I'd love us to retire the myth “You can’t get rid of people in HE.”

For starters, it's just not true, is it?

To be fair, I heard this particular bit of HE folklore much more often before the recent rash of redundancies across the sector. It's slightly harder to argue that it's impossible for people's employment to end while institutions are simultaneously going through restructure after restructure.

But I've heard some version of “you can't get rid of people in HE” throughout my career, from academics and Professional Services staff alike. And I don't think the people saying it necessarily truly believed that nobody could ever be dismissed.

What I heard underneath it was often a sense of futility.

Performance management was perceived to be so laborious, so time-consuming and so unlikely to result in anything actually changing that managers who were already overwhelmed with work couldn't contemplate adding it to their workload.

And there were always horror stories to reinforce the point.

Someone was apparently caught red-handed committing gross misconduct but HR made so many administrative errors handling the case that the institution had to keep them. Someone else had been underperforming for years, but when the case finally went through the formal process an external person was brought in to preside and decided to give them "another chance".

These stories become institutional folklore.

Meanwhile, you don't hear nearly as much about the manager who noticed someone was struggling, addressed it early, got really clear about the standard required, put appropriate support in place and saw their performance improve.

For one thing, it's not a very exciting story.

For another, a good manager probably isn't telling everyone about it. The process is confidential for a reason. The person who has been struggling deserves to retain their dignity.

So perhaps we're working with a slightly skewed sample.

What do we actually mean by “performance management”?

I think one of the problems is that we've allowed performance management to become synonymous with getting rid of someone.

It isn't.

ACAS guidance is pretty clear about this. If someone is struggling with their performance, the first step is to understand why. Employers should support people to improve, which might include training, coaching or mentoring. If informal steps don't work, a performance improvement plan can set out specific objectives, a reasonable timeline and the support required. Dismissal is described as a last resort.

In other words, improvement is one of the intended outcomes of performance management.

That seems obvious when you say it out loud.

And yet I regularly coach managers who have been having variations of the same supportive conversation with someone for months, sometimes years, because moving into performance management feels like an enormous escalation.

Particularly if they're a “nice” manager.

They've usually never actually attempted a formal performance management process themselves. They're working from received wisdom about how awful it will be. They don't really want to do it. And “it won't work anyway” gives them a very understandable reason not to try.

It's quite a sophisticated protective mechanism when you think about it.

If performance management means trying to get someone sacked, then beginning that process feels like a huge moral decision. Am I really prepared to threaten this person's livelihood? What if they hate me? What if everyone thinks I'm horrible? What if I put us both through all of this and HR doesn't support me anyway?

No wonder another supportive conversation looks attractive.

Let's catch the black and white thinking

When this comes up in coaching, I often ask some version of:

“What do you think is most likely to happen if you actually progress this?”

Usually there are far more possible answers than “nothing happens” or “they get sacked”.

• They might improve.
• They might finally understand how serious the problem is and change their behaviour.
• They might engage with the support available and get back to the required standard.
• They might decide the job isn't right for them.
• They might start looking for another role.
• They might leave before the formal process gets anywhere near dismissal.

Or yes, if their performance doesn't improve despite clarity, support and a fair opportunity to do so, the process could eventually result in their employment ending.

UK employment law does allow dismissal on capability grounds. The requirement is not that an employer must retain someone indefinitely regardless of their ability to do the job. The requirement is that there is a fair reason and a fair process.

ACAS describes dismissal for capability as a last resort and says employers should have evidence of the poor performance and the steps they've taken to support improvement before reaching that point.

That's quite different from “you can't get rid of people”.

It's closer to: you can't fairly dismiss someone for poor performance without properly managing their poor performance first.

Which seems rather more reasonable.

And what happens if you do nothing?

This is the question I think managers sometimes miss.

Let's say you know this person well and you think that, faced with a formal process, the most likely outcome is that they start looking for another job.

Right. So you might not even need to see the process through all the way to dismissal.

What happens if you don't do anything instead?

• Perhaps the person stays indefinitely.
• Perhaps the other members of your team continue picking up the slack.
• Perhaps they get increasingly pissed off that somebody else appears to be “getting away with it”.
• Perhaps one of your good performers decides they've had enough and leaves instead.
• Perhaps stakeholders lose confidence in the team.
• Perhaps you keep doing the work yourself because it's quicker than dealing with the problem, while simultaneously becoming more and more resentful that you're having to do it.

Doing nothing isn't a neutral option.

Neither is staying in what I think of as the repeating conversation loop: another understanding conversation, another offer of help, another apology, another promise that things will improve.

At some point the manager needs to establish a boundary.

That might sound like:

“I've noticed you've missed another deadline. We've had several conversations about this over the last few months. I'm going to monitor this for the next six months. If another deadline is missed during that period, I'll need to move this into the formal phase of performance management.”

Or, if the problem is the quality of someone's work, the manager needs to make the required standard explicit:

“I need you to be submitting newsletter drafts that require one or no rounds of edits before they're approved, rather than multiple exchanges to get them to the required standard.”

What is OK? What isn't? What's the standard? What's the timescale? And crucially, what will you, the manager, do if the problem happens again?

Without the consequence, you're just making a request.

Being nice isn't always kind

This is where I think some thoughtful, compassionate managers get particularly stuck.

They think the choice is between being supportive and being harsh.

So of course they choose supportive.

They empathise. They give another chance. They make allowances. They're patient.

None of those things is inherently bad management but they can slip into excess.

The manager becomes so focused on being supportive to one person that they inadvertently create an unfair dynamic for everybody else.

I think there's an important difference between being nice and being firm but fair.

