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Tend Your Team Like a Garden
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/
View all episodes
By Rebecca TaylorSummary
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/