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How Companies Are Using PIP To Humiliate and Get Rid of Workers
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By EconMatters
In my last two posts, I talked about why hiring now takes longer and how some companies use interview to score free consult from job applicants, today I'd like to discuss the increasing popularity of PIP. This is not your forex trading pip, PIP in the corporate lingo means Performance Improvement Plan.
What's in PIP?
Any Human Resource (HR) person would preach that PIP is a performance management tool designed to facilitate "constructive discussion" between a staff member and his or her supervisor and to "clarify the work performance to be improved". PIP typically consists of a summary of an employee's 'guilt' and a list of tasks and milestones to rectify the 'guilty behavior' requiring at least weekly check-in with HR and manager to report progress. Although a non-public process between employee, manager and HR, PIP is quite humiliating and a definite morale killer.
Read: Getting Hired Now Takes Longer
PIP or Quit?
PIP is very ineffective in actually 'improving performance'. Employees (particularly the ones that are highly skilled and experienced) on PIP most likely would quit before the completion of PIP thus defeating the entire purpose (I personally would think twice retaining somebody who's willing to go through PIP and stay). Since PIP is an official and formal HR process (i.e. included in employee record), it is typically a last resort and rarely used. In fact, most managers understand or should have the IQ to know that if you put an employee on PIP, be prepared for him or her to quit (leaving all the work to the manager or other team members, not to mention disrupting the team product delivery project plan).
New Love of PIP
Up until about five years ago, managers usually had favored the more informal approach such as a good long sit-down talk, followed up by more short discussions for feedback. Nevertheless, my observation is that in recent years, PIP seems to have become a popular tool to the new generation middle managers for the purpose of a "homogeneous team". That is, PIP has become an acceptable and common practice to get rid of the "black horse" employee that is typically high-skilled and highly productive, thus at odds with a team of mostly mediocre members (including the manager) and hard to terminate based on pure work performance.
Read: How Some Companies Are Scamming Job Applicants
Highly Subjective
The loophole is that there's not a clear definition of behavior or performance that warrants a PIP. Let me just cite one example.
Throughout the years, I have maintained a small network of friends (around 8 people in various fields including IT, Marketing, and Finance) with 10-30 years of professional experience. We all work for different companies and usually feel safe discussing things such as work projects and politics with each other. Within this small 8-person network, all of a sudden, four got put on PIP within the past 3 years (what are the odds?) for some highly subjective and vague "violation" like "unprofessional conduct". These four all have something in common:
- A newly-promoted Gen X or Y direct manager that's less experienced
- All four have the most company seniority within their respective teams outranking even their managers
- All four are highly skilled and have a proven track record of high performance and high productivity
I don't think this is a coincidence or some random occurrence. For a professional with 20 years of experience, going through PIP is like a slap on the face. Needless to say, all of them quickly got the message and landed a new job shortly after the PIP started. Of course, their managers are not all too shy about calling and asking for work-related things long after they quit.
Why New Gen Managers Love PIP
I'm not sure how corporations are training managers these days, but I find it very peculiar that any manager with half a brain could think PIP is actually an effective managerial tool and be used so often. So here is what I think happening in Corporate America (otherwise, it means companies are now run by real morons).
As we noted before, the post-boomer new generation middle managers tend to rely on tools favoring standardization in the decision-making or project delivering process. They tend to be ruthless ('relationship' means very little), and like to band together and act like a "Fraternity Group". PIP, in essence a group-decision-make tool without clear boundaries and definitions, is perfect for them to use getting rid of an otherwise hard-to-terminate high-performance employee with relatively low risk of a lawsuit (The employee on PIP is usually required to sign the PIP to show "understanding" and "commitment to the plan" thus agreeing to the 'guilt' summarized on PIP).
Start of Decay?
I think the worst part in it all is that this is taking place with blessings from the corporate higher-up. These people are brain-washed by the almost two-decade-long propaganda to give special consideration to Gen X and Y -- 'The Hope of Corporate America after Boomers'. In most corporations, the higher-up is still mostly the boomer generation with Gen X or Y kids, so letting the new generation managers do whatever including losing valuable employees is like giving their kids a break (on a psychological level).
