PIP and similar things also get "misused" with other anti-management techniques like stack ranking.

Someone I know got put on a PIP solely because the dictates from Upper Management said that annual review scores must have a certain distribution and average per team - and that naturally means someone it at the bottom. And the dictated numbers means that people with lower scores must be put on a PIP. It happened to be the newest, least experienced member of our team, and the PIP "plan" itself (as written by the team lead) was effectively "Continue what you're doing", but they were still forced by HR to do it.

They left themselves a year later, and I don't blame them. They just re-introduced all the worst parts of "stack ranking" and firing the "worst" person in the team with more bureaucracy.