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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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Also take a look at Aaron Clarey's youtube channel
Awesome, except where do you find factory jobs out there anymore?
I hit a ten million to one lottery and got a manufacturing job two miles from home in socialist, employer hating, Maryland. I am thankful every day for this anomaly.
That is a very common way to freeze the advancement of the older employees in construction firms. I actually saw a memo circulating stating that they didn't want the older generation being promoted as they were too adversarial to new "concepts".
In other words the old hands wouldn't put up with their bull shit. They didn't want them to leave outright but stick around to "guide" the younger management team. Most ended up quiting and the clusterfuck was hilarious.
Yeah, I'm seeing it go down with one of the builders my company does work for.
Kid inherits company from dad with very little know how of what's going on. Company is actually run by two of the foremen who have between 60-70 years of experience between them.
It'll sink once these guys decide they're better off on their own, or as partners. Hopefully they'll just take their current employees with them, essentially leaving kiddo with projects to fulfil but no employees to produce those projects.
To the kid's credit I hear he's decent on the sales side (something I'm not very good at) and getting customers, of course since it's all word of mouth and reputation I wonder how long it'll last.
Dilbert is a documentary.
Wow! Thanks for that insight - had no idea this kind of stuff was going on in corporate. I'm fortunate and glad to be in the small business world. We look out for each other in this realm - it's like a family.
Indeed, I can't imagine a highly productive expert of any field being okay with participating in a PIP. What an insult to people who work hard and give a shit about their work...
I have made a career of fighting off the most ridiculous policies you could ever imagine.
The average middle manager and lower level employee really has no clue what sort of horrific, moral killing ideas get floated by senior management.
All of it is about getting more, more, more in a terminal business environment.
Matrix management.. where everyone gets a number and are interchangeable. System guaranteed to bring out the least in each employee.
" - It's like a family"
And not just in-house either. It also includes the carpenters looking out for the electricians, and the electricians looking out for the plumbers, and those plumbers looking out for the hvac guys. It all evens out in the end, and we're all in it together just trying to get the JOB done.
Corporate America has forgotten about the JOB itself. It's all about petty personal politics now, and I surmise very very few people (percentage wise) within the company do any real work which makes these corporations their actual money.
Production: What's that? Oh we need skilled and talented people who actually produce things....uh, can't we just get a diversity hire for $12/hr. and call it a day after we take lunch on the corporate account and make it a tax write off? SOMEONE will come along to take care of the actual work.
It seems that the only thing corporate America thinks it need to produce these days is "profit". You don't need to produce anything as long as you're producing a "profit". That idea works until every body else tries to do the same thing.
This article is spot on.
The reason that I work as a consultant and not an in-house full-time employee is that the meatheaded millenials feel threatened by anyone with a high skill level.
I have twenty years of marketing experience, and the twenty-somethings in the average company get scared when I show up. So, they start engaging in sabotage. I don't need that grief.
American companies punish experienced employees instead of rewarding them. This country is truly circling the bowl.
This is how Toronto Canada become from a high-tech IT engineering hub the South Asia's proxy sweat-shop hub for all the garbage IT work possible/needed to be done trough near-shoring in North America.
This is how RIM & Nortel were assassinated.
This is how/what causes locally grown, seasoned IT professionals to leave IT as field or the local IT industry and move to Silicon Valley, San Francisco etc. or Europe due to the invasion of cheap jack-off all trades IT workers imported without limits since the government removed all regulations in the spring of 2014.
http://politics.slashdot.org/story/14/12/13/2042211/canada-waives-own-ru...
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2687534/microsoft-frustrated-as-eve...
here is where basically the have/not have the job is decided at the interview end not basically based on the skills but solely on the level of enslavability - and that is the lowest price for the complete ownership of the person, it is norm to work at least 60h/week and it will be presented bluntly to you in face at the interview and also that it is expected to be totally submissive and tolerant to psychological abuse if not part of the old-boys gang.
From my recent experience in Toronto, your comment is dead on.
This article is quite correct. PIPs are used to terminate employees that are not otherwise able to be fired (high performance, solid experience, etc.). It is about perceived attitude, incl. 'flexibility' (i.e., how desperate is the employee to hang onto that paycheque) -- not work performance.
In a firm where I used to work, they got rid of an entire skilled department this way. Those whom they could fire or pressure to quit, they did -- PIP managed the very few others. (They preferred to pay out the few settlements it cost them, which came to less than all the salaries and benefits as the employees had been, as a group, generally very skilled, with decades of experience.) Within two years the department was gone.
PIP is a notorious route to get rid of a performing employee that someone in management does not like.
<<not basically based on the skills but solely on the level of enslavability - and that is the lowest price for the complete ownership of the person, it is norm to work at least 60h/week>>
The work within that department changed drastically over that time, into just what you describe. It was a very rapid transformation.