The U.S. has long worried about China taking over America in talent, economy, military, etc. From what I've observed in Corporate America, this may not be an idle threat.
Graphic Source: http://www.polyp.org.uk/
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THis post is about demographics. In preface: I am Gen Y and I am starting out by apologizing for my own demographic. It may be safe to say that we may not be as adhesive as a marketing concept or a political generalization.
The boomers are threatened. Gen X (not all) were focused on their engineering degrees and ambitious and the rest are golddiggers- still ambitous though. Tech was built on the backs of Gen X. Gen X is progressive, experimental, inquisitive, insightful and most tolerant to non-whites (LEGAL and other citizens and coworkesr/classmates).
My own personal opinion is that Gen X is more tolerant than baby boomers.
Gen X needs to be more inclusive in their own shenanigans in order to influence and to have people vote with them since they're the smallest voting demographic.
Gen Y is a mixed bag. I belong to Gen Y. I out experimented Gen X but I'm one of the few in my demographic that will figure anything out for themselves.
Some Gen Y got PhD's in easier things- some aimed high and got what they wanted out of life- these are the guys you will love and won't have to worry about.
But the rest? Most most copied the boomers' bullshit I'm sorry to say and it may be the consequence of boomer parenting and watching too many soaps and Jerry Springer episodes.
My agegroup grew up in the dawn of neoconservatism racist nepotism, thrive on negativity uselessness and mindnumbingly incompetantly intolerant relationships, didn't get that trainwreckism is only a consequence of wanting to like your life
Carrying on as if they were still trending in MIDDLE SCHOOL, many didn't bother to pass their college exams (took mommy and daddy college grant for granted), cheat, like, get stuck on stupid drugs and tattoos- and have to scream that they're feeding their illigitmate kids in between conversations about how kewl they are because they knew another useless fuck that died of a heroine/ecstacy overdose.
And it's not limited to their personal lives.
These sheep. Yes I'm calling them sheep because the ones I dealt with couldn't figure out what they wanted to do with their own lives so they first take orders from mum and dad (or peer pressure) that they're either going to work at Taco Bell until they get a remedial cad job, stay at home parent, school teacher or join the military. THe rest just decided to trash their lives, marriages and bodies and it ain't pretty.
Me being the outcast because I'm not white, took myself to school and figured out what ***I*** wanted to do and pursued it. It was moving a long and not getting rich until the stupid economy messed everything up to hell. So when the people who bullied me, put me down found me on Facebook and saw what I had been doing for so many years while they were too lazy to get their own creds, they used nepotism to copy exactly what I did in life to a "T". With NO credentials, ONLY NEPOTISM.
Yes this is the group that produced a Manager at Deloitte and Touche with no accounting experience, but just a degree in preschool ed. EXPERTS in accounting were laid off before she was hired on, and unlike the others she at least had enough of her own game with a high end remarraige and all.
Then I turn around, and these same exact people (who already had very bad experiences with divorces...one was shot in the head by her husband before he killed himself)--- the junk doesn't stay in the office, they're screwing people left and right in their own relationships! Because when you're already entitled to alimony that they were too lazy to get and all but there's this chronic need to be accepted in middle age that took over their motor skills. And to top it off? They don't look like anyone on the cast of Melrose place, but act as if they do! Not the hipsters though, they're trying to recreate beatlemania.
But anyways.
This is about the workforce.
I apologize for those who have already put up with it.
I apologize for those who will have to put up with it.
This is my age group. It's overrun with assholes who pull shit that everyone else gets punished for and they show no remorse.
If you were interviewing someone in this agegroup for a position, and if you want a good employee- I would definately at least stick them in front of an Excel exam. Just to see if they're not stupid and if they can follow directions without having an attitude. AS managers- watch out for their arrival time that's 45 minutes past their start time, 2 hour lunches, incompetant trainers and bullshit to blame the new guy for the stuff that they were too stupid to learn (but wanted to be paid for anyways).
Saying this, I probably got one promoted by a threatened Caucasian baby boomer.
You were warned.
The Millenials are clueless, not the smartest tool in the shed. I wouldn't even go to say that they're idealistic like those before them. Again, it's just nepotism. ALL nepotism. I mean, sure Zuckerberg learned programing in the 6th grade. On Nook?
:)
It's who you know- these guys got LUCKY. Probably because they're the least threat to the boomers.
The boomers scare me.
i'll wait for Dilbert to explain it
Politics invading the workplace, of course it has invaded everything else as well. Usually I look to leave if I even get a "sit down". At that point something is seriously wrong and the writing is on the wall. If your manager has to have a "serious discussion" with you either you suck or he sucks. Time to make a change.
When was Politics not in the workplace?
Excellent article and OUTSTANDING COMMENTS from subscribers - wow!
At the plant I work at, yesterday they gave us Pizza before they close the plant for summer vacation. Later in the day they call four of our employees to a meeting. I won't say workers because at least two of them do as little work as possible. At their meeting they were told their Mentor pay was being taken away since they haven't mentored anyone in a long time. In a way I was thrilled when I heard this. Why continue to pay extra money to those who don't do the jobs their being paid to do.
What I liked most is hearing one of these freeloaders complaining out loud. Now I expect this guy will work even less. Instead of 30 minute shit breaks, he will most likely be takng longer ones. Finally their willingness to do as little work as possible has come back to bite them in the ass.
WOW, many +100's on this one
Anglo-american organizational culture has degenerated in recent decades, possibly due to a top down emphasis on short term gains. Essentially looting, going for the fast buck. Throw in the adversarial focus of the american legal system, and you've got a huge mess. Pissed-off exploited employees, idiot managers, etc.
Over in CH and DE, where the business community is dominated by smaller firms, employer-employee relationships seem more 'adult' and informal. Front-line skill-levels seem to be higher and there is less of a tendency to promote based on externals: race, gender, etc.
Every work day starts with a quick detailed meeting where EVERYTHING that is not of a personal nature is discussed in extreme detail. Firms and individuals get lasting reputations in the community and skilled employees (big generalization) can usually find another position if for some reason management has its head up its ass or is trying to ape 'american style' methods.
Some highly skilled employees get wanderlust and are usually in demand around the world for their competence. You just don't see this with americans. Really at the end of the day it is an issue of culture.
I work in IT in a fortune 500 company, we have this process, part of it is pmp, and the other is pip. pmp is a process of self evaluation, self improvement, goals etc. 6 out of 8 questions can only truthfully be filled out by a manager type, like "thinks and acts strategically", "leads and inspires others" etc. I am a deep thinking engineer, problem solver. I do my best work when I am still, and silent. Yet I have to rate myself in these categories. Raises and promotion are based on the answers. It is humiliating and makes me feel unvalued. I am also modest and honest. Having to gin up some stuff to fill in this form make me fell dirty and want to go home and take a bath.
I think a major purpose is lawsuit shield for the company. So they can't be accused of laying you off for racial, gender, sexual, medical etc.
The manager has slots on the form to fill out too if they have it in for you, they can write stuff in there not flattering and it is really hard for you to expunge that off your record.
I stay here because the company is stable financially, close to home and has insurance and flex hours so I can care for my family.
You nailed it. The purpose of HR (why managers in HR are paid 6 figures for doing, very little) is to protect the company at all costs.
Honestly, I scoff when someone acts like HR is a promotion over anything else, it's a filing and data entry position. Companies already have lawyers.
The Managers technically do all of the work protecting themselves from "threats".
I think the trick to this is to apply for a different position in the firm that is not your manager's position. I ran through jobs for a period, someone did a background check and said that "bad" opinions about me were very inconsistant. Just answering these questions is illegal in the first place.
Employees dont' need unions, we need lawyers.
My wife's company is another very large firm as well. They have similar programs. And they make all employees update thier pmp plans every few months. Really funny stuff actually (and sad at the same time). Most employees figure out really quick how to play the game.
Corporate management structure..
http://mikesblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/management-levels.jpg
They love PIP because it gives worthless HR managers a reason to collect a paycheck while producing absolutely nothing.
What?
Nobody uses the old fish in the gastank trick anymore?
Itching powder in the return airducts?
Kids today...no imagination.
Ha!
Corporate masters have us all fighting about our generations instead of realizing that by forcing out the talent, and the high paid, the company in order to remain in business is going to have to try moving the jobs to find capable workers.
