You are about to put someone on a Performance Improvement Plan, or you have been told you should, and you are not sure if you actually want to. The conversation feels heavy. The paperwork feels final. The HR-supplied template reads like it was written by a lawyer (because it was). And underneath all of that, the question you cannot quite say out loud is the one that matters most: are we trying to help this person succeed, or are we already managing them out and using a process to make it look fair?
Both of those are sometimes the right answer. The problem is that most first-time managers do not know which one they are doing, and the PIP form does not force them to find out. So the document gets written, the meeting happens, the 30 or 60 or 90 days run, and the outcome is whatever the manager already secretly thought it would be on the day they opened the template. The employee senses this. The team senses this. And the next time you have to do this, you trust the process less, because the process did not actually decide anything.
This article is one cluster under the Performance Management hub. The full operating model for the review cycle and the systems around it lives in the complete guide to performance reviews for first-time managers, which is the right place to start if your underperformance issue is downstream of unclear goals or missing feedback. This article is for the moment after that, when the goals were clear, the feedback was given, and the work is still not where it needs to be. The decision in front of you now is a different one, and it deserves its own framework.
If you want a fast read on which direction your situation actually points, the should I put this employee on a PIP free assessment takes about three minutes and gives you a structured answer (PIP, coaching, or managed exit) based on the same framework that the rest of this article walks through. Take it before or after reading. The framework lands harder when you have already tried to apply it to your real situation.
Why most PIPs fail, and what the working ones do differently
The honest data on PIPs is uncomfortable. SHRM’s Performance Management research has consistently shown that the majority of formal Performance Improvement Plans end in termination rather than recovery, and the most cited internal range across large employers is somewhere between 60 and 80 percent ending in exit. That number is not a sign that PIPs are broken. It is a sign that by the time most managers get around to opening the template, the decision has already been made in their head, and the PIP is the legal-friendly way of executing it.
That is one of the two failure modes. The other is the inverse: the PIP that gets opened too early, on someone the manager has never really coached, with vague criteria the employee cannot hit even if they tried, because the manager themselves does not know what “back on track” looks like. That version produces resentment without recovery, the employee leaves on their own (often the strongest performer of the underperformers), and the manager learns nothing.
The working PIPs are the small middle. They do three things differently, in this order:
- The decision is made before the form is opened. The manager has already worked through whether this person is coachable, whether they have given the employee real feedback (not friendly hints), and whether the role itself is the wrong fit. The PIP is not the diagnostic tool. It is the formal version of a decision the manager has already made with their eyes open.
- The criteria are concrete and observable, and the employee could pass them. “Improve communication” is not a criterion. “Send a written status update by Wednesday end of day each week, covering the four items we agreed on” is. The bar must be specific, and it must be a bar the employee can actually clear with the support being offered.
- The support is real, not symbolic. A PIP without a weekly 1-on-1, mid-cycle written feedback, and a clear escalation path is a countdown. A PIP with all three is an actual chance.
The Harvard Business Review piece by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall titled “The Performance Management Revolution” (April 2015) made the broader argument: most of what companies call performance management is annual ritual that produces little behavior change and a lot of paperwork. The PIP is the most extreme version of that ritual when run badly, and the most useful version of it when run well. The difference is the manager’s clarity going in, not the document.
The decision framework below is the work you should do before you ever open the PIP template. If you do this work honestly, the document writes itself, and the conversation lands a different way.
The four questions to answer before you open the PIP template
A PIP is the wrong tool until you can answer four questions clearly. Most first-time managers who get the PIP wrong skipped at least two of these. The order matters: each question is upstream of the next.
Question 1: Have I actually told this person their work is not meeting the bar?
Most “underperformance” cases that hit the PIP stage have one thing in common. The manager has been frustrated for months, has dropped hints, has felt the gap between what is needed and what is happening, and has not, at any specific moment, sat down with the employee and said directly: “Your work is not meeting the bar I need it to meet, and here is what I need to see change.”
Hints are not feedback. Asking leading questions is not feedback. A passive “let me know if you need help with the X project” is not feedback. The version that counts is direct, specific, and dated. If you cannot point to a 1-on-1 or a written message where you used the words “this is not where it needs to be” or something equally clear, then the answer to Question 1 is no, and you are not ready to consider a PIP. You are ready to have the hard conversation about work not being good enough first, give it 30 to 60 days, and reassess. The constructive feedback examples library shows the exact form direct-specific-dated feedback takes across fifteen situations — the gap between a hint and feedback is usually three sentences and a date.
