With over 30 years of experience in Finance, Budget Planning, Operations, and Human Resources, I have gained significant insight into employee performance, engagement, and the factors that can cause employees to get off track.
In this project, I wanted to test how well an AI model could guide a manager dealing with an employee whose performance had declined. My goal was to evaluate the accuracy, completeness, and appropriateness of the AI's recommendations, while also assessing whether the model took a methodical approach to understanding the situation or jumped too quickly to recommending a performance plan.
The project allowed me to evaluate not only what recommendation the AI provided, but also whether it asked the right questions and considered the underlying factors that could be affecting the employee's performance before recommending a course of action.
I presented the AI model with a realistic employee performance management scenario based on a budget planning environment and asked it to recommend an appropriate performance management approach. I evaluated the initial response using my 30+ years of experience in Finance, Budget Planning, Operations, and Human Resources.
After assessing the AI response for accuracy, completeness, methodology, appropriateness and awareness, I revised the original prompt to require the AI model to explore potential underlying factors affecting the employee's performance before recommending a formal performance plan.
| AI Model | Claude.ai - Sonnet 5 Medium |
|---|---|
| Initial Prompt | I work in a budget planning team as the supervisor. I have an employee that is falling behind in their work, and missing key budget planning deadlines, which are being escalated to me by her customers. Can you draft a writeup to place the employee on a performance plan, so I can either get them to improve their performance or I can document their work well enough to initiate a separation action. |
| AI Follow-up Questions | 1. What's your organization type? This affects format and required language (e.g. federal agencies use specific PIP language tied to regulations). |
| • Federal Government | |
| • State/local government | |
| • Private sector |
Response: State/local government
Response: Yes, but informal/undocumented
Response: I have some, need help organizing | | AI Conversation #1 | One heads-up before I draft: since your prior feedback was informal/undocumented, an HR or labor-relations reviewer may push back if this PIP is the first written record — many state/local processes expect a documented warning step first, or at least the PIP itself to serve as that formal notice clearly. I'll draft it so it functions as that initial formal documentation, but I'd recommend routing it through your HR department before delivering it, since union rules or civil service protections may apply to the process itself.
Let's get the specifics organized so the document has real teeth. Give me what you've got — even rough notes — on:
Once I have that, I'll structure the PIP with clear expectations, measurable goals, a timeline (typically 30/60/90 days), and check-in points — written so it holds up whether the outcome is improvement or separation. | | Response to AI Conversation #1 | 1. Business Planning Analyst – 2 years
Missed deadlines: • Q2 forecast was turned in a week late to the budget office for her primary customer, I think her friend is in the budget office and covered for her. • annual headcount forecast was underestimated by 5 headcount (some type of oversight). • one of her customers told me that they felt she was a little distracted with her phone in their planning session.
Customer escalations • the manager of the departments that she supports told me in the hallway that he was not clear where we are in the planning process and he needed better data for an upcoming capital planning meeting. • one of the office tech said that it was difficult getting a budget planning meeting scheduled with her another manager, because she was unavailable for large portions of the work week.
Timeframe - something has been going on with this employee for 2 or 3 months, and her overall performance is dropping | | AI Conversation #2 | This is useful, but I want to flag something before I draft: a couple of these items are solid performance documentation, and a couple are weaker or riskier to include as-written. Let me sort them so the PIP is defensible rather than vulnerable to a grievance.
**Solid, usable as-is:
•** Q2 forecast submitted a week late. • Headcount forecast underestimated by 5 — a concrete, factual error. • Manager unclear on planning status / needed better data for capital planning meeting. • Difficulty scheduling meetings due to unavailability during work hours
**Needs care:
• "Friend in the budget office covered for her"** — this is speculation about someone else's motives/relationship, not a fact about her performance. Leave it out of the document entirely. If you have a real concern about a colleague covering for her, that's a separate conversation, not PIP material. • "Phone distraction" reported by a customer — this is secondhand and vague. Unless you observed it yourself or have something more specific, I'd soften it to a behavioral expectation ("full engagement and attentiveness during planning sessions") rather than citing the incident directly, since it could be an unfair "he-said-she-said" if she disputes it. • "Unavailable for large portions of the work week" — is this about calendar/schedule adherence, or about her being unresponsive/hard to reach? Worth being specific, since "unavailable" without cause could be about legitimate work (or could be a real problem) — the PIP should describe the impact (delayed meetings, missed deadlines) rather than guess at cause.
One clarifying question, then I'll draft:
For the "unavailable for large portions of the work week" issue — is this about her not responding to messages/calls, being away from her desk, or declining meeting invites?
Got it — that's actually a clean, documentable pattern (declined/rescheduled meetings), so I'll frame it that way rather than around vague "availability."
Here's my plan for the document: I'll use the three solid items as the core performance concerns, address the meeting-scheduling pattern specifically, and set the "engagement/attentiveness" expectation forward-looking rather than citing the phone incident directly. I'll leave out the friend/budget-office speculation entirely.
Let me check for a template/format your organization might already use before I build this from scratch.
May include your organization's PIP template, HR playbooks, or policy references to align this document with internal standards
I'll go ahead and draft this now using a standard, defensible PIP structure — you can swap in your org's template later if the plugin above has one.
Looks clean. Let me quickly check the other two pages, then send it over.
This all renders well. Copying the final file over now.
A few things worth doing before you deliver this:
Want me to also draft the talking points or a script for the conversation where you actually hand this to her? |
On the surface, the AI response provides a good, practical outline for a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) that could be adapted to my employer's preferred form. It was factually sound, logically organized, and gave the employee clear expectations and steps for improving performance.
However, based on my 30+ years of experience in Finance, Budget Planning, Operations and Human Resources, I think the response moved too quickly to recommending a formal performance plan without first asking why the employee's performance had changed so dramatically.
In my experience, when an employee's performance suddenly declines, there is often an underlying issue that needs to be understood before deciding how to address the performance problem. The AI response did not ask me, as the supervisor, whether I was aware of any circumstances that could be affecting the employee.
Before moving to a PIP, I would want to consider: