This essay as told is based on a transcribed conversation with a former L’Oréal employee who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect his career. Business Insider verified their employment at L’Oréal and their performance improvement plan. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
I had been working at L’Oréal for about two and a half years when I received an alarming message from my manager.
She said she was meeting with HR and asked me to come to a coffee shop to talk to her afterwards. I was a store manager at the time. When I arrived at the cafe, the HR person was still sitting at the table. The alarm bells began to ring.
I sat down, confused. They took out this piece of paper and said to 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 prior. It was weird.
PIP seemed unjustified
The whole performance improvement plan felt like a scope. They couldn’t tell me anything that I was doing wrong and that I needed to change.
It was not that the elements of PIP were made up. They simply didn’t feel worthy of participating in a performance plan.
One of the reasons I received my PIP was because I had not trained the team for the reopening of our store after the recent renovations. My manager hadn’t told me when the store would reopen, so I hadn’t started training yet. I had the receipts to prove it all.
Another reason for PIP was that I spoke poorly at an event. When the global president of L’Oréal asked me a question about sales, I answered the wrong number due to my time difference. At the same time, I checked my binder, where I had written the correct number, and quickly corrected myself. Having this instance as a reason to be put on PIP was ridiculous to me. I thought, “I’m only human. Can I not make a single mistake?
On the PIP it stated that I needed 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’Oréal, I was told that a PIP should never be the first step. You should first talk to the employee and try to rectify the situation. If that doesn’t work, the manager should call in their manager to talk to the employee. If this still doesn’t correct the behavior, you may want to start thinking 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. It seemed more personal than performance-based: I would talk to HR.
I contacted HR after the PIP meeting and started sending them all the receipts. Evidence that my boss and I had meetings about reopening the store, where I updated her on the progress. I also showed HR a document that I had produced in preparation for the training before knowing the PIP.
The main issue highlighted in the PIP was that I had not retrained staff in time for the store to reopen. I wanted HR to understand that I had never been officially asked.
For the first two weeks of PIP, it was all about ticking boxes. Doing the weekly status updates and whatever else they asked me to do.
PIP Disappeared Once HR Got the Whole Story
Once HR had all the context and understood that this was the first time my boss had criticized me, everything just dissolved. Technically, I was on PIP for the rest of the month, but my plan wasn’t brought up again after the first two weeks.
L’Oréal had a strict culture of “Never tell anyone.” 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 interpreted it as, “If I don’t make these performative recordings, I might get fired.” »
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 Global Department Head
Less than a year after that PIP, I was promoted out of the store to a corporate level role. I then worked directly under the boss of my former manager, whose boss is the president of L’Oréal, the same person whose sales number I misquoted. It became a joke between us about when they “tried to fire me.”
It didn’t upset me because it seemed so absurd. Years later, I discovered that my then-boss was under pressure from her boss.
I was then promoted four times in six years. I left the company as the global head of my department. My salary has tripled since I benefited from PIP.
I advise anyone worried about being put on PIP to document everything. Have all your receipts and emails so you can defend yourself if you are unfairly subject to PIP. Don’t be afraid to take matters into your own hands and remember that PIP doesn’t have to be a death sentence.
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