A performance improvement plan is only as good as the record behind it — and that record is almost always the part nobody builds. The plan itself is a one-page form you can find free in ten seconds. What is missing, every time, is the twelve weeks of dated notes underneath it, the proof that the support you promised actually arrived, and a way to tell whether you wrote any of it down while you still remembered it.
This kit builds that record. It is an eleven-tab workbook for Excel and Google Sheets, plus eight corrective-action documents shipped twice over — once as a fillable PDF and once as an editable Word file you can reword before you issue it. Every employee name, site and date you see in the screenshots and in the pre-loaded example is fictional, invented for the walkthrough and meant to be overwritten with your own.
What makes this different from a free PIP template?
Free templates give you the form. This gives you the file the form sits in — and three things a form cannot do.
1. Two dates on every record, and a score for the gap
The Evidence Log keeps the date it happened apart from the date you wrote it down, computes the days between them, and scores each record from that gap: 3 points if it was logged within two days, 2 within a week, 1 within thirty days, nothing after that. Add a point if you raised it with the employee at the time, and a point if a witness or a document backs it up. The total bands the record Strong, Good, Weak or Reconstructed, and nothing logged more than thirty days late can rise above Reconstructed, whatever else is true about it.
That distinction is the one nothing else in this market makes. A note written the same week carries detail a note written months afterwards cannot recover, however accurate the later one feels — and the gap between those two dates is the first thing anyone reading the file afterwards will notice. Recording it is not a legal test and the workbook does not pretend it is one; it is an honest read on your own documentation habit, and the only person it is for is you.
2. Every checkpoint date, worked out for you
Type a start date and a number of weeks. The Plan Builder derives all three check-in dates and the fixed review date from those two entries, so nothing is typed twice and nothing drifts. Then it reads them against today: the Dashboard shows the next date any plan owes somebody, counts check-ins whose date has passed with no meeting recorded, and flags any plan sitting past its review date with no outcome written down — the quiet failure that turns a formal plan into an open-ended one.
3. A readiness gate that says no
The Plan Builder runs five checks before it will call a plan ready to issue: is the deficiency stated in facts rather than adjectives, does the standard carry a number, a rate or a date, is the support named, are the check-ins spaced across the plan, and are there at least two Strong records behind it. Until all five pass, the verdict column says which one failed, in words — not a red cell, a sentence you can act on.
How do you write a performance standard someone can actually meet?
You write one that carries a number, a rate or a deadline, describes a behavior rather than a trait, and can be checked on any given day without asking anyone’s opinion.
The Standards Library holds 54 rewrites across 6 deficiency categories — quality of work, attendance and timekeeping, and four more. Each row pairs the vague version you were about to write with a measurable version, plus how it is measured and by whom, where the evidence comes from, and a suggested timeframe. Find the row closest to your situation, take the rewrite, and adjust the numbers to the bar you already hold others to.
The Plan Builder then checks your standard against the same test. A standard with no figure in it does not pass, and the plan does not become ready to issue.
Try the standard-writing half free
The Standards Library is the tab most people reach for first, so a cut of it is free and ungated: The Measurable-Standard Rewriter gives you the five tests, twelve worked rewrites spanning all six categories, one of them walked through the tests line by line, and a blank grid to write your own. No email, no signup — and if it is all you need, keep it and go no further.
Are you treating similar cases consistently?
The Consistency Check tab is not typed at all — it reads the Plan Builder. Every open plan is set beside the other plans filed under the same deficiency category and compared on how long it runs, whether an earlier step is on file, and how much evidence sits behind it. Then it names the difference in a sentence.
A difference is not a fault. Two people in the same category can be on plans of different lengths for good reasons. But an unexplained one is worth being able to account for, and no PIP template on the market looks across your plans at all.
The ladder, in one file
Most template packs ship the coaching note, the verbal warning, the written warning and the plan as four unconnected documents. Here the Warning Register carries the verbal note, the written warning and the final written warning as dated rows — what it was about, the standard set at the time, who issued it, whether the employee acknowledged it, and how long it stays live under your policy, which you set. The Plan Builder reads that register, so a plan knows what came before it, and the Dashboard counts the steps still live today.
Support Delivered does the same for the other half of the promise. Every plan offers something — a shadow shift, a revised template, a schedule change, paid training. Each promise gets its own line with an owner, a status and a delivered-on date, and anything still unarranged after a check-in has passed is flagged. “We offered support” stops being a claim and becomes a record.
Fillable documents, plus Word twins
The eight documents cover the whole ladder: a coaching conversation note, a verbal warning file note, a written warning, a final written warning, the performance improvement plan itself, a check-in record, an evidence log sheet and a plan close-out record. All eight are fillable PDFs — 228 fields in total — so you can type in them on screen, or print them and write.
All eight also ship as editable Word files, because the wording on a corrective-action document is yours and you should be able to change it. Nothing is locked.
Own it, don’t rent it
Performance software prices every employee on your roster whether or not any of them is on a plan, and most of it carries a monthly floor that a ten-person business is paying for one open case. This is one workbook and eight documents, bought once, used for as many plans as you run — and the file stays yours, with the records in it, after you stop paying anyone anything.
The fine print, said plainly
This kit is not legal advice and applies no legal test. It does not assess whether a plan or a dismissal is lawful anywhere, and nothing in it is a substitute for advice from a qualified employment lawyer in your jurisdiction. What it does is make your own record complete, dated and consistent — which is a documentation job, not a legal one. Before you act on a plan’s outcome, take the completed file to somebody qualified to read it.
