Weaponized PIPs: Why Timing Is Not the Real HR Problem

Rebecca Taylor: This is HR Voices, a scenario-based podcast featuring real people leaders who deal with real people challenges every day. Each episode, we dig into the messy, gray area stuff nobody puts in a training deck. If this sounds like your kind of show, follow or subscribe wherever you're listening or watching, and leave us a rating. It helps other people leaders find us. HR Voices is brought to you by All Voices. Hello and welcome to HR Voices. I'm your host, Rebecca Taylor, and I'm here with Alyssa Horn, Senior Director of Global Investigations and Employee Relations at Mattel. Alyssa, thank you so much for being here. Hi, thank you so much for inviting me. I'm so excited about this. So excited to have you. I think that like we've had we're already old friends at this point. we've made our prep call. We've like we yapped for way too long, probably before we even started this, but and we're talking again. Like we're like once I always say like once you meet me, it's hard to get rid of me unless you really want to. And like this is what that looks like in action. So I'm really excited. I love that. Me too. Me too. Okay. Are you ready for your scenario? Give it to me. Let's go. All right. We are calling this the weaponized pip. A manager puts an employee on a performance improvement plan one week after that employee filed an internal ethics complaint about the manager's expense reports. The performance concerns cited in the PIP are real, but were never previously documented or raised. HR has to decide whether the timing alone is enough to pause the PIP and how to protect the integrity of a legitimate performance conversation that now looks and may in fact be retaliatory. So Before we get into the specifics of what might be true, what might not be true, from a 10,000-foot view, what stands out to you as the most risky or unclear in this scenario as it's laid out now? If I had to pick one thing that is risky or unclear to me out of all of that, I think it's the fact that the performance concerns were never discussed with the employee. but that would never happen in real life. That would never happen. No, no, no. It never happens. That never happens. No. People never hear about performance issues for the first time in an annual performance review or a PIP. Never happens. No. The other factors that you cited, you know, the internal complaint, that is, of course, a concern. It's also a concern to me of who in that specific organization is responsible for investigating internal complaints. Is the same HR person who presumably worked with the manager on the PIP who supports the business also responsible for investigating that internal concern? Or does that organization have an independent investigation function so they can totally bifurcate these two things? Ooh, okay. I love this because I want to kind of dive into that a little bit before we even go into like the scenario because I know we've talked a little bit about this, even just kind of in prep for this. So there are some companies that HR will own employee relations as sort of part. its function and then in other companies employer relations might either sit on its own or report to legal or compliance or something else, right? So in your experience and in your sort you know maybe not even your opinion, but like what is the diff how did those differences affect investigations like this? I could I could talk forever about how those differences impact not just investigations like this, but investigations as a whole. Yeah. When an organization is looking into an internal complaint, one of the most important things is that that fact-finding, that due diligence is objective. When you have HR business partners investigating internal complaints and concerns within the business group that they support, where they undeniably have close relationships with those business leaders, because having those relationships with the business leaders is essential to their success as an HR business partner. There is real or perceived a conflict of interest. Not to mention the uncomfortable position that it puts that HR business partner in. Imagine a senior HR business partner, a director, a senior director conducting an internal investigation into an allegation of harassment. They are sitting with that business leader asking them very pointed, very direct, very difficult questions related to that allegation. And an hour later, they're sitting next to that business leader in a talent discussion, in a succession planning meeting. It's it's a very complicated relationship when you have HR business partners investigating those internal complaints. in my experience, having that independent function, whether it sits within HR but reports to the CHRO or sits within legal, whether that's compliance or employment law, there is that objectivity around investigations. Your investigator is not directly tied to a specific business group. They're not supporting that specific business leader, so they don't have those inherent relationships or knowledge of the personalities when they're conducting those investigations, and they're going strictly. on the facts that they're gathering through interviews and review of any data that's provided to them. Yeah. It's so funny because like in my own HR experience, my team always handled employee relations, myself included. And we were at much, I was at much smaller companies doing this too. So at larger companies that do sort of have those centers of excellence, I do think that I do think that that's a really cool way to kind of line it up, honestly, because it has to be more trustworthy to an employee too, right? Because they don't feel like They're being investigated by someone who can also have a say in their promotion or might also have a say in whether or not they're on a pip, right? It's almost like adding more counsel in a way and then reducing bias at the same time. It's interesting. It it covers so many different aspects. you know, I think everybody who's worked in HR for any period of time has heard somebody somewhere say that HR is only there to protect the organization. Yeah. I mean, we can have a whole other conversation about that. I you know, in in my in my career as I started out as an HR business partner and then moving into employee relations and investigations, that's not an