Managing Poor Performance and Performance Improvement Plans
A one-day programme for the managers who have to address underperformance and the HR practitioners who support them. Poor performance runs on a different track from misconduct, with a different process and different risks, and treating one as the other is where most employers get into difficulty. The programme covers setting standards that can actually be enforced, holding the conversation, building a performance improvement plan that is genuine, and documenting the whole sequence so it holds if the employment ends.
The recurring failure is the PIP used as a formality: targets set at a level nobody could meet, no real support offered, review meetings that never happened, and a dismissal that was decided before the plan was issued. The Industrial Court reads that pattern easily. This programme works through what a defensible performance process looks like at each stage, and finishes with participants working real scenarios. It pairs with the Employment Act and Workplace Compliance programme, which covers the misconduct and domestic inquiry track.
HRD Corp SBL-Khas Claimable
Programme Agenda
9:00 AM - 9:15 AM
Welcome and Programme Overview
Introduction to the session, objectives, and housekeeping.
9:15 AM - 10:15 AM
Performance or Misconduct: Getting the Track Right
The distinction that governs everything that follows. Genuine incapability against unwillingness, and the cases that look like both. Why routing a performance problem into a disciplinary process, or a misconduct problem into a PIP, damages the employer's position either way. Attendance, attitude and behaviour problems and where each properly belongs. The role of probation and why probationers are not without protection.
10:15 AM - 10:30 AM
Break
10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Setting Standards You Can Actually Enforce
Job descriptions, objectives and KPIs written specifically enough that a shortfall is demonstrable rather than arguable. The vague appraisal problem: years of satisfactory ratings followed by a sudden performance case, and how that history is read later. Calibration across managers, and correcting a record that has drifted from reality without ambushing the employee.
11:30 AM - 12:30 PM
Identifying and Evidencing Underperformance
Gathering evidence contemporaneously rather than reconstructing it, the records that carry weight, and distinguishing an individual shortfall from a systemic one caused by resourcing, training, tooling or an unworkable target. Checking for underlying causes including health, disability and personal circumstances, and the adjustments an employer should consider before treating the issue as performance alone.
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
Lunch
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM
The Performance Conversation
Preparing for it, opening it clearly, and being direct about the gap without turning it into an accusation. Handling denial, deflection, emotion and counter-allegations. Agreeing what happens next and confirming it in writing the same day. When a grievance raised during the conversation has to be dealt with first, and how to handle a medical certificate that arrives immediately afterwards.
2:30 PM - 3:15 PM
Designing a Genuine Performance Improvement Plan
What a PIP must contain: specific and measurable targets pitched at the required standard rather than an aspirational one, the training, coaching, supervision and resources the employer will provide, scheduled review points, and a realistic duration for the role in question. Drafting the PIP letter. The features that mark a PIP as a paper exercise, and how an employer avoids them.
3:15 PM - 3:30 PM
Break
3:30 PM - 4:15 PM
Running the PIP and Deciding the Outcome
Conducting and recording review meetings, giving feedback while the plan is running rather than banking it for the end, and adjusting for genuine obstacles without abandoning the standard. The four outcomes: improvement and closure, extension, redeployment or role change, and termination. The warnings sequence, and the standard of just cause and excuse applied to a dismissal for poor performance. What the evidence bundle needs to contain.
4:15 PM - 4:45 PM
Scenario Workshop
Participants work anonymised scenarios: a long-serving employee with an unbroken record of satisfactory appraisals, a probationer falling short, and a PIP interrupted by a grievance and a medical certificate. Groups decide the next step at each stage and identify where the employer's position becomes vulnerable.
4:45 PM - 5:00 PM
Wrap-Up and Q&A
Key takeaways, next steps, and close.
Key Outcomes
- Route performance and misconduct down the correct and separate processes
- Set performance standards specific enough that a shortfall can be demonstrated
- Gather and record evidence of underperformance contemporaneously
- Identify underlying causes, including health and resourcing, before treating an issue as performance
- Hold a performance conversation that is direct, fair and properly confirmed in writing
- Design a PIP with genuine targets, real support and scheduled reviews
- Decide and document the outcome, and recognise what turns a performance dismissal into an unfair dismissal claim
Training Mode Physical / Online / Hybrid / e-learning
HRD Corp SBL-Khas Claimable
Level Intermediate, suitable for line managers, supervisors, department heads, HR business partners and industrial relations practitioners
Duration 1 Day (8 Hours) | 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Venue In-house at the client's premises, or delivered via the client's preferred platform (Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or equivalent)
Assessment 10 to 15 question knowledge assessment covering all modules, plus a facilitated scenario workshop
Certificate Certificate of Completion issued to all participants upon full attendance