Are Performance Improvement Plans the only option?

In a recent poll 57 per cent of respondents told us that their current top HR challenge was engaging the workforce. My first thought here was: what are these organisations doing about employee development? The two go hand in hand.

How can you ensure your top performing employees continue to grow and how can you take your worst performing employees and either help them succeed or find them an exit strategy from your organisation?

There is no one size fits all approach. Each employee is a unique individual with their own family, emotions, and values.

2022 has seen us revert to some normality in the UK - school children took SATs, GCSEs, and A-Levels; foreign holidays came back; no more imposed limits on the number of guests to weddings, funerals, or bar mitzvahs.  

One thing that hasn’t reverted to the pre-Covid norm is sitting together in the same office. – No more listening to colleagues on the phone to clients. No more shouting across the desk for someone to help. Whether we miss these aspects of working in an office environment or not, the fact is, listening and watching colleagues, and being able to discuss aspects of work in an informal atmosphere provided us with continuous development and growth at work.

Whilst there are many benefits to hybrid working or working from home, the unstructured and unplanned discussions we had in the office, provided us with a steady professional growth that we have now lost by not being sat in a room with experienced and knowledgeable colleagues.

If staff feel stagnated in their development, even the stars of your team can start to feel de-motivated and become less productive. Performance will go downhill.

Poor employee performance is not a new concept but for many organisations dealing with it in a remote setting is unfamiliar.

Where performance improvements are identified as being needed, I have seen approaches include placing the employee on a PIP (performance improvement plan), extending their probation period, and withholding bonuses or pay increases. All these approaches risk making the employee feel stigmatised and depressed. Not many people would perform their best when they feel this way. In addition, PIPs and extended probations often require increased management and HR interaction and resource. The leadership and HR teams are normally very busy, and this adds to their workloads.

Often by the time the manager has decided to put formal action in place, they have become frustrated and may have even given up on the employee. Again, these feelings are not conducive to a leader performing their best.

What about this as a concept? - “There’s no such thing as a bad employee”  What if it’s just people in the wrong fit, i.e. wrong manager/wrong team/wrong organisation? (If it’s the latter, it may be of benefit to all to help them exit.) Some people excel in one team and struggle in another.

The goal for managers in dealing with their employees’ performance (strong or poor) is employee development, but each employee is different — their development needs to be approached in different ways. Software programmes exist to help with performance management, but nothing is going to replace the benefits of face-to-face communication and context.

Whilst a PIP does provide a standardised process with timelines and targets which provides a legally justifiable way to terminate the employee’s contract, if the actual goal is employee development, then a PIP does not go far enough. True employee development requires mutual respect, active listening, relationship building – all of which requires managers to make time to coach their staff. Coaching isn’t a skill set that can be automated.

So, what can you do to help develop your employees? For me it’s a mix of

Have a system that recognises the individuality of your staff. This could be a notepad, an excel spreadsheet or appraisal software. It should include their bespoke needs such as career aspirations, strengths to develop, the types of recognition they value and what is important to them. A regular 121 discussion (no less than monthly) that is rooted in real conversation. Use coaching tools such as open questions, active listening, and mirroring body language to create an environment that allows the individual to talk openly and feel really listened to.  Make it clear that this is a non-judgemental, confidential space helping to build a partnership based on trust. Celebrate their successes in a way that links to the type of recognition they value. Mutually agree any goals or objectives together with any next actions and timescales. A typical conversation may go something like this: 5 minutes on small talk 10 minutes on current projects/ work items 10 minutes on future iterations 5 minutes on closing the discussion/1-2 action items to take away Record the key points from the discussion and make sure each has a copy

Use the discussions to get to know each other as well as moving work items forward and don’t forget that each discussion needs to reflect the individuality of the employee. If the discussions start to feel like ground hog day as you go through your team, then this should be an alarm bell. Their objectives may the same, but the discussions should be very different.

A tip I recommend is to review what you noted in your system that recognises the individuality of the staff before you start the discussion to remind yourself what their career aspirations are, what strengths they need to work on and what types of recognition they value.

If you want to know more about how coaching can improve your team performance, please get in touch. I’d love to hear from you.