You forgot to mention "24-hour on-call availability thru cell phone", and "able to report to work on little to no notice, showing a good attitude, for no extra credit or compensation".
And yes, this all happened shortly after the founding partnership had passed the reins to the next generation.
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/lang/Thread.html#join()
PIPs are given to experienced people because we see through the BS and propaganda and identify and fix the real problems better than less experienced middle managers who often can't even see a problem, let alone fix it.
Many middle managers also tend to feel threatened by experienced people, and need to chase them off or at least neutralize them.
Experienced people are also likely to at least mildly and accidentally (though accurately) contradict typical BS executive narratives (e.g. "we are perfect").
I think it is also a way to incite fear in the rest of the sheep, while saying the opposite
I think it is also a moronic cost cutting measure.
Imagine a mediocre middle manager with 12 years of experience accusing a really smart, highly paid, effective, and popular employee with 28 years of experience of being a total F**kup and saying that he is going to fix him in 60 days!
dup
Trying to stoke a generational divide?
Stupid article. (note to self: avoid anything written by this author).
Oh, and by the way, most middle managers regardless of generation do not want the added bullshit of things like PIPs. Why? Bad policies burn bridges. Draconian and evil policies rather are handed down right from the top and forced onto middle management.
Another boomer bitching about "those darned teenaged kids, and their rock and roll!"
My gigantic corporation has an HR department full of boomers and guess what, they started the idiotic PIP program. I know people across the company from all generations. All generations have hard workers. All generations have schlubs. Get over yourself (directed at the author).
Not really the company I did worked for used this type of management to do just that get rid of the brightest employess not matter how good you were so everyone could be the same. You alway answer yes no matter how f$$$$$$ dumb the ida was.
I hope your not an editor, jo6
* you're *
retracted
One gots to watch those petards! LOL
Most people who think this sort of crap is middle management really don't have a clue what they are talking about. Hence, misguided frustration and blame.
There are shitty managers all over, of all ages. But, dehumanizing policies like PIPs and 360 reviews are "corporately" driven. The failure of middle management rather (particular younger managers) is not having a fucking clue - and going along with the stupidity. In some cases, just joining the ranks of the sociopaths.
Senior management sets the tone. Guides. This article is same sort of bullshit that has idiots believing CEOs don't have a clue what actually goes on in thier firms when the indicments come in (and proceed to find mid-level scapegoats).
Perfomance and productivity dont count when the head office can print shares like the fed. Nothing of substance matters anymore.
Numbers and skill mattered under a gold standard because you couldnt print willy nilly, thats over now you can.
Companies are no more then government shells, as long as they are liked in the kings court they get free gifts, contracts and favors. Displease the court and your on your own, forces against those that no longer need to produce to recive freebees.
This is not a economy of supply and demand, its an economy of privlage and favors granted by the royal court. Welcome to the dark ages, they missed you.
I had an H1B employee that decided to come in to work 1 day a week yet collect full time salary. Being a minority and a woman, it was a delicate HR issue. PIP at least convinced her to transfer to another division.
Even my pip-boy has now turned against me? Sad face.
Ah, +1 for the Fallout reference.
Place I used to work called it (S)pecial (H)igh (I)ntensity (T)raining.
They gave all their employees lots of SHIT.
This and more is been going on for a long time.
When American corporations began in earnest to boost earnings The easy way to do this was to offshore jobs. As an example, the last Firestone manufacturing tire plant in the US was shut down abruptly in Texas, south of San antonio one day years ago and the very next day the Firestone announced they were having the tires made in China and imported back.
Is this the proper way to increase productivity and profits? Yes, if you don't give a shit about employees and standard of living of Americans.
I really boils down to the yin-yang of morality, where a multi-national American corporation's heart is.
If we sat on the board we would have the moral choice to distribute profits to:
Board and management
Stockholders
Employees (the stupid dairy cows being milked)
Customer via reduced cost.
You determine if you work at a MNC who receives the rewards of your work?
Please consider doing NOTHING with these parasites and anything else.
Love ya like a brother!
Anybody been subjected to that 6 Sigma shit? Basically, all of this stuff is the same and amounts to management incrementally cranking up the speed on the conveyer belt from that skit where Lucy's working at the candy factory.
No one yet has asked why. Why are they doing this? It all comes down to the age old reason: money. Corporations want more money to placate shareholders. Why? Because the market is demanding more return. Why? Because the banksters are sucking everyone dry, and where before there was profit for all, now there is none because the banksters took it for themselves like greedy fucking niggers.
This problem, as all others plaguing society these days, is caused by the banksters. But because they are so well hidden in the great scheme of things, and there is so much distraction to throw people off the trail, they get away with it, time and again.
Wake the fuck up you god damn morons.
I am Chumbawamba.