This is the single most common mistake first-time managers make. They escalate to formal documentation as the first real signal, when from the employee’s point of view it feels like an ambush. The legal documentation works against you here too: a PIP that follows no documented coaching is much weaker than one that follows two months of recorded direct feedback.
Question 2: Is this a skill problem, a will problem, or a fit problem?
This is the diagnosis question. The three answers point to three different responses.
Skill problem. The person wants to do the work, is trying, and does not yet have the capability. New to the role, new to the level, missing a specific technical or interpersonal skill. The right response is coaching plus structured skill development, often over 60 to 90 days, with concrete milestones. This may or may not need to be a formal PIP. Often a coaching plan with the same rigor and a clear bar is the better tool, because the formal PIP language reads as punitive when the issue is genuinely developmental.
Will problem. The person can do the work and is choosing not to. They are checked out, distracted, in conflict with you, dealing with something outside work, or they have decided this is not where they want to be and are running out the clock. The right response depends on what is underneath. Sometimes it is a candid conversation that surfaces what is actually going on (often something you did not know). Sometimes it is a PIP. Sometimes it is a managed exit. Skipping the conversation and going straight to the PIP almost always produces resentment without resolution.
Fit problem. The person is capable, motivated, and in the wrong role. The work has shifted, the team has shifted, or the role was a stretch from the start that did not pan out. The right response is rarely a PIP. It is almost always either a role change (internal transfer if available) or a managed exit done with care, where the person leaves with dignity, often with a runway, and often returns to a strong performer reputation in their next role. Putting a fit problem on a PIP is a way to use process to avoid the harder conversation.
If you cannot tell which of these three you are dealing with, you are not ready to write a PIP. Take the three-minute PIP assessment quiz for a structured pass at this question, and then sit with the answer for a week before doing anything formal.
Question 3: If they hit every metric on the PIP, will I be glad they are still on the team?
This is the question almost no manager asks themselves. They open the PIP template, write the criteria, and never check whether passing the PIP would actually change their internal verdict.
The version of you that should be writing a PIP is the version that genuinely wants this person to succeed. If you imagine, at the end of 60 days, an employee who hit every milestone you defined, and your gut response is some flavor of “yeah, but I still do not want them on the team,” then you are not really PIPing them. You are documenting a termination. The kind, slower, more honest version of that is to skip the PIP and have the managed exit conversation directly.
You owe the employee an answer to this question before you start. If the answer is yes, you would be glad they passed, then a real PIP is on the table. If the answer is no, then save everyone the months and have a different conversation. If your gut is leaning toward “I want them off the team,” the Should I Fire This Employee? assessment is the next step. It walks through 15 scenarios across performance, behavior, and process to test whether the situation actually warrants termination, or whether something else (coaching, role change, candid feedback you have not yet given) is the real next move. It is the same logic as the PIP decision but framed for the harder call.
Question 4: Can I describe what “back on track” looks like in three concrete sentences?
The fourth question is the operational one. If the answer to the first three has been “yes” or has been clarified, you should be able to describe success on the PIP in three concrete sentences. Not categories. Not rubrics. Three sentences a non-manager could read and tell you whether the person had passed.
Examples of what works:
By the end of 60 days, this person will have led the customer onboarding process end-to-end for two clients without escalation. Their written status updates will hit every Wednesday before 5pm and cover the four items we agreed on. They will have run a clean quarterly business review with their two largest accounts.
Examples of what fails (and what most PIPs actually contain):
By the end of 60 days, this person will have demonstrated improvement in communication, taken greater ownership of customer relationships, and shown a positive attitude in team interactions.
If your version of the criteria reads more like the second one, the PIP is not ready to be written. The employee will not know what to do, you will not know how to grade it, and the eventual termination will rest on subjective judgment that legal will be uncomfortable with anyway. Get specific or do not start.
If you have answered all four questions clearly, and a real PIP is the right tool, the rest of this article is the operational guide. If you got stuck on any of them, the answer is to do that work first.
The three outcomes a real PIP should produce
A well-written PIP has exactly three possible outcomes, and the manager going in should be genuinely open to all three. If you are only open to one, the document is not really a PIP.
Outcome 1: The employee passes, and stays. The bar was real, the support was real, and the person rose to it. This happens. Not in the majority of cases (the SHRM data is honest about that), but often enough that PIPs are not pure theater. When it happens, you owe the employee a specific acknowledgment, a clean transition out of the formal process, and a credible commitment that this is over. Continuing to manage them as if they were still on probation after they passed is the fastest way to lose the trust you just rebuilt.
Outcome 2: The employee does not pass, and exits with the company’s process. The bar was missed. The conversations along the way did not change the trajectory. Termination follows. This is the outcome most PIPs end in, and the manager’s job here is to make sure it lands as humanely as possible. The person should not be surprised on the last day. Mid-cycle written feedback is what prevents the surprise.
