It looks like I’m going to be the first person here to speak up.
Here goes:
At a well-known and highly respected Ivy League university on the Eastern seaboard of the United States, PIPs are still used by spineless, clueless, and incompetent department heads and inept, soulless, supervisors who work in tandem with the HR Department to oust otherwise talented, skilled, experienced, and likable staff members whose faces have been deemed to not fit in with administrative vision and values (whatever these things may be).
At this particular seat of learning and leadership, PIPs are set up to make it impossible to succeed.
I was one of two people who were both recruited to a department of the university within a few weeks of each other by a senior manager who was beloved by her colleagues but who had clashed with her new department head.
She was placed on a PIP (but had the good fortune to be hired by another organization before her PIP ended).
Within weeks of my colleague and I finding themselves reporting to a new supervisor, we both found ourselves on a PIP.
I rose to the occasion and aced every challenge, none of which mattered because ultimately, excuses were made to justify each of us being fired.
I found myself being accused of having plagiarized my entire portfolio of design work by a supervisor who did not know the keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste (and she was the head of publications and an editor!).
A week after she signed off on the termination of my employment, my new supervisor retired.
In a one-on-one meeting with then head of HR before my departure, he alluded to the fact that should future employers seek information about my employment status that it might become necessary for them to disclose that my employment status had come to a standstill due to disciplinary issues and that they may have to disclose as much but … all of that unpleasantness could be avoided if I were to resign from my position before the conclusion of the PIP.
Despite rising to every challenge and test put forth in my PIP, and despite several people speaking up on my behalf, because I refused to resign, the university terminated my employment status.
Towards the end of my time there, I came close to ending it all.
It would not have mattered if Saul Bass, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo had come back from the dead and rolled up their sleeves to help me, the result would have been the same.
At this university, PIPs have only one purpose: to get you out of the way. When staff in these situations resign, the university is saved the expense of paying unemployment payments.
Via an inside source from the university’s legal department I heard that the university intentionally sets up its policy on these issues to make it impossible for anyone to get through the process.
This source also advised against suing the university because it would be cost prohibitive and because the university would use its considerable resources and legal war chest to make it impossible to obtain a fair outcome.
PIPs are designed to erode your confidence in yourself and your abilities. They are used by clueless, incompetent, vindictive, and cowardly supervisors who have no business running a lemonade stand let alone managing staff to reinforce their own self importance.
PIP's aren't fair because in most cases, the burden is completely on the employee who may not know what they were doing wrong or how to improve.
It looks like I’m going to be the first person here to speak up.
Here goes:
At a well-known and highly respected Ivy League university on the Eastern seaboard of the United States, PIPs are still used by spineless, clueless, and incompetent department heads and inept, soulless, supervisors who work in tandem with the HR Department to oust otherwise talented, skilled, experienced, and likable staff members whose faces have been deemed to not fit in with administrative vision and values (whatever these things may be).
At this particular seat of learning and leadership, PIPs are set up to make it impossible to succeed.
I was one of two people who were both recruited to a department of the university within a few weeks of each other by a senior manager who was beloved by her colleagues but who had clashed with her new department head.
She was placed on a PIP (but had the good fortune to be hired by another organization before her PIP ended).
Within weeks of my colleague and I finding themselves reporting to a new supervisor, we both found ourselves on a PIP.
I rose to the occasion and aced every challenge, none of which mattered because ultimately, excuses were made to justify each of us being fired.
I found myself being accused of having plagiarized my entire portfolio of design work by a supervisor who did not know the keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste (and she was the head of publications and an editor!).
A week after she signed off on the termination of my employment, my new supervisor retired.
In a one-on-one meeting with then head of HR before my departure, he alluded to the fact that should future employers seek information about my employment status that it might become necessary for them to disclose that my employment status had come to a standstill due to disciplinary issues and that they may have to disclose as much but … all of that unpleasantness could be avoided if I were to resign from my position before the conclusion of the PIP.
Despite rising to every challenge and test put forth in my PIP, and despite several people speaking up on my behalf, because I refused to resign, the university terminated my employment status.
Towards the end of my time there, I came close to ending it all.
It would not have mattered if Saul Bass, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo had come back from the dead and rolled up their sleeves to help me, the result would have been the same.
At this university, PIPs have only one purpose: to get you out of the way. When staff in these situations resign, the university is saved the expense of paying unemployment payments.
Via an inside source from the university’s legal department I heard that the university intentionally sets up its policy on these issues to make it impossible for anyone to get through the process.
This source also advised against suing the university because it would be cost prohibitive and because the university would use its considerable resources and legal war chest to make it impossible to obtain a fair outcome.
PIPs are designed to erode your confidence in yourself and your abilities. They are used by clueless, incompetent, vindictive, and cowardly supervisors who have no business running a lemonade stand let alone managing staff to reinforce their own self importance.