Manager put me on a PIP right after I got back from paternity leave — is this even legal? Should I quit?
Long one, sorry, but I need advice.
I've been at this company (australia based GCC) for almost 6 years, last 3 as a vendor manager after getting. I used to consistently outperform my peers throughout with no contest and got great ratings and feedbacks initially.
We've gone through a few manager changes. Current skip-level is a corporate lawyer with zero background in this field. He basically only listens to the managers below him ( all late 40s/50s), and from what I can tell, kind of paranoid about their own jobs since this company's redundancy process is brutal. Ever since he came in, all the standing I built under my old managers has just been dismantled. Now I have to apparently invent work to look busy and get side-eyed if I don't.
My rating got tanked last year because my previous manager did not record the work in place and went on a nice long holiday, and my skip practically sweet talked me into not making this a big deal and was fairly compensated with a decent hike. Then again this year, all the tasks I did recieved exceptional feedback expect from my manager and skip, they just wanted to nitpick and not give me feedback on this either. This year I was 95% done with a big piece of work when I had to go on leave — my wife's pregnancy was high-risk and I was still working while she was in the hospital.
Company gives dads 16 weeks parental leave, which I took after the baby arrived. The manager nor the skip flagged the unfinished 5% before I left, neither did they mention anything on the lines of finishing my performance review before hand (I went on leaves 2 months before the review happens). Came back and got told it was on me to have sorted that out beforehand. Meanwhile my wife works at a Big 4 firm and they handled her hand off and review internally with no drama.
So I got back last week, I did not agree with the crap reasons they mentioned on my review so I pushed back on my rating with my manager and the skip-level. Instead of actually addressing it, they focused on the random bits of the year, did not acknowledge the appreciation recieved from my peers but said it's a 'mixture of all things' and I had failed in delivering it all and are now saying I should go on a PIP. IMMEDIATELY . No HR in the room, no feedback on what went wrong, nothing.
Is that even legal — PIP right after coming back from parental leave?
I'm desperate to quit but eventually but I've got a newborn now and can't afford to be jobless for months, especially since I need remote work. And yeah, it stings extra because there are people on this team doing basically nothing and they never get touched.
Any advice on the legal side or how to play the PIP conversation would help a lot right now.
TL;DR: Been at a non-Indian company 6 years, 3 as vendor manager, used to be a top performer. New skip-level manager (no relevant experience, listens only to insecure senior managers) has sidelined me. Got a bad rating two years running. This year I left a task 95% done to take paternity leave after my wife's high-risk pregnancy — nobody flagged it before I left, got blamed for it after. Challenged my rating on return, and instead of addressing it they're pushing me toward a PIP with no HR involved. Want to know if that's legal and how to handle it. Can't quit yet — new baby, need to find remote work first.
(I had to use claude to make it more refined because I'm raging, I've added few more details which were missing)