 |
 |
 |
Download performance improvement plan template in Microsoft Word format.
Get the Most Out of Your Employees with a Performance Improvement Plan
Are you the owner or manager of a business with several employees under your supervision? Are you getting all you can from these employees in terms of production? If you’re not—if you have one or two employees that are currently struggling to meet your expectations—you may want to implement a performance improvement plan. In this article we will provide a brief definition of the performance improvement plan, followed by a discussion with regard to the plan’s process and structure.
The Purpose of a Performance Improvement Plan
One of your primary goals as a business owner or manager is to try and get the utmost in effort and productivity from those in your employ. This will allow your business to run more effectively, provide better service to customers, and ultimately, make the business more successful from a financial standpoint. But how do you handle an employee who is underperforming? How do you convince an employee who is not quite measuring up to your expectations to work harder and fulfill his/her potential—the potential you saw in them when they were hired? This is where a performance improvement plan can be a great help.
A performance improvement plan is a document aimed at helping an underperforming employee resolve some of the issues that have become obstacles to his success—and the success of the company. Unlike the dreaded “write up,” which only highlights what an employee did wrong and the consequences for that action, a performance improvement plan is not designed to be punitive in nature, but rather geared towards helping a struggling employee improve his skills and grow within the company.
The Structure and Process of a Performance Improvement Plan
When structuring a performance improvement plan for an employee, you will of course have to point out the areas where he/she is deficient. This is, after all, why the plan was needed in the first place. However, this information doesn’t necessarily need to come across as criticism, but rather an observation of specific areas in which the employee could improve. After these areas are identified, the next step is to create a list of 3-4 goals that will help the employee become more successful in these areas, along with a timeline for obtaining each goal. This goal setting process need not be a “one-way affair.” In fact, most plans of this type are much more effective when the goal-setting process is more of a collaborative effort between you and the employee. Using this tactic helps the employee to “buy-in” to the process, and feel like he/she is being helped and encouraged, rather than criticized and punished.
After you have developed a few success-oriented goals, and recorded them on the performance improvement plan document, you’ll need to create a list of steps that need to be taken in order to reach each goal. For example, if an employee is consistently showing up 10-15 minutes late for work each day, one of the goals might read “to be consistently punctual when arriving for work.” In addressing this goal, together you would then develop a list of steps that will help the employee obtain it. For example, “leave the house 20 minutes earlier” and “develop a backup transportation plan for when your car won’t start.” Again, creating these steps in a collaborative way, with the employee also listing steps on how to obtain the goal, will allow him to grow and take responsibility for his own deficiencies.
Finally, as briefly mentioned above, each goal should have a realistic timeframe, and at the end of that timeframe you should again meet with the employee to discuss his/her performance with relation to each goal. In most cases, the performance improvement plan will produce significant improvement in the deficient areas; however, if there is no improvement, and the employee refuses to take responsibility for his shortcomings, it may be time to consider a more punitive approach, including suspension or termination.