How to put someone on a PIP (with a scored example)

Managers hide behind “a bit of extra support” because they are afraid of the word PIP. The employee finds the word later, in a portal, and the trust dies. Open with it. This is a performance improvement plan. It is written. It has a start and an end. It exists because the last quarter’s feedback did not change the work. Then you can be human. People can survive a hard name. They cannot survive a soft meeting that turns out to have been formal all along.

“Be more proactive” is how PIPs become folklore. “Customer updates go out the same day as the slip, for the next six weeks, and we review every Friday” is a plan. Bring the examples you have already given — if this is the first time they are hearing the gap, you are late, and you should own that. The measures should be things they can do, not personality renovations. Write what support you will give: time, pairing, a course, a lighter load for the window. A plan with no support is a countdown.

They will say this means they should start looking. Sometimes they should. Your job in the room is not to recruit them out and not to pretend nothing is wrong. “This is the formal chance. If the measures are met, the plan closes. If they are not, we will talk about what that means — I am not making that decision today.” That sentence is honest. “You are fine, this is just paperwork” is a lie. “You are done” is a decision you have not been asked to deliver. Stay in the middle you can defend.

If you invent the plan while they are crying, you will write either nothing or a novel. Three measures, a window, a review rhythm, the support you will actually give. Show it to HR before you show it to them. If you cannot get three measures, you are not ready — go back to ordinary feedback. A PIP is for a pattern you have already named. It is not a way to start being honest.

Plans without a Friday die on Monday. Put the first check-in in the calendar while you are still in the room. Send the document the same day. If they want a companion or a union rep next time, that is a process you should already know. Do not say “we will find a time.” That is how both of you pretend it was only a conversation. If they go quiet after the meeting, still send the plan. Silence is not consent and it is not a veto. The document is what you will both look at when memory starts to rewrite the hour.

A PIP is not a bucket for every irritation you have been storing. If a new issue appears, deal with it as new — or formally vary the plan. Moving the goalposts is how a real chance becomes a sham, and they will feel it immediately.

Reading the document like a prosecutor. Setting goals nobody in the role has hit. Refusing to answer what happens if they miss. Telling them it is “just a formality.” Running a PIP you have already decided they will fail. Practise the shutdown: they hear fired, they stop listening. If you can get them back to a Friday review and a named measure, you can run a plan that is actually a plan. Get advice before you start if you are unsure of the process. This page is the conversation, not the legal design.