They opened a file on you. Open yours.
Fairhanded walks you through every stage of a performance improvement plan — the first 72 hours, every meeting, the endgame — to the best terms you can get. Every step you complete becomes part of your timestamped record.
Is yours survivable — or an exit script? 10 questions, 3 minutes.
- Private by design
- EU servers, encrypted
- Export anytime, forever
- One case, one price — no subscription
Guide — today's step
Your file — entry 12
Recap of Tuesday's check-in sent to R. Alvarez — goals restated in writing, copy kept.
Guide — next step · updated 14:33
Recap is on the record. At Thursday's check-in, ask for both goals in writing — here is the script.
Just put on a PIP? Take a breath. Then take notes.
Is this survivable?
Some plans are. Some are exit-shaped. The difference shows early, if you know where to look — the guide covers it on day one.
Should I sign anything?
Usually you are only acknowledging receipt — but wording matters, and so does timing. The guide covers it on day one.
What do I do first?
Very little, and nothing dramatic. A short list of calm moves, in order — the guide covers it on day one.
The short version
What a performance improvement plan actually is
A performance improvement plan is a document in which an employer writes down that your work is below a standard it names, sets objectives with a date on them, and states what happens if the date arrives and the objectives have not been met. In most countries it has no legal status of its own: no statute requires one, and no statute says what it must contain. What gives it weight is that it starts a written record, and a record kept by one side of a disagreement is the account that survives unless somebody keeps another.
That is the whole mechanism, and it is why the document is not the thing to react to. The plan is your employer's version. What you are deciding, in the first week, is whether there will be a second one.
The long version, including the four shapes a plan takes and how to tell them apart, is in the guide.
What a file does that an article cannot
A guide page can tell you what the law where you live requires, and what the named process at your employer usually involves. It cannot know what your manager said on Tuesday, and it cannot establish when you learned something. Those are the two facts that decide most disagreements about a plan, and they are the two nobody writes down at the time.
So the paid side of Fairhanded is a file rather than more reading. Each entry is stamped with the moment it reached our servers, never from the clock on your device. Once you confirm an entry it seals: its wording and its timestamps cannot be edited afterwards, and a later correction is a second entry that names the first, with both kept. At any point you can export the whole thing as a dated chronology with the original files beside it and an appendix for checking the record, as often as you like, at no extra cost.
None of that requires you to have decided anything. It works the same whether you pass the plan, negotiate an exit, or leave on your own terms — which is the point, because most people do not know which of the three it will be at the moment they need the record to have started.
The free triage
First: find out what you're actually in.
Ten questions. A calm read on whether your plan looks survivable, exit-shaped, or genuinely undecided — and what the first 72 hours should look like in each case. A read, not a verdict: no one can promise you an outcome, and you should distrust anyone who does.
Start the free triage →If you'd rather read before answering: what a performance improvement plan is, or the PIP guide, by country and by employer.
Free triage
03 / 10Had you heard these concerns before the plan appeared?
How it works
Get your read.
The triage places you: survivable, exit-shaped, or undecided. Your guide is built around that read.
Follow a guide that follows your plan.
The next check-in and the last day of the plan, kept in front of you, with the step that belongs to each: what to do this week, what to ask in the next meeting, what to get in writing. You never face a blank page, and every note you make is sealed the day you make it.
every entry, sealed the same day
Arrive at the endgame ready.
Whichever ending is yours, you walk in with terms — and the record that backs them.
Fairhanded is a dashcam for your work life. Most footage is boring — that's the point. But if someone ever rewrites what happened, you'll have the tape.
What you get
A guide built around your plan.
Not a static course. Your plan's dates and your read set the sequence — what to do on day one, what to bring to each check-in, how to approach the endgame. Verdict-shaped, not chat-shaped.
In chess, both players record every move. Nobody calls that distrust.
Same-day timestamps.
Memory fades and bends. A same-day note, timestamped, doesn't.
Private by design.
On your personal device, never the work laptop. Stored encrypted on EU servers, invisible to your employer, deletable by you at any time.
Lawyer-ready export.
Ten minutes to a clean chronology — if it ever comes to that.
However your PIP ends
— passing, negotiating, or leaving — Fairhanded gets you the strongest version of that ending.
Passing
The guide keeps your delivery visible and your goals pinned in writing — and the record proves you met them.
Negotiating
A documented file changes the math on the other side of the table. Terms improve when your chronology is ten minutes from a lawyer's desk.
Leaving
Exit paperwork, benefit eligibility, reference language — the guide walks the details that decide what leaving actually costs.
The name
Before typewriters, the clean final manuscript was called the fair copy, written in a fair hand — the version that counted. And English already gave managers "heavy-handed" and processes "underhanded." You stay fairhanded.
For four hundred years, when the storm was disputed later, the ship's log settled it — because it was written the same day, in a fair hand. This is your log.
What it costs
Two steps, not two tiers.
Step one
The read — free.
The triage and your first read: survivable, exit-shaped, or undecided — plus what your first 72 hours should look like. No card required.
Start the free triage →Step two
The case — $99, one-time.
Everything, for this PIP: a guide that follows your plan, your timestamped file, the endgame playbook, and the lawyer-ready chronology export. One case, one price.
Less than twenty minutes of an employment attorney's time. No subscription. Export always free. Your records remain yours.
The guide
Or start by reading. All of it is free.
Plain explanations of how performance improvement plans work, what the law where you live changes about them, and what the named processes at large employers involve. No account, no email, no card. Each page says when it was last checked and what it rests on.
