Being Performance Managed
Realizing you’re being performance managed is one of the scariest (legal) things that can happen to you in an at-will job. You’re doing your best in a chaotic environment, focusing on your goals, making sure you tie up loose ends and communicate what you’re doing with your team and manager, yet, something goes awry.
Done right, performance management plans can be clear, discrete ways for you to improve your job performance, understand what your team and manager expect from you, and carve a path toward success. However, they’re often used to “manage out” someone who is no longer wanted on the team. How can you tell the difference? There are some obvious, and less obvious, ways to tell.
If your performance plan is truly a path for you to stay in your current role, the goals of your performance plan will be clear, achievable, and on par with the goals you see your peers and teammates achieving; it may even seem remedial if you’ve been slacking or dropping balls. Showing up on time, being where you say you will be, delivering the work products your job expects of you -- all of those are basics. If you want to stay in your job and are on a performance plan, these are non-negotiables.
However - if your performance plan seems vague, if you’ve had personality clashes with teammates or managers, or if the plan seems to “come out of nowhere” after positive feedback from previous managers or teams, these are all signs that you’re likely being managed out.
If you don’t want to stay in your current role, being on a performance management or improvement plan can actually be helpful, because it is a stepping stone towards receiving severance and unemployment. With those supports in place, you can give yourself time to search for a new job that’s more enjoyable, sustainable, or well-matched to your strengths.
If you do want to stay in your role or with your company however, being put on a performance management or improvement plan is a precarious position that you need to navigate carefully.
Your course of action will be different depending on whether you want to stay or go. If you want to go and are looking to negotiate some severance, let your manager know that you’re interested in what alternatives exist to the plan. Some companies will refer you to an HR specialist -- sometimes referred to as “Employee Success Business Partner”, “Employee Resource Specialist”, “Human Resource Business Partner”, etc. This person’s job is to protect the company from legal action in case your manager or another employee is behaving in an illegal way. Illegal workplace behavior includes sexism, racism, discrimination against you based on your membership in a protected class [LINK]; it also includes retaliation against a complaint or code of conduct violation.
Of course, it’s very hard to prove that a coworker’s behaviors may be motivated by an underlying prejudice. However, it isn’t hard to prove that you feel discriminated against. If this is the case, your VERY FIRST step must be filing a complaint with your HR/ER/etc department against the person behaving in this way -- whether it’s a coworker, manager, or another person in your chain of command.
NEXT:
what does filing a complaint protect you from? What does it not protect you from?
What to do if you want to stay in your role/company