A firm but fair manager understands that their responsibility is to create the conditions for the whole team to thrive. They can be empathetic towards someone who is struggling while also being honest about the fact that their performance isn't currently at the required standard.

In fact, I think that honesty can be considerably kinder than allowing someone to labour under the false impression that things aren't that bad.

I once knew someone who had struggled in their role for years. Their work wasn't good enough and, behind the scenes, they were working incredibly hard to hide mistakes and cover up the extent to which they were struggling.

Eventually they were made redundant and they were... relieved.

They'd spent years living under the weight of hiding errors, telling lies to cover them and beating themselves up because they couldn't do the job properly. Poor management hadn't protected them from that experience. It had allowed it to continue.

That's stayed with me because it showed me that the person who is underperforming isn't necessarily obliviously having a lovely time while their kind manager shields them from uncomfortable feedback.

They may know.

They may feel deeply ashamed.

They may be working incredibly hard to hide what's happening.

They may desperately need somebody to stop colluding with the pretence that everything is basically fine.

Good performance management can be the point at which somebody finally says: this isn't working. Let's stop pretending it is. Here's what the job requires. Here's where things aren't currently meeting that standard. Let's understand why, agree what needs to change and what support you need, and see whether we can make this work.

Perhaps they improve.

Perhaps everyone discovers that they're simply in the wrong role.

Perhaps they decide to leave.

Perhaps, eventually, their employment ends.

Dismissal is one possible outcome of resolving a performance problem. It isn't the definition of resolving a performance problem.

Managers have more power than they think they do

I also think we've become a bit confused about the role of HR in all of this.

I've worked with managers who seem to believe they need HR's permission to manage their team.

I would much rather see managers use HR consultatively. That sounds like:

“This is happening. This is what I'm proposing to do about it. Do you agree?”

Rather than:

“This is happening. Tell me what to do.”

Obviously there are points where you absolutely need HR expertise. You need to understand your institution's policies. You need to make sure you're acting fairly and lawfully. Disability, sickness, reasonable adjustments and the overlap between capability and conduct can introduce important legal considerations. If you're moving into formal processes, you need to follow your institution's procedures properly.

But regular feedback, clear standards, good agreements, documenting repeated concerns and telling someone what will happen if a problem continues are not exotic HR interventions.

They're just basic management.

And if they're done well and early enough, many performance issues may never need to touch the desk of the HR/People team.

Interestingly, ACAS also explicitly warns employers not to use settlement agreements in place of good management. Protected conversations and settlement agreements are legitimate tools, and they can be used to agree an end to an employment relationship. But ACAS says workplace problems can often be resolved more quickly and easily through good performance management and fair procedures.

That feels particularly relevant in HE, where I sometimes see a strange contrast between the belief that it's virtually impossible to performance-manage someone out of a role and the use, particularly in more senior parts of institutions, of protected conversations and negotiated exits.

I don't currently have sector-wide data showing whether that genuinely happens more often at senior grades, so I wouldn't claim it as a certainty. But I'd quite like to know because anecdotal evidence certainly points in that direction.

And it raises an interesting question about whether “you can't get rid of people in HE” is really a statement about employment in HE at all, or a story we've developed around our experience of managing particular kinds of performance problems.

This is where good managers earn their stripes

I know this stuff can feel gross.

Telling another human being that their work isn't good enough isn't something most thoughtful managers relish. Holding a boundary when somebody is upset with you is uncomfortable. Starting a process that could, eventually, have serious consequences for someone's employment should feel significant.

But this is also where good managers earn their stripes.

Confidence doesn't usually arrive beforehand.

You have the courage to do the hard thing. You practise. You discover that you can survive somebody being disappointed, angry or unhappy with you. You handle it fairly. You do it again when the next difficult situation comes along.

That's how management confidence develops.

Nice managers can struggle to build that confidence because they keep protecting themselves from the very experiences through which they would discover that they can handle the difficult bits of the job.

And there is something else on the other side of that discomfort: your team sees you dealing with issues, senior leaders see that you can manage and you get back some of the mental capacity you've been using to overthink the problem.

Perhaps most importantly, your behaviour becomes more congruent with the values that probably made you want to be a nice manager in the first place: compassion, transparency, fairness and integrity.

Firm but fair management is not the opposite of compassionate management.

Sometimes it's the fullest expression of it.

N.B. if you want to know more about congruence, you can listen to Episode 27 of my podcast: Searching for Peace of Mind. Search Management Matters on Spotify or Apple or listen on my website.

I'd love us to retire the myth

I believe in an HE sector full of people who are in the right jobs, doing work they love, or at least work they're happy to do so they can live lives they love.

I want people to be trusted to do their jobs well and to trust themselves to recognise when things aren't going well and do something about it.

I want decisions to be taken by the right people at the right time and for what is said to actually be acted upon. I want people to know what their role is and how it fits. I want them to feel respected and to be paid fairly for the effort they put in.

Performance management is part of that.

So is making proper use of probation when somebody clearly isn't a good fit.

So is recognising when the work has changed and the roles an institution needs have genuinely changed with it.

And yes, sometimes so is recognising that somebody simply isn't able to do the job they're employed to do.

Leaving those situations unresolved indefinitely isn't compassionate. It doesn't serve the person, their colleagues, their manager or the institution.

I'd love to eradicate “you can't get rid of people in HE” from the folklore of the sector because I don't think it helps anyone.

Managers have much more professional responsibility and power than that story allows them to believe.

Performance management isn't something you do when you've finally given up on somebody.

Done well, it's an attempt to make things better.

And ultimately performance management is an act of leadership.