Or, better yet, get tax abatements the small companies (whom have no time to implement such bullshit) don't, and import more, lower paid, H1-Bs and the like.
Happening everyday.
We divide, they conquer. Same as it ever was.
ps, back in the late 90s/early 00s when the Y2K employment went away, dotcom burst, but H1-B increases were just starting, and kept in place by "pro-business" repukes though signed by demoncrats, they did the same thing.
Ousted the older, better compensated, boomers and put late 20s/early 30s Gen X/Ys in their place. There is a huge water company (currently has a major contract with Wallys) that still employs the 40 and out. When you near your 40th birthday, the company finds a way to promote you, blame a huge problem that already existed on you, and can your ass with no buyout, no guilt and no unemployment.
Nothing new in the never-ending march to our third world status. Ooooh, lookee, my game just added new levels.
A black woman who turned Muslim or something seems to be protected from this type of remedial action. Comes in after 9 and leaves like 3 on the dot and most of the time works from home or is off, who knows...
If you complain to HR, you're likely to not be fired because her work ethic should have gotten her laid off from a recent layoff they just did. Businesses are fearful lawsuits!
It's about race. Affirmative action protects underrepresented minorities (and soon felons and convicted hard drug users) at everybody else's expense.
Always spit out the pips anyway
I don't like pips, pips, pips, in my juice, juice, juice!
http://www.oddcouple.info/sounds/pitspitspits.mp3
I was trained under a sub contractor carpet installer until I learned the trade and years later got work through other major brand named companies. Anyone remember "NEW YORK CARPET WORLD?"
For years installers relayed horror stories about them but one day I decided to try them out.
As a sub, you are required to pick up the material, deliver and install and collect the check from the customer. You submit your work report along with EXACTLY the companies alloted pay schedule allowences to the manager each week, then get paid the following week. The company typically keeps 10% out of your pay for possible "problems" with your work: retainer fee. OK. I agreed with that. Only problem was each week I would receive my paycheck and it would be $52.52 off. (((sigh)) Go see the manager...wait for the manager to get free to meet with me and go over everything until he said yes, coporate (Detroit Michigan) made an error. We will get you a refund next week. Next week came the main check would again be off by $44.28 and the MAKE UP CHECK would be off by $11.24 !!!! Happened all the time.
So one day we finished a job for this nice lady that paid the final payment of $500 in cash. The next day I called in and said I didn't want to work & I wrote to NYCW headquarters and told them I would keep this in liu of payment for the money they owed me. MAN DID THE SHIT HIT THE FAN. As a sub, they could not get me on theft, because I reported collecting the money-only on keeping their money because of an "alledged" disparity with my pay. Well the fuckers brought out the consultants that got me a better job at a nicer store for a while until I told them to go fuck themselves.
You did the right thing. The globalists want to manupulate the future world to prevent the incident you described from ever happening again. They want control over us. We can't let them get it.
NWO delende est.
A friend related to me what a co-worker of his wife did some time ago--early 2000's?--to stay on the job, and then get himself paid to leave.
Right after the co-worker, a him, hit 55, his bosses all seemed to grow dissatisfied with his work--like they were on the same script of something. Nothing had changed but the guy's age.
Seeing the writing on the wall, he prepared with research, and a lawyer search. Then they hit him, at age 57.5, with a PIP. He sprang into action. Filed an age discrimination complaint with the government--state, federal, and country--and an accompanying suit. Not that I agree with tyranny's anti-discrimination laws, but sometimes one must use what's available as a floatation device.
As things progressed, he would then file retaliation complaints, and amend his suit. Then he got a new boss, a young black woman, so he then filed a race complaint, and an additional suit. He had at one point the original complaint and suit, a race suit, and 6 retaliation complaints, all requiring months of off and on litigation--court dates, depositions, etc. Discrimination suits are very cumbersome for a firm to deal with, as they involve not just the courts, but also very slow moving bureaucratic agencies as well. Even slower if the complainant is white.
When the firm found out that some ex-employees, who had been ousted do to "performance" issues, were considering joining the guys suit, the firm bailed and paid the the guy handsomely to leave. It also turns out that he had started stealthily recording all convos with his superiors once he saw the writing on the wall. One superior was just a tad too forthcoming--As related to me, "Look man. You do great work, but you're too expensive. Let them can you, and then take a holiday for 6-months. Take the family to Disneyworld. You've got saving right..."
