A performance improvement plan should never be the first time an employee learns their work is falling short. That single principle anchors a recent analysis by Carli Smith, an attorney with FordHarrison who practices labor and employment law and business immigration, published September 30 by HR Daily Advisor. Her framework, drawn from an admittedly unusual muse — Taylor Swift's widely publicized sourdough baking — maps the mechanics of bread-making onto the people-process decisions employers face when an employee's performance slides.

The timing matters. PIPs remain one of the most litigation-prone documents in HR practice, because they often double as the paper trail justifying termination. Smith's argument pushes back on that reflex: a PIP built to fail helps no one, and courts and juries tend to notice the difference between a plan designed to improve performance and one designed to document a firing that has already been decided.

Check the ingredients before you start

Before placing an employee on a formal plan, Smith writes, employers should ask four diagnostic questions:

• Were expectations clearly communicated?
• Did the employee receive adequate training for their role?
• Does the employee have the necessary resources to succeed — including tools to self-solve or ask for help — and have they used those resources?
• Has the employee previously received meaningful feedback about the performance issue?

Just as a sourdough starter needs regular feeding before it becomes active enough to bake with, employees need the right tools, resources, training and clear expectations before a PIP can fairly measure their performance. If the answer to any of the four questions is no, the problem may sit with the employer's process rather than the employee.

One step is not enough

Smith compares a PIP's structure to the stretch-and-fold technique in sourdough baking, where each round of folding develops the gluten and strengthens the dough. A single intervention does not produce a loaf; a single document does not produce improvement.

Her practical guidance: after identifying that an employee is struggling, employers should not hand over a PIP and wait for the deadline to pass. Instead, they should schedule regular check-ins throughout the plan's duration — asking questions, providing feedback and documenting progress toward the defined outcomes. Those check-ins should include directly observing the employee's performance or work product, so managers can identify and address obstacles as they arise.

Most importantly, Smith writes, the employer must make sure the employee understands what successful improvement actually looks like. An employee who does not know the target cannot hit it.

Set a realistic clock — and keep it fixed

The hardest part of both sourdough and performance management, according to Smith, is the waiting. Dough needs time to bulk ferment; employees need a reasonable opportunity to apply new skills, incorporate feedback and demonstrate improvement. The appropriate timeframe will depend on the circumstances and the specific performance issue at hand.

But Smith draws a hard line on two managerial habits. Employers should avoid setting unrealistic deadlines, and they should avoid continually moving the goalposts once the plan is in place. Both undermine the plan's core function: creating enough time to determine whether the employee can ultimately meet expectations.

For HR leaders, this is where documentation discipline pays off. A plan with clear metrics, fixed dates and a defined review point gives leadership a defensible, consistent basis for whatever decision follows — improvement, extension or exit.

Test the loaf under heat

Sourdough only proves itself in the oven. Similarly, Smith argues, an employee's improvement only proves itself under real working conditions after the plan concludes. Employers should evaluate whether the employee is still consistently meeting deadlines, whether errors are decreasing, whether procedures are being followed — and whether, once on their own and under pressure, the employee has actually addressed the specific concerns identified in the PIP.

This is the evaluation layer many organizations skip. Completing the plan is not the same as demonstrating durable improvement, and the distinction matters for both retention decisions and any later legal scrutiny.

The goal is a better loaf, not a discarded one

Smith's closing point carries the most weight for people-process strategy: a PIP should not automatically mean termination. If the goal of baking sourdough were simply to throw away the loaf, she writes, there would be no point in feeding the starter, stretching and folding the dough, waiting for fermentation and baking.

Applied to performance management, the purpose of a PIP should be twofold: give the employee a clear understanding of role expectations, the specific performance problem and a structured opportunity to improve, while giving leadership a meaningful way to evaluate whether improvement actually occurs. When employers design plans with that dual function — rather than as a termination formality — the document becomes a retention tool instead of a lawsuit magnet.

Smith, a DePaul University College of Law graduate who earned her J.D. magna cum laude, advises employers on workplace matters drawing on experience in both employment litigation and corporate immigration. Her sourdough framing is playful, but the underlying compliance message is straightforward: before the next PIP goes out, HR teams would do well to audit whether their plans feed, fold, wait and test — or simply serve as a pre-written ending.