Rarely does a corporate announcement cause massive news shockwaves, but that is precisely what happened in May 2020 when employees of the payment processing company Square were told they could work from home forever. The Verge reported on it at the time and stated that a company spokesperson had told them that Square was most interested in having employees work from wherever they felt the most comfortable given the eruption of the COVID-19 pandemic at the time.
That news was huge at the time, but it doesn’t necessarily have the same impact that it once did given how comfortable much of society has become with the concept of remote work. That said, it is undoubtedly still true that there are hurdles that must be overcome with this style of work as well. One such area to consider is how a remote employee may be put on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) and what that looks like in our new remote work landscape.
The definition of a PIP is explained well by Gartner:
A performance improvement plan (PIP) is a document that aims to help employees who are not meeting job performance goals. A PIP covers specific areas of performance deficiencies, identifies skills or training gaps and sets clear expectations for an associate’s future conduct. Objectives must be met within a certain period, and failure to do so may result in employment actions (such as termination).
Simply put, a PIP provides employees with a roadmap that they should follow to get their performance more in line with the expectations of their employer.
Today, we want to look at how these types of plans may be clearly and effectively communicated to remote employees and why doing so is of the utmost importance.
The Purpose of a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP)
There are many reasons why a performance improvement plan can prove to be constructive both for the employer as well as the employee. Among the top reasons why this is the case include the following:
- Clarifies Expectations – A survey conducted by ComPsych and reported on by the Chicago Tribune found that 31% of those surveyed reported that unclear or vague expectations at work were a cause of stress for them. Those individuals often report that they don’t fully understand how they are supposed to act or react to challenges that are thrown their way. Therefore, it might be the case that a PIP is necessary not as a form of discipline, but simply as a means of clarifying what a given employee is supposed to do while on the job.
- Offers Structure and a Plan for Improvement – Providing employees with a structured path that guides them on their improvement journey can help those employees see the difference that the plan is making in their performance. The Society for Human Resource Management, better known as SHRM, recommends creating goals at intervals of 30, 60, and 90 days. This gives employees enough time to work on performing their output while also providing definitive timetables that can be used as measuring sticks to see how far the employee has come along on their journey.
- Protects the Employee-Manager Relationship – It is always advisable to maintain a certain formality to the manager-employee relationship. It is tempting to want to engage in an overly friendly or causal relationship but doing so jeopardizes your ability to treat everyone on an equal playing field. Therefore, a PIP can be used to maintain the level of formality that is appropriate in business settings.
How to Create a Performance Improvement Plan for Remote Workers
Creating a performance improvement plan for remote workers is not as simple as sitting down at your computer and typing up a quick document. Rather, it involves three main elements that must be carefully considered. Those elements are:
- Thoughtful Preparation – From the moment an employee is handed their PIP, they ought to be able to tell beyond the shadow of a doubt that you have poured your heart and soul into it. They need to understand that you have laboured over the exact goals and benchmarks that you are asking them to reach.
- Clear Communication – The first reaction for many employees when they learn that they are being put on a PIP is to think that they are being punished. It is your responsibility to let them know that this is not the case. Instead, you are merely trying to work with them to improve their results to benefit outcomes for the company and for the individual as well.
- Ongoing Support – You cannot simply drop off the PIP at the desk of the employee and walk away. They are likely to have questions and need a little assistance here or there as they try to reach their goals. Make sure you are available to provide the ongoing support that they require to reach their goals.
With those elements in mind, let’s look at the steps that you should follow in the process of creating a useful PIP for remote workers.
Step 1: Identify Performance Issues with Data and Feedback
Employees crave feedback on their job performance. MetaSpark explains that a lack of feedback can be a major blow to an employee’s mental health:
Lack of communication about performance is also bad for an employee’s mental health. When employees don’t know if they’re doing something right, they can feel lost and frustrated, especially those working from home.
As they noted, this is particularly pressing for remote employees as they are not able to experience the one-on-one connection that employees working in-office get to enjoy.
However, you should be clear with your feedback and offer data to back up everything that you say. Remember, you are trying to highlight some performance issues that a given employee is exhibiting, and you should only do so if you are confident that you have the data to back it up. When presented with a complete case like this, an employee may be more likely to heed your advice and work on improving themselves.
- Tip: Start by offering feedback about the things an employee is doing right before diving into the areas where they can improve.
Step 2: Set Clear and Measurable Goals That Tie into the Remote Work Experience
All employees deserve clear and measurable goals that they can strive for, and this is particularly true for remote workers. They can often feel as though they are out on an island all to themselves, and the clarity that comes with measurable goals is extremely important to them. Their performance improvement plan ought to be full of these types of goals so that there is never any confusion or misunderstood instructions.
- Tip: You should ask remote employees for feedback about what kind of goals they would like to strive for.
Step 3: Develop a Timeline for Progress with Weekly Check-Ins
As we have previously mentioned, the guidance from SHRM is to create a PIP that includes benchmarks for an employee to reach the 30, 60, and 90-day marks. However, it is also critical to include weekly check-ins to observe how much progress is being made throughout the process. Seeing the steps that an employee is taking along the journey can provide some valuable insights as to where they stand.
- Tip: It is much easier to correct any mistakes during a weekly check-in rather than waiting for the next 30-day interval.
Step 4: Ensure Open Communication and Transparency
Some employees tend to clam up once they receive a PIP. Once again, they might feel as though they are being punished for some misdeed. You need to try to correct that perception as soon as possible. Offer warmth, compassion, and transparency, and let the employee know that he or she can always speak with you about any thoughts, questions, or concerns that they have about the PIP.
- Tip: If they are uncomfortable speaking with you directly about it, offer them an alternative source that they can speak with for assistance.
If you follow these steps, you will be well on your way toward creating an ideal PIP for remote workers.
Examples of Performance Improvement Plan Goals
You can surely see the value of a performance improvement plan, but perhaps you are curious about what kind of specific goals ought to be included in one. Let’s look at a few samples of goals that you might include in your PIP for remote workers:
Improved Communication on Slack or Teams
As the two behemoths of remote work collaboration, Slack and Teams are the main platforms used by employers with remote workers. Sadly, many of those remote workers feel that they can keep their cameras turned off while they are in video meetings. This is an enormous frustration for employers with a staggering 92% of executives saying that they feel that employees who routinely turn their cameras off during meetings are less engaged. It is an understandable concern on their part as remote employees who turn off their cameras could be disengaged and focused on other things when they are supposed to be in a meeting.
With that in mind, improved communication on Slack or Teams is a goal that might show up in a PIP. This goes beyond merely asking employees to turn their cameras on during meetings and extends into asking them to actively participate in meetings and bring discussion topics to those meetings as well.
Meeting Deadlines for Deliverables
The successful completion of projects requires that employees have the capacity to meet their deadlines for deliverables. CoAmplifi explains:
Work that involves projects inevitably includes project deliverables. These deliverables aren’t necessarily the result of the project, but they play a key role in ensuring that a project satisfies its requirements. When project deliverables are defined correctly and completed on schedule, the odds are good that the project will be a success.
Employees who do not manage their time well or who lack the motivation to get their work done might constantly fall behind on their deadlines or fail to meet them altogether. That is something that can be addressed in a PIP as well. After all, every stakeholder has a reasonable expectation that projects will be completed in a reasonably timely manner.
Improved Accuracy of Work Submissions
Human error exists in every type of work that we perform, but that doesn’t mean that we can simply let it slide forever. If an employee is repeatedly handing in work submissions that are riddled with errors, then this must be addressed in a PIP. You don’t want that work to go out the door and end up in the hands of a customer who is understandably upset by all the mistakes.