incorrect statement. It's a matter of how you interpret protecting the organization. I do view my role as an investigator as protecting the organization. Sometimes that means substantiating allegations and exiting employees who are violating company policy. So, prot how you know, when you talk about protecting an organization, that can mean very different things. But Having the investigations and employee relations function completely independent from the support that an HR business partner provides to the business eliminates that perception of bias. It adds that layer of objectivity and it gives the investigator the ability when introducing themselves to the individuals that they're talking to, complainant, witness, subject, to say, I'm I don't support this line of business. You know, I When I've conducted investigations, I will start off by asking people, tell me a little bit about your role. I'm I'm not familiar with what your business does in the company. So, you know, that background may be relevant to the investigation, but it also helps really confirm what we're sharing with that employee, which is I'm not aligned to the business. I'm not yeah, yeah. That's interesting. So maybe for this scenario, we can think of it as like because this sort of lays it out as HR has to decide, HR is doing the investigation HR this, but what if we kind of put our own little sprinkle on it? Cause these are all fabricated to do whatever we want. so what if we sort of explore this as there's a separate employee related there's a separate investigator who maybe has to partner with HR. And can you talk me through sort of what that partnership kind of looks like? So let's say, you know, you get this, you get this report and now you know you're I guess you have to start by kind of figuring out different pieces of evidence that you need to figure out, right? So as you're kind of as the investigator, who are you starting to talk to? Like what conversations are you starting to have as you start to, you know, your investigation and what evidence do you look at? So you there's there's a framework and a process that that organizations should follow for their investigations. It it's a little nuanced. If I It depends on how the complaint comes in. I don't want to get too in the weeds here, but let's say this complaint for purposes of this conversation came into whatever mechanism the company has for an anonymous hotline reporting. And let's say that we that the complainant, when they called in, gave all of the information that that you would need up front to really have an understanding of what the complaint is and what you would be investigating. In those cases, before I would talk to the complainant, I would let the HR business partner know. I would say, hey, want you to be aware this complaint came in, and we keep the information very high level because obviously investigations are confidential. So we keep the information very high level. we would also notify the manager of the subject. I think that's an important step in an investigation, and it's not required, it's very determining, it's very it's determined by what the organization wants to do as part of their process. I think it's important to let the manager of the subject know because you're gonna be talking to people in their business. You know, you want them to know what's going on in their business. And if the allegations are substantiated, personally, I don't think it's fair to that business leader for them to hear about it for the first time when we're coming to them to say, hey, we substantiated these allegations. Here's what we think you should do. Their head is gonna spin. Yeah. So those are usually my first steps. And then I would talk to the complainant. To ask all of those follow-up questions that the investigator wants to ask, to ask them to send me any information they're have they have. We're talking about expenses in this case. Yeah. How would they have visibility into their manager's expenses? That would be my first question. Generally speaking, an employee doesn't have visibility into what their manager is expensing. They don't approve it. Is this person responsible for submitting their manager's expenses? Maybe we're talking about an executive assistant. So that would be you know that would be the first step is how do you have this information? What inf what documentation, if anything, do you have that you can share with me? We would want to work with the finance team to pull expense reports. Because they're in a case like this, when we're talking about an allegation like this, even if the complainant doesn't have documents or information they can share, there's very it's very easy to request expense reports and do an audit of that expense report. Whether you know once we have a better idea of what we're talking about in terms of what the allegation is about the violation of the expense policy, then it would Be determined, is this something that we need to pull internal audit in? Are we talking about a more complex analysis or audit that needs to be done that's beyond the scope of an investigator just reviewing expense reports? So that's part of the process as well is understanding who are the relevant stakeholders and partners that may be pulled in on this investigation. Understanding, are there any witnesses? If we're talking about expense reports, maybe, maybe not, you know, if Maybe one of the expenses that they're talking about that may be fraudulent or in violation of policy is a big dinner or something like that. So are there other participants that need to be spoken to? Yeah. And then of course the the end of an investigation is always interviewing the subject. Yeah. Yeah. I it's interesting because in this particular scenario, when you talk about speaking to the the the person's manager first. This could be an interesting one because when when someone submits their expense reports, their manager approves them usually, right? Correct. So that can be an interesting little fun layer of like, hey, there may be, you know, I guess like when you when you're notifying that person's manager that you're doing an investigation, what information are you giving them and and purposely not giving them in that conversation, especially in a scenario like this where it could also kind of indirectly accuse their manager too? It's a great question. I keep that information