By country
- UK performance improvement plan: ACAS, and whether to sign
ACAS sets out what a fair capability process contains: support, informal steps first, specific objectives. A plan that skips those falls short.
- On a PIP in the US: no law requires it, and what that means
No US law requires a PIP before a termination. What it does is create the written record both sides will argue from later.
- On a PIP in Germany: the Abmahnung, not the plan
In Germany the plan is management practice and the Abmahnung is the legal instrument. Before either matters, check the two thresholds.
- On a PIP in Spain: the 33-day tariff, and why not to resign
Spain has no statutory PIP. It has two dismissal routes, a 33-day tariff that works as a price list, and a rule that makes resigning expensive.
By employer process
- Amazon PIP: Focus, Pivot, severance and the appeal
Amazon runs two stages before the formal plan, gates internal transfers behind VP approval, and prices every door. Five days to choose between three.
- Microsoft PIP: the 16-week offer and the rehire ban
Microsoft reportedly offers one choice: enter the plan, or take a fixed 16-week separation. Why the transfer block matters more than the rehire ban.
- Google PIP: GRAD ratings, the retired check-in, and the plan
Google's Support Check-In is reported discontinued since 2023, and the plan's reported length varies widely. What is a warning, and what is a plan.
- Meta PIP in 2026: Checkpoint, and what replaced the triggers
Meta replaced its six-tier rating scale with Checkpoint in 2026, so the widely repeated PIP triggers describe a system that no longer exists.
Questions, answered
- Does a PIP mean I am being fired? The four shapes plans take
A plan does not say what the employer has decided, and nobody outside the room can. The four shapes one HR practitioner sorts real plans into.
- Should I sign a PIP? Where it is receipt and where agreement
The signature line means receipt in most templates and agreement in the UK. Where to sign and object separately, and where not to sign at all.
- How long a PIP lasts, and whether it can end early
Thirty, sixty or ninety days is the template answer, and no law here sets a length. Whether you can be dismissed before the date splits by country.
- PIP severance: what to ask for, and when to ask, by country
Severance after a PIP is a statutory right almost nowhere. What you can ask for, and when to ask, set out for ten countries rather than in general.
Fair questions
Is this legal advice?+
No. Fairhanded is structured guidance and record-keeping, and it is not a law firm. Where your situation turns on a legal question — whether a dismissal was fair, what a clause in a settlement agreement does, whether a deadline has run — that belongs with someone qualified where you live. What this does is make that conversation shorter and cheaper: your export is a dated chronology with the documents attached, so a lawyer spends the first ten minutes reading rather than interviewing you.
Isn't documenting adversarial?+
Documenting isn't pessimism, the way a seatbelt isn't an accusation. Your employer began keeping a written record the day it issued the plan, and in most places it is required to. Keeping your own is the ordinary, symmetrical response, and nobody outside the file ever needs to know you are doing it. In chess both players write down every move, and nobody reads that as distrust.
What if I'm hoping to pass?+
Then the guide is aimed at exactly that: visible delivery, goals pinned in writing so they cannot move mid-plan, recaps after every check-in, clean conduct throughout. People do pass plans and stay for years. The work that makes passing more likely — getting objectives stated precisely, getting support you were promised in writing, keeping a contemporaneous record of what you delivered — is the same work that leaves you with a record if the ground shifts. Nothing is wasted either way, which is why the guide never asks you to pick an ending in advance.
Can my employer see this?+
No. Fairhanded lives on your personal device and our servers, never the work laptop and never anywhere your employer has access. Use a personal email address and a personal browser and there is nothing on your employer's systems to find. We also build no employer-facing product of any kind: there is no HR dashboard, no company plan, and no version of this that an employer can buy.
Where does my data live?+
On EU servers in Helsinki, encrypted, under European privacy law. Every third party that touches your data is named in the privacy policy in force, and a new one cannot be added before a new dated version of that policy is published. You can export everything or delete everything at any time. We do not claim we are unable to read your data — that would not be true, and a privacy promise that is not true is worth nothing.
What if it's not for me?+
Start with the free read. Ten questions, three minutes, no card, and it tells you what your own plan looks like rather than what happened to somebody else. The guide is free and open too. By the time anything costs money you will have seen how this reasons, which is the only honest way to sell it.
What does the paid case actually include?+
One plan, one price, no subscription: a guide that follows your plan's own dates and your read, the timestamped file you build as you go, the endgame material for negotiating or leaving, and the chronology export. The export stays free and stays available after the plan ends — the file outlasts the plan. If a second plan arrives years later, that is a separate case.
My PIP has already ended. Is it too late?+
No, and this is the most common version of the question. A record built after the fact is worth less than a contemporaneous one, but it is not worth nothing: what you write down today is dated today, honestly, and it is still better than a memory reconstructed under pressure in six months. More to the point, the clocks that matter after a plan ends are short in most countries, and the guide's deadline material is written for exactly that position.
Which countries is this written for?+
The guide covers the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Estonia, each as its own page, because the answer to almost every question changes at the border. In Germany the operative document is the Abmahnung rather than the plan; in Estonia a plan has no legal status and the hoiatus does; in Spain resigning costs you a tariff the law would otherwise hand you. If your country is not on that list, the free read still places you and the general material still applies, but take anything jurisdiction-specific to an adviser where you are.
Some of this isn't up to you. What's left is.
10 questions · 3 minutes · no card required