Tools and Resources for PIP Management
Creating a PIP is one thing, but managing how it plays out once it has been presented to an employee is something else. You will need some important tools to monitor the progress of any employee who has received a PIP. Consider incorporating the following into your plan:
- Performance Monitoring Tools – Wouldn’t it be nice if you had direct access to the real-time productivity data of an employee at your fingertips? Believe it or not, such tools do exist. Time Tracker is a great example of a piece of software that you can tap into when you want to have a bird’s eye view of the work that your employees are performing. The software automatically measures their time for you, and you can simply log in and have a look around to see where the employee spending their time and where they might still be struggling.
- Time Tracking Software – It is impossible to know with absolute certainty how much time a given employee is spending on their various assigned tasks until you start to measure it. The good news on that front is that time tracking software like Time Tracker can do this for you. Simply have your employees create accounts and ask that they log in whenever they are performing work-related duties. The software will track that time with automated timers and allow you to see the quantity of time employees are putting into various projects.
- Collaboration and Communication Tools – Something else to keep in mind with remote teams is that they need to remain in constant contact with one another about the various projects that they are working on. A collaboration tool such as Slack is the ideal way to help them do exactly that. This tool makes real-time collaboration on any project a breeze. Remote workers can communicate back and forth with one another about any potential roadblocks that they may face while working on a project. These types of tools are the modern way to keep up with the progress of remote workers on PIPs. Incorporate these into your process so you can see results as they happen.
How Remote Workers Can Improve Their Performance
It is not only the responsibility of employers to come up with useful strategies for how to improve performance among remote workers. Some of that burden must also be shouldered by the workers themselves. They must step up when called upon to do so and pull their weight. Fortunately, there are a few steps that any remote worker can take to help reach that goal.
1) Enhance Time Management
Let’s be completely honest with ourselves, it can be tempting to slack off as a remote worker. To highlight this fact, Inc.com reports that the average remote worker still wastes more than an hour per day on productivity theater. This is the act of pretending to be busy or contributing to a work-related task when, in fact, the employee is accomplishing next to nothing.
Remote workers can take it upon themselves to manage their time better and ask how they can contribute more toward tasks that truly make a difference rather than continuing to waste time on productivity theater.
2) Ask for Feedback Routinely
There is nothing wrong with asking for feedback regularly. This is truly something that can help improve the work product that a remote worker produces, and they should seek this out. That feedback might help them determine how they can best contribute to the ongoing work of the company more effectively.
3) Use Productivity Tools
The employer doesn’t have to assign remote workers productivity tools for them to start using them. Proactive remote workers will take it upon themselves to use tools that they know will improve their outcomes. Among those is Time Tracker by eBillity. This user-friendly software tool is excellent for keeping tabs on one’s time and measuring productivity on various projects.
Remote employees should always strive to do this as they need to be responsible for their work output. Taking the reins and deciding to do this on their own is an excellent way to show their employer that they are serious about contributing to the success of the company.
Common Mistakes When Making PIPs for Remote Teams
Unfortunately, some employers have made errors when creating PIPs for their remote teams in the past. You should strive to learn from these mistakes and avoid making them yourself. A few big pitfalls to avoid include:
- Establishing Unclear Goals – It is not enough to tell an employee that they need to “get better”. You need to explain what that looks like and back up your goals with data.
- Not Personalizing the PIP – What improvement looks like will vary from employee to employee. This is because everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. Failure to tailor-make each PIP is a mistake to be avoided.
- Not Understanding the Restrictions of Remote Work – In many ways, remote work is quite liberating. However, there are some restraints to remote work as well, and this ought to be recognized when working on creating a PIP for remote workers. Remember, they can’t do everything that in-office staff can do (such as attend meetings in person).
Create Your PIP for Remote Workers Using Time Tracking Tools
Every remote employee is a unique individual who deserves a performance improvement plan that is specific to them. It is your job to create those personalized documents and present them to employees in an effective manner. You must also provide them with the tools to succeed.
Time Tracker by eBillity has a slate of tools that can aid remote workers in their quest to improve their job performance. The time and attendance software is a great place to start. Use this tool to track time spent on various projects and keep tabs on employee productivity. That is the basic starting point for improvement, and it only goes up from there. Start a free trial today and improve remote worker output.