very, very high level. Yeah. It's very high level. So in this scenario, it would be, you know, we received a we received a concern that there may be some irreg irregularities or improprieties with this employee's expense report. Just want you to be aware, and I'm very upfront with them why I'm making them aware at this point again, because I'm gonna be interviewing people and I want you to know about that. I don't want you to hear about this for the first time when I come back to you. So I keep in every in every investigation, we keep that information. information very high level. And that's that's something that I've always done in investigations. As I said earlier, you know, each organization determines what they want that process to look like. That's just something that as long as I've been doing investigation. So Yeah. Well fifteen years, let's call it. That's always something that I've that I've done is notifying the manager. Yeah, yeah. And I like the way that you do it because, you know, it's just like you're giving it sounds like it's almost like regardless of what the regardless of what the investigation's about, the manager gets the same level of information, which is just I'm gonna be around, I'm gonna be talking to your people, I'll let you know where it goes and as much information as I can share at the time. So I think that that's really that's really smart. 'Cause sometimes it's like, you know, transparency is great. But sometimes it has to be used strategically, right? Where you can't always, there has to be a balance of transparency and confidentiality in a lot of the work that employee relations and HR does. And that's sometimes I think what causes some, you know, hostility about the professions, because we can't always tell you everything, even if you want us to, you know? You you raised a really good point. Confidentiality. That's part of the conversation also. This is confidential. They get the same confidentiality conversation that everybody else gets. The other thing, the other reason that we keep it high level is if the allegations are unsubstantiated. You don't want you don't want that manager to have all of this uncorroborated information that may alter the way they view their employee. Yes. That is such a good call. That is such a good call out because perception and Absolute. You know, court of public opinion, so to speak, is sometimes more damaging than what the actual truth is. And yeah, you're right. You don't want to even like plant that seed if you don't have to, you know, unless it's not ultimately substantiated at the end of the day. Yep. Correct. Interesting. Okay. So now I want to talk about the PIP and the performance concerns. So this person, you know, maybe they overheard their boss saying that they took their wife out to dinner and put it on the company card, and that's like where they're like their expenses reports seem like wonky. You know, you you you can overhear a lot. I used to work at a company where every director had expense had like money that they could spend sort of whenever they wanted, like expense accounts, that's the word I'm looking for. and so it was kind of like it didn't really matter what they did. It was sort of just like this is the money you can spend, spend it as you like. And but that can come off with someone who doesn't have that level of context that can read all different kinds of ways, right? So maybe this employee overhears something and is like, hmm, I'm I think this needs to be investigated. So now let's talk about this pip. So, you know, I guess by the time the person is put, by the time the manager puts the the employee on a pip, there could be a possibility that the manager doesn't even know that the ethics complaint was filed, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. So how do you do what where do you go from there? So the one thing I want to say, and I I truly believe this. An employee filing a complaint does not place a bubble of protection around them. They are not insulated or immune from performance management if they are not meeting the expectations of their job simply because they filed the complaint. So before we talk about this, I want to make sure that that's clear that just because this employee filed a complaint, that does not mean that they cannot be performance managed if they're not doing their jobs at an acceptable level. So in this scenario, the other things That comes into play from my perspective. One, timing, of course. So you would want to look at, to your point, does the manager even know about the complaint? Two, when did they start socializing the idea of the performance management? When did they first reach out to their HR partner to say, this employee is not performing? I think we need to put them on a pip. I think we need to do something about their performance. Did that predate the concern? The bigger issue for me in this scenario with the PIP is the fact that the performance concerns, while valid, have not previously been discussed with the employee. Mm-hmm. And that's not related. Right. And that's not related to the investigation. For me, that's just a concern with a PIP process in In my opinion, a PIP is a culmination of coaching and feedback conversations and a very direct sit-down conversation of we have had three conversations regarding X, Y, and Z. I have not seen you sustaining improvement in these areas. Your performance is not meeting my expectations. Here's what I need to see from you. How can we make this happen? If there's no improvement at that point, then there's a pip. So that I think that needs to be talked about more than the timing, in my opinion. No, you're right. You're right. Cause it's like who authorized the pip, you know, because it's usually, at least in my experience, if you want to put someone on a performance improvement plan, the manager has to go to HR to make it formal and official and everything like that. And I know in my experience in HR, I don't know how many times I would stop people from getting put on pips because of this exact situation. Like if a manager comes to me and says this person has to go on a pip and you have no documentation. And know nothing. It's like, no, you start your documentation. Now you're like, you know, if you wanted to, you're basically like, now you're beginning the process. So this is interesting, where it's like, you know, HR seems