Dear Deepa Sethi,
There need not be an exclusive policy on the Performance Improvement Plan (PIP). It can be a part of the Policy on Performance Appraisal (PA).
When an employee fails to meet the performance criteria, he/she is placed under PIP. The rationale behind placing an employee under PIP is to give him/her a chance to improve himself/herself. It is a transitory period either for continuation or the termination of employment. In the policy on PA, you must clearly mention the points related to the process of performance measurement. How the performance will be measured, when will it be measured, who will measure whose performance, the performance cycle etc.
While designing the policy, roughly you can include the following points:
a) Who will be placed under PIP and under what circumstances he/she will be placed?
b) The duration of the PIP
c) What amount of time the HOD is expected to spend in order to elevate the performance of the underperforming employee
d) What will be the frequency of the feedback to employee during PIP and who will give it?
e) On completion of the PIP, who will measure the performance, and on what parameters will it be measured?
f) What happens if the employee fails to meet the performance targets? Will it lead to the discontinuation of employment? Will the employee be given still more grace periods?
Caveat: - In this forum, there were complaints about how the managers used PIP as a weapon to harass the juniors. Sometimes the management decided to terminate someone and then PIP was used as an alibi for the removal. By resorting to these means the organisation lose its credibility in the eyes of the other serving employees. Therefore, adequate precautions must be taken to ensure that injustice is neither to the employee nor to the organisation.
All the best!
Dinesh Divekar