Performance Improvement Plans

Although they can vary greatly, generally a Performance Improvement Plan (“PIP”) identifies specific issues or deficiencies with an employee’s job performance and gives the worker goals and requirements they must meet within a particular timeframe. Most PIPs last for either 30, 60 or 90 days. Typically, an employee who fails to meet the requirements of a PIP would be fired.

Although a PIP is supposed to be a tool to help underperforming employees, employers often use them to ty to justify firing an employee for an unlawful reason. In other words, they are used to cover up unlawful discrimination or retaliation. For example, employers sometimes use the PIP to claim it was fair and gave the employee a chance to save their job, or to show that the employee failed to meet the company’s supposedly legitimate expectations.

While a PIP might make it harder to prove the employer’s true reasons for firing an employee, a bona fide PIP would include realistic goals and a plan to achieve them, including providing the employee the time, resources, tools and support necessary to do so.

In contrast, when an employer uses a PIP to try to create a justification to fire an employee it is likely to include vague, subjective, unrealistic, or even impossible goals or requirements. The fact that the PIP was unjustified, unreasonable, or impossible can be evidence to help support an employee’s discrimination or retaliation claim.

At Rabner Baumgart Ben-Asher & Nirenberg, P.C, our New Jersey employment lawyers represent employees who have been subjected to unfair and unreasonable PIPs being used to hide the fact that they were wrongfully terminated.

Another tactic employers use is to offer an employee the choice either to go on a PIP or to accept a severance package. In many of those instances, the employee might be told that they would forfeit any right to receive severance pay if they chose to go on the PIP and fail to meet its requirements. For an employee to accept the severance offer, they inevitably would have to sign a separation agreement that gives up their potential legal claims against the employer.

As a result, if you are given this type of choice, it can be very important to have an experienced New Jersey employment law attorney help you analyze your options before you decide whether to accept the severance that has been offered to you, try to negotiate for a better severance offer, or go onto the PIP.

Of course, PIPs are not the only way employers seek to disguise discrimination or retaliation. For example, they also use unfair and baseless negative employee performance reviews to try to make it seem as if the employee deserves to be fired or subjected to another form of unwarranted discipline.

If you have been unfairly placed on a PIP, or believe your employer is using a PIP to try to cover up a discriminatory or retaliatory reason for firing you, then we can help. From our office in Bergen County, our firm represents workers throughout the state of New Jersey.

You can contact us online or call us at (201) 777-2250 to schedule your initial consultation with one of our New Jersey employment lawyers. We are located at 135 Chestnut Ridge Road, Suite 230, Montvale, New Jersey 07645.

You can learn more about your employment law rights on our New Jersey Employment Lawyer Blog. For example, you might be interested in reading the following articles about cases involving employees who filed lawsuits when they were fired after they had been placed on a PIP:

• New Jersey’s Whistleblower Law Applies to Employees Working Out of State
• New Jersey Court Permits Employee to Proceed with Disability Discrimination Lawsuit
• Appellate Court Reduces $10 Million Punitive Damages Award For Age Discrimination to $2,465,000