Make the Tough Call: When Performance Won’t Improve

Handle poor performance at work with a practical employee performance management and PIP guide for managers. Learn when and how to use a performance improvement plan (PIP), manager tough decisions, and role fit vs performance in real situations. Walk away with a clear decision rubric and next-step playbook for managing underperforming employees fairly, confidently, and legally defensibly.

What You'll Learn:

• How to recognize when employee performance management has moved beyond casual coaching and needs a structured approach.
• A practical decision rubric to separate role-fit issues from motivation and effort problems in low performers.
• How to design a focused, effective performance improvement plan (PIP) with clear expectations and no more than three measurable objectives.
• What to do when an employee is not improving after feedback, including timelines, documentation, and communication best practices.
• How to weigh business impact, effort, and behavior against your organization’s values before making a tough call.
• Ways to explore reassignment, training, or scope changes when performance issues are really role-fit misalignment.
• How to protect your team, yourself, and the business by creating a fair, consistent, and legally defensible process for managing underperforming employees.
• Simple reflection and action steps you can take this week to apply performance coaching at work in your real-world situation.