The moral: If one permits themselves to be ousted by management using fraudulent "performance" reasons, they will have few, if any, cards to play. If they act before hand, they will, at a minimum, be able to keep working for a few more years.
Fortunately I left the dance-for-peanuts grind years ago, so I don't have to deal with such crap.
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission..
You being of sound mind body and resources who was able to save before the incident, you were able to finance help.
The trouble with younger adults is that one, of course we're not 'encouraged' to seek help, but two- it can cost a bundle to a grunt worker. Cost of living has only gone up, I only know a few in my age group that was able to save after life expenses- and they were doing well before they got into the workforce.
But congrats to you anyways!
The reality is that most of us are "at will" employees. They can get rid of us for any reason. The only reason why they caved is money. It cost more money to defend themselves then it was worth so they settled. The company likely would have won the case if they took it all the way since most of the evidence you mention is heresay.
How could the tape recordings, which prove age discrimination, be hearsay? True, some of the other suits are he said/she said but the tape recordings had the company dead to rights.
I have heard some great stories recently of new management in the trucking industry. The newby managers keep coming up with new strategies straight out of business school - to which the old hands say "We tried that years ago, it doesn't work". When management tries it anyway, sure enough it doesn't work.
And then there was the local construction company, family run, with sons that went through business school. Daddy died, and the indulgent widow let her sons run amok. The experienced manager tried to keep the business on a proper course, but the sons knew better from their university schooling. Manager left before his ulcers got worse, and the company went into receivership about a year later.
I contracted at a major corporation. As a contractor there are limits to your involvement with the company. Crossing the line is considered "co-employment." My supervisor/manager wanted to put me on a PIP. I told her that was grounds for a co-employment lawsuit and walked out of her office. Never heard about it again.
Almost since I started my first full-time job when I was 16, over 30 years ago now, I've felt that the employer/employee relationship was a really sick one. It turns employees into infants and employers into dysfunctional parents.
The problem really is that once two people form an organization of any kind, there are from that moment on three living entities involved, with needs, priorities and an agenda. Except one of them is abstract and imaginary. It's a shared hallucination. And then everyone has to do things, or not do things, "for the good of the organization," which is an abstract entity. I don't believe in hierarchical authority systems, both in the sense that I don't think they're good for people in the long run, but also that they don't really exist outside of people's voluntary conception. You notice whenever anybody wants to help you, they take the credit themselves. When they decide not to help you, they blame "Policy," i.e., The Organization.
Add to that the fact that managing people is hard. Most people aren't very good at it. There aren't any tricks to it; it's just a lot of goddamn work. Some people are naturally better at it than others, but usually not the people you'd think and not for the reasons most people think of first. A good manager has to understand what needs to get done, how, and why it needs to be done that way. Then the good manager communicates that, verifies that it's been understood, and gets the hell out of the way while facilitating the process. It's not easy. And most people are hard to manage, even for a manager who's good at it.
That's why you have to have "PIP", and "360 Feedback," and all that other horseshit. It's all a cover to keep incompetent or at worst, ruthless psychopathic management, from being exposed. It keeps employees off-balance and demoralized, the better to surrender their autonomy and relinquish their basic rights and not insist on what is due to them. Yes, it drives off the competent, and that is also intentional. It's another tool of the extraction process. It's not meant to improve an organization or make a business work better. It's simply meant to smooth the way for the exploitation of anything of value, on the way to eventually discarding everything and anything remaining.
I left my last job 11 years ago. I've always worked for companies of 50 or fewer employees, and toward the end, I was re-organized into reporting directly to the small-company CEO. Nice guy; utter moron. Anyway, we had an initial meeting to discuss how our new arrangement would go. I told him everything was fine; I'd keep doing my thing; but that if he had a problem with me and my job performance he had to tell me on the spot. If he "saved it up" for the annual review process, I would quit on the spot. He was very taken aback that I would say that and was never comfortable with me again. It probably didn't help that he had just implemented a "360-Feedback" program, with all feedback to be anonymous, and that I had referred to it loudly as "Maoist Public Self-Criticism." And then, when I and a few of the other skilled veterans started submitting downright bizarre and sometimes disturbing anonymous "360-Feedback" about each other, sometimes written by each other; that probably spooked the guy a little bit too.