to have approved this PIP. HR might not have, if we're thinking about this as a scenario where employee relations is a separate center of excellence than HR, HR may not know that there's a complaint in, but I'm like completely making this up, right? But maybe the manager overheard that this employee submitted something. And so now the manager could be trying to get ahead of something, right? Like there's so many what-ifs. So many, there's so many what-ifs, which is why it's so important that when a complaint comes in, the HR business partner is made aware. Yeah. Because if you have these two parallel work streams, the investigator has no idea what's going on from a performance management perspective. The HR business partner has no idea if the concerns been raised. That's why the relationship Between the ER and investigations function and the HR business partner function is so important. Yeah, yeah. I think that's a really, really good call-out because you can even look at it as even if HR does do the investigation, but maybe it's a different HR business partner that does the investigation compared to the business partner that is handling performance. Even then, that level of communication coordination is so important because it's part of the full context of figuring out what actually happened and what you're gonna actually do about it, right? So You know, I guess like the the part of this that is funny to sort of say, and you know, a lot of this, these are fabricated, these are fake, right? So like we can sort of like commentate on them as much as we want. but the way this is framed is HR has to decide whether the timing alone is enough to pause the pip. But like, why would you pause the pip? Would you pause the pip? I guess. Like what would be the reason for that? I guess during an investigation, you might So It am am I the HR business partner or am I the investigator? Let's answer both. Let's do it as the HR business partner and as the investigator. If I was the investigator, I wouldn't really have a say in terms of pausing the pip. Okay, I can I can advise, I can make suggestions, but at the end of the day, that would be a decision for the HR business partner and the business leader to make. I, wearing my ER investigator hat, I would certainly express my concerns. One about the timing, and two, again, about the fact that the previous performance issues, there have been no previous discussions or documentation, that the first time the employee's gonna be hearing this is a pip. if I was the HR business partner based on this scenario and the question, is the timing alone enough to pause the pip? I don't think the timing alone is enough to pause it. I do think the other factors are enough to pause it. Yeah. Yeah. For me as an HR business partner, I Would have serious concerns and strong pushback to a manager proceeding with issuing a PIP to an employee if they have not had any previous performance discussions with them and the individual was not at all aware that they were not meeting expectations. Yeah, that's a really, really good distinction too, that it's not the timing, it's all the other kind of things around it. And so where what are your concerns in relation to? Like what is what is the vulnerability here for the company and what is the risk? I mean, you know, retaliation's mentioned. so you know, can you talk to me a little bit about like what are you trying to prevent from happening or what risk are you trying to protect the company from? When you look at a pit In my opinion, that that is always to be delivered with the ultimate goal of the employee improving their performance. Mm-hmm. Okay. I think very often in in organizations, the way it's framed, the way the process plays, employees view pips as a way for for their manager to manage them out. Yeah. I I I Hope that it wouldn't be delivered that way because I think that the PIP is, although it may be the last step in the performance management process, it is still an important step with the hope that the employee improves. So to me, the risk in that exists, and again, I'm I'm beating the drum here, in issuing a PIP when those previous conversations have not taken place. Because you are jumping to that step where it's presumably the last step before the employee has exited from the organization. If they don't successfully complete the pip. But you haven't given them any previous opportunities to improve their performance before jumping to that step. Yeah. And then they can go external, like they can talk to an attorney, right? And then they can bring this story to a turn to an attorney and say, hmm, I never had any d documented performance issues. I submit this claim about my manager and expense reports. All of a sudden I'm put on a PIP and then I'm let go. you know, lawyer, maybe let's we can look into this. Like they could have a claim, right? I mean, I I'm not an attorney, so I can't say whether they would or they wouldn't. But look, anybody can always go to an attorney. Yeah. That's I guess that's more what it is. Yeah. I I guess another question would be is this an outlier in terms of Putting this employee on a pip without any previous conversations or documentations or coaching, is that consistent with the internal process in this organization? Does it happen often or is it only happening to this person? Because that fact could contribute to whether there's validity to a potential retaliation claim. Yeah, that's true. And that's other that's good sort of research to do too is just sort of what is the context of other pips within the company, not just and especially especially from that manager, but also kind of throughout the whole company. Like are there patterns? Because everything's a pattern, right? Especially if you're documenting everything in the right way and you have, you know, sort of your documentation in some place that you can sort of look back historically and see what may have happened before. That's a really good call out. Is like, is this a one-off situation? Is this an outlier? And then if it's not, it you can Still find a pattern of weaponizing pips. And is there a policy? Some companies have documented policies for performance management and progressive discipline. So if there is a documented performance management process that clearly outlines the steps that a manager has to take, is this manager following that process? And