggles or support seeking against them in performance reviews, pay increase discussions, or other employment-impacting ways?

• Hell, are you still doing "classic" performance reviews in 2022? If so, what has stopped you from doing something more relational and supportive of employee growth and development?

• Have you built relationships with your team members and employees where you can share feedback around work performance that isn't accusatory, derogatory, degrading, or demeaning? Note that I said feedback and not "constructive criticism." Those two words together cancel each other out in the workplace. Criticism is criticism, period, especially when it gets coded as "performance coaching" for Global Majority and marginalized employees. People of color and marginalized communities know this and respond in kind. I've witnessed Black women be sent to "etiquette school" as part of their PIP process, which the organization's Executive Director in question wrote up as "necessary coaching." We're not naïve to how you're wielding white supremacist ideologies.

• If you keep harmful, hateful people under your employ and suddenly want to put them on a PIP after they've done years of damage, ask yourself," Why now?" What hindered you from removing these dangerous employees years ago? Months ago? Weeks ago? If they were so dangerous that you now want them gone, what was the reasoning behind y'all giving them glowing performance reviews and pay raises over other employees?

And this is just the tip of the iceberg for embedding empathy and engagement into your workplace culture to move away from the instant PIP mindset.

Now, I know some of y'all are like, "Damnit, Pharoah. Are you talking about an entire culture shift not to have to fire people? Do you know how much work that will take?" Well, yeah. That's precisely what we're talking about. We have made empathy, understanding, and support a chore instead of a given. We've made mitigating the harm caused by toxic, hateful employees toward Black and Brown employees a chore, not a given. We've made mitigating harm caused by hostile, bigoted employees toward AAPI communities, employees from Indigenous communities, Global Majority employees, employees with disabilities, queer-identifying, gender-fluid, gender-neutral employees, and trans employees a chore instead of a given. We've opted not to check in with our employees and team members, even when their struggles are likely why their work performance might be hindered or stalled, before declaring that immediate correction is needed or they're fired. That's why PIPs exist, to allow us not to deal with the isms, phobias, or human connections that we've deemed antithetical to white supremacist workplace culture. These isms and phobias have been acceptable in workplaces for far too long, with people with power and positionality wielding them in the name of "professionalism" while hiding behind "we're a family here" anecdotes.

Do you want a more equitable, inclusive, human, and supportive workplace? It's time to center the humanity of the people who work with you.

It's time to remove the toxic people from your company.

It's time to develop relationships and systems that support employee development and growth while supporting struggling employees.

And it's time to let performance improvement plans go.