Long story short, I blew up at the guy and he either fired me or I quit. I had my own computer and cell phone, so I set up an LLC, bought some insurance, and started doing the exact same work as I had been doing, on my own. I usually don't set specific goals, because I always discover some new factor I hadn't been aware of that renders the goals irrelevant, but this time I did. I aimed to recover the income level of my job within 24 months, double it within 48 months, and pay off my house within 72 months. When I started figuring out taxes for my first full year of free-lancing, about 18 months in, I realized I'd already doubled my previous income (the 48 month goal), and I worked about a third less than I had been working as an employee. So much for goals.
I'll probably never have a job again. I know I'll never get hired by an HR process. I'm 48 years old, male, white; I dropped out of college after having dropped out of high school; I've quit every job I've ever had except maybe the most recent one, and that guy will never talk about me to anyone he doesn't know (I scared him pretty badly, I think).
The good news is, the social and economic environment that fostered the creation of the modern American finance-driven corporation and all this heinous, outrageous bullshit was a unique moment in history. The conditions had to be just so. And now, that moment is ending. If you're young, bide your time and get good at something. Soon enough, you won't have to put up with that kind of bullshit. Never take a job that requires you to put up with it. Clearly, your submission is more important than your skill. You don't want anything to do with such a situation. I know people who have taken those jobs and stuck with them. They drink themselves into quiescence, but before they do, all they can talk about is how much they hate their job, their boss, themselves. They live in fear of losing their job, their money, their meagre benefits. Then they say they could never do as I have done, and go out on my own, because the "Need the Security."
Sorry. Slavery requires the consent of the enslaved. Sure, they might kill you if you don't consent. But that's still consent, and some people do refuse it.
You did great. Starting a new business IS risky, and being that you've done this before and had cushino (maybe unemployment or savings), you had enough to get started. And you knew where to find demand.
Could you illustrate that a bit more?
You nailed the "what".
THe question that remains is the "how".
Wow, simply fabulous swmnguy.
I, too, am 48, I, too, can't go back. If the young little punks would even hire me. I don't hit all their key metrics and resume rules either, just like you I was a high school dropout then a college one too, well kind of. I also continued to take skills based courses and rose to the Director level in a company of about 140 employees at its Y2K peak.
I rode the headhunting/sales goldrush of the late 90s, then went into corporate recruiting/hr until going into sales and eventually back to my first skill, accounting and IT.
I still believe managers are promoted according to their level of incompetence.
It is only getting worse. Simple business ettiquette is long gone, standards are falling even as regulations and compliance continues on its unrelenting ascent. It is more difficult to accomplish anything thanks to the never ending academic/social experts coming up with new and better procedures, plans, tests, rules and regulations.
Thank you for insight, it is nice to know I'm not alone in my history/thoughts. I've currently worked for the one of the worst bosses ever for over 10 years. I'm also currently married to him. Steps are being currently taken to change that, I've had it.
I'd rather be put on a PIP plan than stay another ten. Peace
lol you da man: "when I and a few of the other skilled veterans started submitting downright bizarre and sometimes disturbing anonymous "360-Feedback" about each other, sometimes written by each other; that probably spooked the guy a little bit too.
This bitch started going down the day HR entered the C-level world. All on purpose.
Great post.
I always had the misfortune of having good boss, horrible boss.
First boss, the one that hired me, would be great. Perfect. Set SGDs, standards, goals and direction, and then would get out of the way and let you go get it done--saw you as a partner in him achieving his goals.
Then, almost immediately, they would leave or get promoted, so here comes the horrible boss. Not different, not less great, but horrible. Micromanaging, petty and incompetent. Was like my own personal burden.
That was the main reason I became motivated enough to start my own thing. I just could not stand it any longer.
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission..
I once had a boss so bad, that we in the office would conspire before work as to who was going to be the "bad boy." If one of the gals in the office needed to leave early that day, one of us would play the "bad boy" by asking stupid questions, doing stupid shit, and maybe coming in late. The boss was such a nut job that she would then smother the other employees with "can't do no wrong" attention. Worked every time. What a whack job.