is HR following this process? Because what not to throw anybody under the bus, but if the HR person is then let's say there is a process that has progressive sort of, you know, coaching or progressive action on these things. And then but all of a sudden the HR person agreed to put this employee on a pit. That makes me think that I mean, I'm speculating on fake people in a fake situation, but maybe HR's involved, right? Like that kind of puts HR in a position where they probably need this person needs to be investigated too, right? Know if this person needs to be investigated in terms of a formal investigation, but there certainly needs to be, especially if there's a performance management documented policy or process, there certainly needs to be conversations with this HR person as to why. Yeah. Why are we doing it this way? it's It's a very interesting question this in this scenario because I think the the timing of the PIP is not the main issue for me in terms of the complaint. the investigation into the complaint will proceed because when a complaint comes in, the the company has an obligation to address it. But as it relates to the PIP, I think there's much bigger questions outside of the timing. Yeah, I'm I agree. I agree. It's like that's sort of the sticking point for a lot. And there's also, you know, you could also look at it as sometimes people will have a lot of power that they'll wield over anybody, right? Power dynamics are a real thing. But especially it could, you know, potentially you could have a situation where, you know, the manager goes to HR, HR says that's not the process, that's not what it is, and they say, I don't care, do it anyway. I have authority over you or I have power over you. I mean, you see that in so many different situations. And so sometimes it's like your hands are tied, but then that's sort of the risk of not pushing back. is like now you could be in a situation that's messier than it needed to be. You know, interesting. man, there's so many good places to go. And that goes to what's the company's process because you would think that within an organization, there's there's always a process for escalation. I think you always have to look at, yes Any anytime we're talking to business leaders, we make recommendations. Yeah. They own the decisions. It's their employees. They own the decision. But when we're having these conversations, an important question to ask is, is the person I'm talking to Are they the appropriate level to assume that potential risk for the organization? Do we need pot do we need perhaps to bring in more senior people to have that discussion about what the risk is proceeding the way the business wants to proceed? And are we bringing the right people into that conversation who can potentially assume that risk for the organization? Yeah, yeah. Ooh, I love that. And it's funny because like, I mean, oddly enough, we're actually at time, which is like wild because now I'm like, I feel like there's I know there's so many more questions now. Well like I owe I've been saying this a lot lately. I'm like, we need to do a part two because it's just like there's so many more. To be continued. To be continued. Yes, totally. So to so as one sort of final, you know, question, which is it's sort of a broad question, so it might be tough, but not to put you on the spot. What's one piece of advice that you have for either an HR person or an investigator who might be experiencing a situation like this for the first time? I know you've kind of been giving perspective like the whole time, but like what's one big thing you can leave them with? You don't have to have an immediate response. You don't have to have an immediate answer. There's nothing wrong with saying in response to do we need to pause the pip? There's nothing wrong with your response being, I can't answer that question right now. I need to gather some information. I need to understand bigger picture what's going on to be able to provide you with appropriate guidance. Yes. Ooh, I love that. Love that. Pause. Pause for a moment and take your time. I love that. Well, Alyssa, thank you. Thank you so much for my pleasure. This was so much fun. I would love to do a part two. To be continued. For sure. To be continued. There's so many things that we can like do. I mean, you're I think you're gonna be like, I think we're just gonna be doing a lot of stuff together if you're okay with that. I would love that. I would love that. And thank you everybody for listening. And you know, if you have any other questions about any of these kinds of topics, like feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. You can find Alyssa. I'm offering you up to the I'm offering you up to the audience. Yay. All right. Well, thank everybody for listening, and I hope you have a great rest of your day. And thank you, Alyssa, so much for being here. My pleasure. Thank you. Okay, the timing is what jumps out first with weaponized pip, but Alyssa's right that it's almost never the real issue. The real issue is what happened before the timing got suspicious. No documented conversations, no clear process, and if you're HR, there was no clean line between who's investigating and who's been sitting next to that manager in talent reviews all year. That's the part I keep coming back to. Objectivity isn't a vibe, it's a structure. So if the same person supporting a business leader is also the one investigating a complaint against them, you don't have an investigation, you have a conflict of interest. So this is exactly where having a real system behind you matters, not just a gut feeling that something's off, but an actual record. This is something that All Voices was built around. When every complaint, every pip, every pattern lives in one place with a timestamp attached, you're not relying on memory or vibes to figure out if this is a one-off or if the fifth time this manager's done this, you can actually go look. And if you take one thing from Alyssa today, let it be this: you don't owe anyone an immediate answer. I need to gather more information is a completely appropriate response during an investigation. Alyssa, thank you again. This was so much fun. To everyone listening, if the scenario hits close to home, come find me on LinkedIn. I want to hear about it. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you next time on HR Voices.