Red Tape or Redemption

The performance improvement plan, long a staple of federal management, might be on its way out. Used primarily to give an employee a last-ditch chance to improve before being fired, the PIP has become a thorn in many managers' sides. Numerous bureaucratic requirements complicate how the plan should be structured. Backers say the PIP is one of few protections employees have against arbitrary firings or bad managers.

Opponents say it is a time-wasting step that delays the inevitable firing of a poor performer. The PIP lists performance goals for the worker and deadlines for meeting them. An employee who fails to achieve any of the goals-known in HR jargon as a "critical element"-can be fired. A manager usually writes and presents a PIP after numerous informal efforts fail to yield improvement. The supervisor identifies one or more critical elements at which the employee is failing.

Many managers don't realize that federal law does not require a performance plan before firing an employee. If the problem is unacceptable conduct (such as tardiness or abusive behavior), then a last chance to improve isn't required. If the problem is performance, then managers must give employees "an opportunity to demonstrate acceptable performance" before canning them.

To comply with that requirement, many agencies have developed the performance improvement plan. Some, through regulation or collective bargaining agreements, have strict rules for structuring PIPs. Some require managers to give employees as long as 90 days to improve. But such a lengthy requirement frustrates managers who feel they have worked with employees as much as they can by the time they reach the PIP stage.

In the private sector, a performance improvement plan essentially is the kiss of death. Smart employees start packing up their desks and launch résumé blitzes. But in the federal government, the PIP has a relatively surprising success rate. According to a 1996 Merit Systems Protection Board survey, 32 percent of federal managers said they had placed employees on performance plans. Managers said things got better for 45 percent of the workers placed on the plans. For the most recent employees placed on PIPs, the managers reported that 35 percent improved performance.

For most of those placed on PIPs, it was time to move on. But for some, the plan might have been just the wake-up call they needed to focus on performance. For others, it might have been the first time their bosses were clear about what was expected of them.

Some managers say employees improve just enough to keep their jobs but soon revert to poor performance, forcing another PIP cycle. In fact, the Defense and Homeland Security departments proposed getting rid of the PIP, or making it optional, in their planned personnel reforms.

Through years of regulation and case law, the performance improvement plan has become an unwieldy beast for managers. But for employees, it is a last shot at redemption. Cutting away the regulatory ornamentation that has come to make the PIP more of a burden than a tool would be one way to preserve that last hope. It also would give managers a less cumbersome method of telling employees to shape up or ship out.