One more: My last real employer, before some contract positions, and then my own business, once encouraged all of us folks that assumed we were not inline for a promotion to put ourselves in the running. I went along, though I knew something was up. Then they spent the entire "interview" process discussing why the interviewee was not fit for the promotion. Mean and cruel, especially for those more innocent of the ways of the world. Turns out they wanted to show upper management how motivated their employees were, and used interest in promotions (statistics) as a way to do so. Of course, they destroyed morale nuke bomb like.
Very fine post.
This man knows whereof he speaks.
PIPs are used by companies to build a case against those that they wish to divest themselves of, so if/when the ex-employee decides to sue, the company feels that it can defend itself from the lawsuit. So they're building the case against someone before that someone even decides they have one against them
Spot on Badger.
I fucking blew one manager's mind one time at Office Depot years ago when I had to take a job with them to buy some time before the position opened up with a company I really wanted to work for. He called me in to castigate me for giving TOO GOOD customer service. He complained I was taking too much time with customers. This was during the 2008 collapse and our traffic was cut by 80%. We were down to two employees, me on the floor and the copy girl, while this douche bag couldn't be bothered to get his ass out of the back office.
So, he calls me in to tell me how it should be done. I told him I don't operate like that and that we were going to alienate what was left of our customer base......much of which came in JUST to see me because I took such good care of them. So, I told him to go ahead and write me up if he wished, but I was going to continue to operate as I had. He just stared at me as the assistant manager who was there asked him what's up. And the head manager said ....."Shit.....I CAN'T write him up because he doesn't have a PIP on him yet and this request is not company policy.....just a personal request ! " So he told me to get the hell out of his office. HAHAHAHAHAHA !!! I STILL remember the look on that poor bastard's face. PRICELESS !!!
American business model .. has always had problems .. stems from the adversarial culture .. not all countries business practices have this model .. in German manufacturing for instance.. you find everyone from the investors in the company to the plant manager to the guy on teh floor prodcuing parts or whatever are on the same page .. pretty much anyway . Japense model came from W. Edwards Demmin gwho helped remake Japanese manufacturing after WWII .. his theory of continuous improvement .. and making teh worker part of the deal .. helped Japan whip our ass .. Japanese have issues.. but their idea is the qulaity of the prodcuet depends on poeple who are not always looking to make mangement look good . but on production of a quality product...
Research shows that the climate of an organization influences an individual's contribution far more than the individual himself.
https://deming.org/
W. Edwards Deming
Demings model may work for the Japs but everytime I see it utilized it turns to crap!!
The company I worked for in the 90's went full bore Deming, paradime shift and all that feedback bullshit.
The sales dept met and were told to watch the slide presentation, No. 1 on the list was to abolish Goals/Quotas!
(we were told to ignore number one, that we'd still be measured by our quotas)
bullshit
We called our team in the corporate softball league, "Deming's Lemmings". It was 1990. I would have preferred "Ducker's Fuckers".
dupl
Deming's philosophies are in agreement with human nature and therefore workable. After applying his philosophies Toyota went from a nobody to the largest & best automaker in the world in ~45 years. This is proof that his philosophies don't really work!?!?!?!?
He preached to the BIG3 unsuccessfully. Only then did he fly to Japan because it was the only place he could find an audiance. Nation-building NWO...wtf?
USA manafacturers were too busy making money when the Japs only wanted to learn how to minimize process variation. Additionally, in his book "Out of the Crisis" he specifically directs his focus on saving American manufacturing. He wrote about topics which spanned from mfg process variabiliity to macro anti-manfacturing political landscape in USA legislation. This is back in 1981! He derided USA corporate management for job hopping and focusing on quaterly returns and not on long term business health.
This is a great man.
I'm convinced that the reason why Japanese and German companies sell more exports than the U.S. due to higher quality is because both countries have the lowest CEO to average worker pay gap.
Japanese and Germans have less reason to resent management and it probably enabled proficiency in the process - so your point of "minimizing process variation" makes a lot of sense.
In the U.S., the unions got auto workers on strike and instead of working, the employees were what? Drinking and playing cards?
The American entitlement posse believes that money in buttloads should always be delivered for you at someone else's expense.
