Summary

On HR Voices, Rebecca Taylor and Sara Birmingham, Chief People Officer at Shutterstock, work through a familiar trap: a manager wants to put a newly remote, recently accommodated employee on a PIP, and the request looks airtight. Sara makes the case that most performance problems are management problems in disguise, and that the first three months under an accommodation are a re-onboarding, not a fair sample. They get into why managers who go quiet on anxious employees create the very problem they later want to act on, how to broker the conversation that prevents it, and why the most valuable HR work, the "saves," never shows up on a dashboard. For HR and People leaders who spend their days in the gray area between policy and people.

Chapters

00:00 The Accommodating Conflict scenario

02:30 Why you can't blindly trust a PIP request

06:00 The unseen work behind every PIP

10:00 Three months remote is a re-onboarding

13:30 When managers go quiet on anxious employees

16:30 Tend the team like a garden

19:30 The work is the easy part

21:30 Counting the saves HR never gets credit for

24:30 Approaching success, not underperforming

27:00 The assumption about HR worth challenging

Takeaways

A manager's PIP request is the start of an investigation, not a verdict to act on, especially when remote work and accommodations invite bias.

An accommodation changes how the work gets done, so the first months function as a re-onboarding rather than a fair performance sample.

Managers who go silent to avoid worsening an employee's anxiety usually manufacture the performance problem they later want to address.

The most valuable HR work, the prevented PIPs and resolved conflicts, leaves no paper trail, so track saves and successful PIPs.
Renaming "underperforming" to "approaching success" turns a PIP from a verdict into coaching toward a goal.

Connect with the Guest
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sararbirmingham/
Website: https://www.shutterstock.com/

Sponsor

AllVoices brings all your employee relations work together in one place. No more jumping between spreadsheets, emails, and legacy systems just one place to document and manage reports, cases, investigations, and performance conversations. It helps you run a more consistent process, takes busywork off your plate with AI, and makes it easier to spot trends early, so you can work proactively, not just put out fires.

See a demo at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.allvoices.co/

Tend Your Team Like a Garden

HR Voices

Tend Your Team Like a Garden