A PIP Is Not a Tool for Forcing Employees Out: The Workplace Bullying Red Lines Managers Most Often Cross During Performance Improvement Plans

“Our company placed an underperforming employee on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) to help improve the employee’s work performance. Unexpectedly, the employee refused to cooperate and instead filed a workplace bullying complaint against the manager. How should we handle this?”

When an employee has demonstrated poor performance over an extended period, implementing a PIP is ordinarily a legitimate and necessary management measure.

However, I would like to remind HR professionals and managers at all levels of one critical point: the real risk is often not whether the company conducts performance management, but whether the entire Performance Improvement Plan can demonstrate that its purpose was to help the employee improve—not to force the employee to resign.

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Once a manager first decides that a particular employee must leave and then works backward to design impossible targets, repeatedly reprimand the employee in public, or deliberately withdraw essential work resources, the PIP may be transformed from a lawful exercise of reasonable managerial authority into workplace bullying disguised as a formal management process.

To reduce legal risk, companies must observe at least the following three red lines.

1. Targets May Be Demanding, but They Must Not Be Designed to Make a Particular Employee Fail

The central legal issue in any PIP is whether the manager’s requirements exceed what is necessary and reasonable for legitimate business purposes.

Improvement targets should therefore be based on the employee’s existing job duties, historical performance data, and the standards applied to employees in comparable positions. They should also comply with objective standards and the principle of proportionality.

For example, if employees in the same position would ordinarily need one week to complete a task, but a particular employee is given only one day, the target may be unreasonable.

The same concern arises where the company knows that the employee lacks the necessary authority but nevertheless holds the employee fully responsible for the final outcome. Similarly, if the employee gradually meets the assigned targets but the manager repeatedly adds new requirements or raises the threshold, this practice of “moving the goalposts” may be regarded not as reasonable management, but as a deliberate attempt to manufacture failure.

What the company must ultimately prove is not merely that the employee failed to meet the target. It must also prove that the target was reasonable, understandable, and realistically achievable for any employee holding the same position.

2. Managers May Correct Poor Performance, but They Must Not Attack the Employee’s Character or Dignity

One of the most common mistakes made by managers is turning the statement “your work performance is inadequate” into “you are fundamentally incapable.”

Statements such as:

“You are the only person in the entire company who cannot do this.”

“You are completely incompetent.”

“If you refuse to sign the PIP, you should resign.”

may take only a few seconds to say, but they may later become critical evidence in a workplace bullying investigation, labor inspection, or civil lawsuit.

PIP meetings should focus on specific conduct, work results, and concrete improvement measures. Managers should avoid publicly singling out the employee, humiliating the employee in group chats, making personal attacks, or using threats or inducements to pressure the employee to resign.

The company should also provide corresponding training, system access, necessary information, and a reasonable improvement period. If the company imposes targets without providing the tools needed to achieve them, it will be difficult to prove that the PIP was genuinely intended to support improvement.

At every meeting, the employee should be given a meaningful opportunity to explain the difficulties preventing achievement of the targets, request necessary resources, and express their views. This is not merely good management practice; it is also an important element of procedural fairness.

If an employee refuses to sign a PIP document, the company may record the refusal. However, it should not force the employee to admit that they are incapable of performing the job, nor should the refusal to sign automatically be treated as misconduct or proof of incompetence.

3. Without Detailed Process Records, Even a Reasonable PIP May Ultimately Fail

When a dispute arises, managers often say:

“We genuinely gave the employee many opportunities.”

The problem is that, once the matter enters litigation, the court will examine what evidence the company can produce to demonstrate that the PIP process was fair and that dismissal was used only as a last resort.

Every meeting during the PIP period should therefore be fully documented. The record should include the areas in which the employee failed to meet expectations, the areas in which improvement was achieved, the employee’s explanations, the assistance provided by the company, and the objectives for the next stage.

The company should not record only deficiencies while ignoring progress. Nor should it introduce a new scoring method after the employee meets the original targets, raise the standards without justification, or create the false appearance that the employee has failed.

Particular caution is required when the employee has already filed a complaint involving workplace bullying, sexual harassment, unlawful workplace conduct, or a similar matter. In such circumstances, the company should immediately implement anti-retaliation safeguards.

The manager named in the complaint should generally not remain the sole decision-maker regarding the outcome of the PIP. Any significant adverse employment action should also be independently reviewed by HR, legal counsel, senior management, or another appropriate decision-making body.

Otherwise, even where genuine performance concerns existed before the complaint, the close timing between the complaint and the adverse action may create an appearance of retaliation.

This may not only undermine the validity of the PIP, but also expose both the manager and the company to additional legal risk arising from alleged workplace bullying or retaliatory treatment.

Attorney Chen Yeh-Hsin’s Reminder

A complete and lawful PIP should contain reasonable objectives, necessary resources, respectful communication, a genuine opportunity for both sides to be heard, complete documentation, and an appropriate review process.

Managers are certainly entitled—and often obligated—to manage strictly and require satisfactory performance. However, the difference between strict performance management and malicious bullying intended to force an employee out often depends on whether the company can prove that every requirement was necessary, reasonable, and consistently applied.

Managers responsible for implementing Performance Improvement Plans should therefore ask themselves: Is your company’s PIP process genuinely helping employees succeed, or is it deliberately creating circumstances designed to make them fail?