Outcome 3: The employee chooses to leave during the process. Often the strongest path for everyone. The employee, given clear feedback and a real bar, decides this is not the right fit and exits on their terms. Usually with a runway. Usually to a job that suits them better. The manager’s job is to leave space for this to happen with dignity, not to pretend it is not on the table.
Notice what is not on the list: outcomes like “the team gets the message,” “the employee learns a lesson,” or “the bar is reset.” Those are not goals of a PIP. They are sometimes byproducts of a well-run one, but if they are your actual goal, you have written something other than a PIP, and you should be honest with yourself about it.
When a PIP is the wrong tool
There are four scenarios where the PIP is structurally the wrong response, and a different tool will work better. New managers often default to the PIP because it is the most formal option available. Formality is not always rigor.
Scenario 1: A first-time issue that has never been raised before. The first conversation about a performance gap should never be the PIP. It should be the direct, specific feedback, recorded, with a clear ask and a 30 to 60 day window. If the employee responds, the PIP was never needed. If they do not, the PIP that follows has actual standing.
Scenario 2: A skill gap on someone who is genuinely trying. The right tool is a coaching plan with the same milestones and rigor as a PIP, but without the formal punitive frame. See the next cluster article on coaching an underperforming employee back to meets expectations for the four-step framework. The difference between coaching and a PIP is mostly the legal and administrative envelope. The substance can be similar. But the framing changes how the employee shows up.
Scenario 3: A fit problem where the role itself has shifted. If the work has materially changed since the person was hired or last leveled, the issue is not their performance against the original bar; it is the bar moving. The right move is either a role redesign, an internal transfer, or a managed exit. Not a PIP.
Scenario 4: A situation where you, the manager, are part of the problem. Underperformance is sometimes a downstream symptom of bad goal-setting, missing feedback, unclear scope, or interpersonal friction with the manager. If you cannot honestly say you have done your job well over the last six months on this person, the PIP will read as scapegoating, both to the employee and (eventually) to your own boss. Fix your half first, then reassess.
When a PIP is the right tool
Symmetrically, there is a smaller set of cases where the PIP is genuinely the right next step, and you should not flinch from it.
The pattern: the employee has had clear, direct, dated feedback over at least 60 days. The work has not improved. You have answered Question 3 honestly and you would genuinely be glad if they passed. The criteria for passing are concrete enough to be unambiguous. The role is not structurally misfit. And the support being offered (weekly 1-on-1, mid-cycle written check-in, escalation path to HR if needed) is real.
When all of those hold, the PIP is the right tool, and using it is more humane than the alternative, which is letting the situation drag on for another six months while everyone pretends it will resolve on its own. The employee has the right to a clear bar and a clear chance. The team has the right to a manager who handles performance issues directly. The PIP, run well, is how those rights get honored.
The conversation that opens a PIP done well does not feel like an ambush. It feels like the formal version of conversations the employee has already been having. That is the test of whether the work upstream of the PIP was done.
The legal and documentation reality you cannot skip
Without venturing into legal advice (every jurisdiction differs and you should check with your HR and legal partners), there are a few documentation principles that hold across most US employment contexts and that are aligned with the kind of guidance the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission publishes for employers around documentation of performance issues.
- Document the gap before the PIP, not just during it. If the first written record of an issue is the PIP itself, the document is structurally weak. Notes from prior 1-on-1s, written feedback in performance reviews, and dated emails or messages that name the issue are what give the PIP standing.
- Keep the criteria objective and behavioral. Avoid characterological language (“attitude,” “professionalism,” “fit”) unless tied to specific behaviors. “Did not respond to three customer escalations within 24 hours over the cycle” is a behavior. “Has a bad attitude” is not.
- Treat protected categories as third rails. Anything that could read as performance feedback shaped by age, gender, race, disability, parental status, or other protected categories is a problem regardless of what you actually meant. If you are unsure, get HR or legal eyes on the document before sending it.
- Save the messages. If your weekly 1-on-1s happen in Slack or Teams, screenshot or export the relevant threads at the time, not three months later when memory is suspect.
This is not the most enjoyable part of the job. It is the part that protects you and the company from the worst version of how this can go, and it is also the part that, if the person passes the PIP, gives you a clean baseline to move forward from.
If you want a sense of the organizational cost of the process before you start (manager time, HR time, productivity loss, replacement cost weighted by the realistic outcome rate), the PIP process cost calculator gives you a number in five minutes. The number is usually higher than managers expect, which is part of why the framework above matters: PIPs are expensive to run, and running one on the wrong situation is expensive in two directions.