Thriving nations around the world don't carry on like that. The Board of Directors vs. Unions have a lot of issues.
I once thought Demings was cool (kept his obit on my fridge for a few years) but now I see he was just an early NWO nation-builder guy. So fuck him.
NWO delende est
PIPs are used by companies to build a case against those that they wish to divest themselves of, so if/when the ex-employee decides to sue, the company feels that it can defend itself from the lawsuit. So they're building the case against someone before that someone even decides they have one against them. Work for a company that only employs PIPs for the worst workers, the ones who deserve to be fired, but cannot simply be "fired" without the risk of being sued.
+1.
PIP is also used to move to outsourcing workers. Its a way to avoid potential class-action lawsuits from groups of terminated employees. Companies are using PIP with productive employees since they can simply replace them with four or five outsourced workers and still save a boat load of money. At least for a while. The issue is that since the outsourcing workers are paid so little, they rarely stick around for more than year. All of the knowledge gained is lost from high turnover which causes productivity losses.
Of course as more an more american workers are outsourced, fewer americans can afford goods and services provided. Thus its just a long term failure.
If you want to read more about a Machiavellian style of management, read 'Jack: Straight From the Gut' re. Jack Welch. His method of ranking employees and forcing people out was astonishing.
Welch is a rank and yank NWO monkey. Enron took it to the (warning: mba speak incoming) next level.
http://gladwell.com/the-talent-myth/
The answer is that you end up doing performance evaluations that aren’t based on performance. Among the many glowing books about Enron written before its fall was the best-seller “Leading the Revolution,” by the management consultant Gary Hamel, which tells the story of Lou Pai, who launched Enron’s power-trading business. Pai’s group began with a disaster: it lost tens of millions of dollars trying to sell electricity to residential consumers in newly deregulated markets. The problem, Hamel explains, is that the markets weren’t truly deregulated: “The states that were opening their markets to competition were still setting rules designed to give their traditional utilities big advantages.” It doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that Pai ought to have looked into those rules more carefully before risking millions of dollars. He was promptly given the chance to build the commercial electricity-outsourcing business, where he ran up several more years of heavy losses before cashing out of Enron last year with two hundred and seventy million dollars. Because Pai had “talent,” he was given new opportunities, and when he failed at those new opportunities he was given still more opportunities . . . because he had “talent.” “At Enron, failure–even of the type that ends up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal–doesn’t necessarily sink a career,” Hamel writes, as if that were a good thing. Presumably, companies that want to encourage risk-taking must be willing to tolerate mistakes. Yet if talent is defined as something separate from an employee’s actual performance, what use is it, exactly?
Yeah, I used to work for a beatch that anytime money was needed to pay for some pet project she would start the whole ranking program back up and those ranked poorly were basically on notice to GTFO of there. Usually that freed up enough cash, but for the clueless ones it often took a pink slip.
Made her look really good to upper management and likely earned her all sorts of bonuses.
Then she did start with the 'get rid of older high paid employees' and hire consultants to do the work. LOL, that worked out well. All the valuable employees GTFO of there and it worked so well she got herself 'promoted' out of that position.
Asshole.....she could have been a bankster that one.
I was PIPPED once for not writing up a fuckup employee the boss wanted fired. I thought the guy was salvageable. After I found out how the bullshit really worked I bought rental properties and took a basic manufacturing job for extra money and healthcare. Life is better outside of credit card banking. The only thing I worry about today is how to run my machines efficiently.
YOUR TO DO LIST:
START A BUSINESS
READ " ENJOY THE DECLINE" BY AARON CLAREY
STOCK FOOD AND USABLE GOODS, FORGET PM
BUCKLE UP M F ER
Of course, when TSHTF, not too many people will be able to afford the rent, right? Housing and rent prices will collapse. It's a good plan as long as the system stays intact and people stay employed.
Precisely.
Hard, productive assets.
Not shiny metal.
Righteous post...
m
How can anything be "productive" in an environment drained of all savings? Without savings, there is NO sustainable demand, let alone growth.
Which is why Capex is dead for now, being replaced by leveraged-debt stock buy-backs based on the credit worthiness of said formerly productive company.
All in all, it's nothing but the financial parasites picking the corporate carcass clean.