- When this store manager at L'Oreal was asked to meet with her manager and HR, alarm bells went off.
- She was put on a performance improvement plan she thought was unfair by a manager she found toxic.
- She said keeping receipts and not being afraid to stand up for yourself were key to surviving PIP.
This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with a former employee at L'Oreal who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their career. Business Insider has verified their employment at L'Oreal and their performance improvement plan. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
I'd been working at L'Oreal for about two and a half years when I got an alarming text from my manager.
She said she was meeting with HR and asked me to come to a café to speak with her afterward. I was a store manager at the time. When I arrived at the café, the HR person was still sitting at the table. Alarm bells started going off.
I sat down, feeling confused. They pulled out this piece of paper and told me: "Here are all the things you've done wrong, and if you don't get your act together, we're going to let you go in 30 days."
I was shocked. I had always received good reviews and had been promoted to retail store manager three months before. It was bizarre.
The PIP felt unwarranted
The whole performance improvement plan felt like a reach. They couldn't tell me anything I was doing wrong that I needed to change.
It wasn't that the things on the PIP were made up. They just didn't feel worthy of being on a performance plan.
One of the reasons I was given my PIP was because I hadn't trained the team for our store's reopening after recent renovations. My manager hadn't told me when the store was reopening, so I had yet to start the training. I had the receipts to prove all of this.
Another reason for the PIP was I had misspoken at an event. When the global president of L'Oreal asked me a question about sales I said the wrong figure in my jetlagged state. In the same moment, I checked my binder, where I had the correct figure written down, and quickly corrected myself. Having this instance as a reason for being put on PIP was ridiculous to me. I thought, "I'm only human. Can I not make one mistake?"
On the PIP, it said I need to retrain the team and give weekly status updates to my manager and my manager's boss.
A PIP should be a last resort, not a first warning
As a manager at L'Oreal, I was told that a PIP should never be the first step. You should speak to the employee first and try to rectify the situation. If that doesn't work, the manager should pull in their manager to talk to the employee. If that still doesn't correct the behavior, you can start to think about a PIP. But in my case, it was the first step.
I decided during the meeting not to try to justify myself to my manager. This felt more personal than performance-based: I would speak to HR.
I reached out to HR after the PIP meeting, and started to send her all the receipts. Evidence that my boss and I had had meetings about the store reopening, where I updated her on progress. I also showed HR a document I'd made in preparation for the training before I'd known about the PIP.
The main issue highlighted in the PIP was I hadn't retrained staff in time for the store reopening. I wanted HR to understand I'd never been formally asked.
For the first two weeks of the PIP, it was checking boxes. Doing the weekly status updates and whatever they had asked me to do.
The PIP faded away once HR had the full story
Once HR had all the context and was made aware that this was the first time my boss had critiqued me, it just dissolved. I was on the PIP for the rest of the month technically, but my plan wasn't spoken about again after the first two weeks.
L'Oreal had a strict culture of "Don't tell anybody anything, ever." I only told some of my closest work friends, and they were horrified. They thought I was going to be fired.
Maybe I was naive, but I never really took it as a death sentence because I knew it was unwarranted. I took it as, "If I don't do these performative check-ins, then I was at risk of being fired."
The PIP made me realize that I needed to move departments away from my toxic manager.
I was promoted 5 times after my PIP and left as a global head of department
Less than a year after this PIP happened, I was promoted out of the store into a corporate-level role. I was then working directly below my old manager's boss, whose boss is the president of L'Oreal, the same person I misquoted the sales number to. It became a joke between us about when they "tried to fire me."
I didn't get upset about this because it seemed so absurd. Years later, I discovered that my then-boss was under pressure from her boss.
I went on to be promoted another four times over six years. I left the company as the global head of my department. My salary had tripled since I was on PIP.
I advise anyone worried about being put on PIP to document everything. Have all your receipts and emails so you can stand up for yourself if you're put on PIP unfairly. Don't be afraid to take matters into your own hands — and remember that PIP doesn't have to be a death sentence.