A working PIP template
This is a scaffold, not a legal document. Run your final version past HR. The point of the scaffold is to force the specifics that keep the document honest.
Performance Improvement Plan
Employee: [Name] Manager: [Name] Plan period: [Start date] to [End date]. Typically 60 days. Some situations warrant 30 (clear, narrow gap) or 90 (broader skill development). Mid-cycle review date: [Date, roughly halfway]
1. The performance gap, specifically
Describe the gap in two to four sentences. Behavior, not character. What is happening (or not happening), how often, with what consequence. Reference the prior conversations and feedback that established this is not a new signal.
Example: “Customer onboarding is currently being escalated to me roughly twice per week, with three of the last six new accounts requiring my direct intervention to recover. We discussed this on [dates] in our 1-on-1. The expectation for this role is that customer onboarding through the standard path is owned end-to-end by you, with manager involvement only by exception.”
2. What success looks like, by the end of the plan
Three to five concrete, observable criteria. The employee must be able to read these and know whether they are passing. The manager must be able to read these and grade without ambiguity.
Example:
- Lead at least four standard customer onboardings end-to-end with no manager escalation during the plan period.
- Send the weekly status update every Wednesday before 5pm covering the four standard items: pipeline, escalations, blockers, asks.
- Run two of your largest three account QBRs without manager support, with positive client feedback documented.
- Be present and contributing in the 1:1 each week with a written agenda you bring.
3. The support and resources being provided
Specific, real, named.
Example:
- Weekly 1-on-1 (60 minutes) every [day] with the manager, focused on the plan.
- Mid-cycle written feedback memo at [date] from the manager, summarizing what has and has not improved.
- Pair onboarding sessions with [colleague] on the next two new accounts, observing for the first and co-leading the second.
- HR partner contact for confidential support: [Name].
4. Consequences
One sentence. Honest.
Example: “If the criteria above are not met by [end date], the next step is termination of employment.”
5. Acknowledgement
Signature line for the employee. Signing acknowledges receipt and understanding, not agreement. Make this distinction explicit if asked.
That structure, completed honestly, is the PIP that actually works. The temptation will be to soften the consequences section, hedge the criteria, or pad the support list. Resist all three. A vague PIP fails everyone.
The conversation that opens the PIP
The meeting where you hand the document over is the one most managers dread. Done well, it takes 30 minutes and lands without surprise. Done badly, it takes 90 minutes and feels like a fight.
The version that works has four parts.
Part 1: Name what this is, in the first sentence. “I want to talk about your performance, and I have a formal Performance Improvement Plan I am putting in place. The conversation we are about to have is the start of that plan.” Burying the headline makes the rest of the meeting unbearable. Lead with it.
Part 2: Walk through the gap, the criteria, the support, and the consequences, in order. No more than 15 minutes. The document does most of the work. Read the relevant sections, pause for questions on each.
Part 3: Make space for their reaction. Do not rush this. The employee may be quiet, defensive, upset, in agreement, or somewhere in between. Listen more than you talk. If they raise context you did not have, write it down. Do not commit to changing the plan in the room; tell them you will think about it and follow up within a few days.
Part 4: Set the cadence. Confirm the weekly 1-on-1, the mid-cycle review date, and the next concrete step. End on the operational, not on the emotional. The emotional weight of the meeting will land in the days that follow either way.
If you have access to the difficult conversations scripts pack, the PIP-opening script in there is built around this structure with full sample dialogue. The toolkit is paid; the structure above is the free version of it.
After the PIP, regardless of outcome
What you do after the plan ends matters more than most managers realize, because it shapes how your team interprets the whole process going forward.
If the employee passes: Hold a short, formal closeout meeting. Acknowledge the work specifically. End the formal weekly 1-on-1 cadence and reset to your normal pattern. Do not keep them on probation in your head while pretending they are off it. The team will read your behavior more than your words. If you keep treating someone as on-the-edge after they passed, the PIP retroactively becomes a sham, and your next one will land worse.
If the employee exits: Make the exit as clean as the company’s process allows. A specific severance, a clear last day, an honest reference policy, a graceful internal communication. Do not bad-mouth them on the way out. Most of the people watching are wondering how you would handle their exit, not just this one.
If the employee leaves on their own during the plan: Often the best outcome for everyone, particularly if they leave with grace and a runway. Do not punish them for it by withholding final pay or being sour in the reference. The professional reputation they take into their next role matters and you may run into them again in your career.
In all three cases, do a quiet retrospective with yourself. What did you learn about how you let things get to this point. What earlier signals did you miss. What would you do differently next time. Most managers run a PIP once and then never reflect on it. The reflective ones get better at the upstream work, and rarely have to run another one.
