Human Resource Blog

90 Day Performance Plan

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An employee recently received a 90 day performance plan (that she needs to improve in 90 days or she is out) from her new supervisor. She was told only verbally what improvements are needed, before this. Prior to this, the employee received 2 postive reviews and a promotion, under another supervisor. The last positive review was only 2 months ago.

My questions are:

1) If the employee feels this 90-day plan is based on examples that are not true, what should she do?

2) Is it legal for an employee to get a 90 day plan (based on few verbal conversations) without a formal written performance review?

3) When the employee approached the current supervisor to get more insight into the 90 day plan and to understand how he would measure her performance within 90 days, he said he will assign his own projects to evaluate her on. While the 90 day plan (reviewed with HR in his office) mentions that she will continue to work on my current clients and she will be measured on that.

The employee does not think she can achieve what he wants in 90 days if she is constantly thrown into new projects. Is this even legal? Is the new supervisor out to get her?

4) The employee has written proof that counters many examples indicated the 90 day plan. Can she use that to talk to HR?

5) I always hear that boss essentially wins in these situations, understandably, but if this is unjust and an attempt to make the employee the scapegoat, how should she approach this situation?

Thanks.

The practice that is described is not an unusual way to handle an employee whose performance needs to be improved. In fact, it’s considered a “best practice” in the HR world. (There is almost no state or federal law that governs performance evaluations and 90 day plans.)

 

It is perfectly acceptable — and very common — for the new supervisor to have different expectations from the old supervisor. It does sound like this supervisor is flexing his muscles a bit, to let employees know that he has the right to change things.

 

Most states operate under the “employment at will” doctrine, which means that any employer can fire any worker at any time, for any reason or for no reason. However, many companies have the policy that a supervisor should work with an employee to try to improve his or her performance, before terminating the employee. So it is possible that the supervisor wants this employee out. Or, the supervisor may genuinely be trying to improve the employee’s performance.

 

There is no requirement for a formal performance evaluation to be done before implementing a 90-day plan. In fact, many companies have a policy that formal performance evaluations are only done once or twice a year.

 

A supervisor who waited for the annual evaluation to address a performance issue would be doing a very poor job. In fact, this supervisor seems to be acting in a responsible way. Discussing the plan with the employee, with an HR person present is a good start. That conversation, and not any subsequent ones without HR present, is the most important one.

Ideally, the items on the plan are objective, rather than matters of opinion. Being on time, or selling 100 widgets, are examples of objective performance. “Having a good attitude” is an example of subjective performance.  

The primary focus of any 90-day performance plan is the future, not the past. Suppose one item on the 90 day plan is “Come to work on time.” If the employee has never been tardy in the past, that’s going to be an easy goal for her to meet in the future, isn’t it?

 

In 90 days, the employee’s performance will be evaluated again…based on the goals on the performance plan. So, the employee would be wise to focus on those goals, and consider other projects from the supervisor as of secondary importance. In 90 days, it’s going to be hard for the supervisor to say, “Jane excelled at everything on our performance plan, but I want to fire her anyway because she didn’t do X, Y and Z, which aren’t on the 90 day plan.”

 

Doing so would defeat the purpose of having a performance plan. It’s likely that the HR person would have a serious problem with this tactic (unless Jane has committed a very serious violation of company policy along the way.)

 

If the employee feels that the past examples on the performance plan are completely false, based on gossip, or unethical, then she might want to discuss that with the HR person. For example, if the performance plan said that she has stolen from the company in the past, it might be wise to address that issue now. Waiting to address the items on the performance plan will make it look like the employee is creating excuses for her poor performance.

 

However, if the discrepancies are minor, then it’s wiser for the employee to focus on her performance now.

 

Any employee who has agreed to a 90 day performance plan would be wise to also update her resume, and perhaps begin looking for a new job (on her own time.) If things work out with her new supervisor, great. If not, she will not be caught by surprise when she is terminated.