The biggest mistake first-time managers make with PIPs
There are several common mistakes (skipping documentation, writing vague criteria, opening the meeting with small talk), but the biggest one is structural and almost never named.
It is the manager who treats the PIP as a verdict already cast, and then performs the process to make the verdict legitimate.
The employee feels this immediately, even if the manager has convinced themselves it is genuine. The team feels it. Eventually HR feels it, because the documentation reads as airtight in form and theatrical in substance. And the manager learns nothing from the experience, because the experience confirmed a decision they already made instead of testing one.
The way to avoid this is the work in Question 3 of the framework. Before you open the template, sit with the question: if this person hits every milestone, will I be glad they are still on the team? If the answer is no, do not run a PIP. Have a different conversation. The outcome will be more humane, faster, and cleaner. And the next time you do open a PIP template, you will be opening it for the right reason.
That is the whole point of the framework. Not to make PIPs more popular. To make sure that when you reach for the tool, it is the right tool, and that you would be willing to be the employee on the other side of it.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a PIP run?
The standard answer is 30, 60, or 90 days, and the right one depends on the gap. Use 30 for narrow, specific behavioral changes that should show up quickly. Use 60 for most performance issues; this is the default. Use 90 only when the gap involves genuine skill development that needs time to compound, and only if you have the patience to truly support that development for the full 90 days. Avoid going under 30 or over 90; both signal that the situation was not really about performance.
Should I tell my team that someone is on a PIP?
No. The employee’s PIP is confidential. Telling the team turns the process into theater and exposes the company to legal risk. If team members ask oblique questions, do not lie, but do not confirm either: “I am working closely with [name] on some specific work right now, and I cannot get into details.” That holds.
What if the employee asks “is this a PIP?” before I am ready to discuss it?
Do not deny it if you are actively preparing one. Tell them you have concerns about their performance, you are working through what the right next step is, and you will come back to them within a specific window with more clarity. Confirming a PIP that has not been written yet is a problem; denying one that is being prepared is a worse one.
Do I have to involve HR?
In most US companies of any size, yes, and the formal documentation typically must go through HR. Smaller companies may not have a dedicated HR function. If yours does not, get a labor employment attorney to review the document before you deliver it. The cost is a fraction of what a wrongful termination claim costs.
Can a PIP be reset or extended?
Sometimes. Extensions are usually a sign that the criteria were not specific enough, or that the manager is uncomfortable with the consequences and is buying time. Resets are even rarer and almost always inappropriate. If genuinely new context appears mid-plan (a serious health issue, a family crisis, a structural change in the role), an extension or pause may be appropriate, but document the reason in writing and run it through HR.
What if the employee files a complaint during the PIP?
Stop the clock and get HR or legal involved immediately. Do not continue the formal process while a complaint is being investigated, and do not let the complaint be perceived as the cause of any subsequent action you take. This is the scenario where the documentation you built upstream of the PIP matters most.
Should I tell the employee what a “passing” outcome would look like in their career here?
Yes, and be honest. If passing means they stay and continue at the current level with no other consequences, say that. If passing means they stay but the next promotion is off the table for a year, say that. Vague answers here corrode the trust the rest of the process is supposed to rebuild.
What if I realize, mid-PIP, that the criteria I wrote were not fair or were too vague?
This happens, and it is your responsibility to fix it. Have a conversation with the employee. Acknowledge that the criteria need adjusting, agree on new ones in writing, document the change with HR. Pretending the original criteria are fine when they are not is what produces the wrongful termination cases. Honesty here is professional, not weak.
What to do next
If you have read this far, you are probably already mid-decision on a real situation. Do these three things, in order.
- Take the should I put this employee on a PIP free assessment. Three minutes. It will give you a structured pass at Questions 1 through 4 of the framework above, applied to your specific case. Most managers find that the answer is one of “not yet, do the upstream work first” or “yes, but coaching is the better tool.” A small minority get the PIP recommendation. Either way, you will be clearer than you were.
- If the answer points to coaching, read the next cluster article on coaching an underperforming employee back to meets expectations. It is the operational guide for the path that is right for most underperformance situations, including the four-step framework and the conversation script.
- If the answer points to a PIP, draft the document using the template above before you involve HR. Bring your draft to HR rather than asking HR to give you a template. The conversations go differently when you bring the specifics first. Your HR partner’s job is to make a strong document stronger, not to invent the substance for you.
The people who do this work well are not braver than you. They have just done the upstream thinking, so the formal step lands cleanly. That work is what this framework is for.