Why is it so hard to fire someone in some organisations?

Agree with this poster, I work in private sector HR. Big fan of settlement agreements, gives the person being asked to leave a bit more money, protects the business and keeps my name out of the tribunal records.

Same for every workplace I've been in. Private.

His HR are shit. This is very straightforward.

this is why I don’t believe universities saying they’re in financial difficulties- they can’t be if they’re carrying dead weight like this employee and apparently their HR team

HR always play this silly game where they seem to think you can't get rid of someone. You can - it's just a matter of how much £££ it will cost the company.

The Employers Rights Act is not yet in force - still at Bill stage and they will still be able to get rid in first 9 months for a variety of reasons.

I previously worked in the private sector and I’ve seen former colleagues fired very quickly after starting their employment there.

Most were fired due to conduct and one was fired for attendance.

The one who was fired for attendance had 19 sick days. He was employed there for three years and had disabilities (the reason for his absences.)
There were no reasonable adjustments to the trigger points and no Occupational Health assessment before taking the decision to dismiss. The director gave no fucks.

One person was also fired for eating a pork pie in the staffroom when she was not even on break lol.

It took me almost 2 years to get someone fired in my organisation. The person literally bullied other members of staff, took the piss out of their appearances and medical conditions, had numerous customer complaints, wasn’t performing which could be evidenced in black and white, rude to senior managers, amongst so many other things. HR send me round and round the houses. Seemed to care more about that person than the rest of the team and our customers.

Im still baffled to this day why it took so long!

In my experience, it's only hard if the employer is decent.

It once took me two years to dismiss a member of staff. They told me they under performed because they were not trained properly because the trainers in our area didn't like him. I arranged for them to be trained again in another area. 13 weeks it took.

After that I arranged for them to have a mentor, someone I knew had failed their 6 month probation, but eventually passed and had been a great employee for over four years.

I had weekly meeting with them and their union representative.

it was exhausting. But the individual was just was not cut out for our area of work.

Despite the time it took ( mine, theirs, union reps and mentors) I was secure in the fact that I had given them every possible chance.

It short a decent employer will ensure every avenue is explored thoroughly before dismissal.

I worked at a university for 10 years. Saw so much of this nonsense. Liberal, wishy washy managers coupled with an extremely woke HR department. Nightmare.

I don't know about the person in your OP, but in regards to your title question, I can testify that- in my manager's case- it is because he is too expensive to get rid of, too hard to replace, he's been here so long that he is like Teflon (and even then, was moved sideways, much to the relief of his original department, and the probable horror of ours... people tend to leave very quickly because of him), and he has intimidated virtually everyone to the point that hardly anyone will stand up to him. Also, HR are not on this site (also education sector) and don't know him, but probably know of his reputation. I attempted to get rid of him for our sanity (it was his last chance) and he denied everything... yes, because I'd really sat there and made up everything he'd ever said and done to me and other team members. It was quite an eye-opener for his new manager.

Needless to say, we are scheming to get rid of him in all sorts of very creative ways.

I have a friend who works in an organisation that’s public sector adjacent (vague as otherwise outing) and who manages a man who has barely worked since Covid. Takes months off at a time because his wife is ‘going through IVF’ and he needs to provide emotional support. HR deem fertility issues a sensitive topic so they don’t listen to my friend’s concerns that this man has done no work for 5 years. He times his sick leave, compassionate leave and annual leave like a military operation to get maximum time completely off. Then the rest of the time he ‘WFH’, logging in on an ad-hoc basis, every now and then going completely AWOL with one excuse or another.

I used to know a man who was a trained barrister working in the public sector (not sure if he worked as a barrister) whose entire job was sitting in on meetings and he claimed to only work a few hours a week on a FT contract.

Slightly different examples as one is taking the piss and the other is just getting away with doing nothing because you’ve slipped through the cracks. But there are definitely people who get away with doing next to no work, even in senior, professional roles.

Haven’t Labour just brought in tougher regs over sacking - no probationary period now.

I dont know but its bloody infuriating.

When you mentioned University, I immediately thought the Woke Brigade!
Universities appear to throw money at a problem rather than nip it in the bud. I believe so they can keep a good name and of course it’s not their money it’s the students.

No good to you now but next time say this is your colleague, because now the thread is getting derailed to buggery.

And I agree with you that many people will absolutely discuss things with their partners even on jury service.

I bet he works in marketing

It once took me 6 months to get rid of a bloke who was openly racist and sexist towards his line manager, and had even been racist towards customers. He'd been at it for years but no-one had ever followed through with the documentation steps properly to be able to oust him.

I was in a regional role so supposed to be spreading my time across different offices, but ended up spending two days a week at that location to ensure that everything was done by the book.

We had nearly got rid of him and he came to the final meeting with his union rep who was very disappointed to see everything properly documented. His attempt at appeal failed when, in a recorded meeting, he said that his line manager fired him because she was jealous of white men because she was a P**i bitch. This was the private sector btw, although I guess we did at least get rid of him eventually.

Lot of puffing up of feathers here

HR is what it is, some good, some not so good.

Friend in USA works for a huge HR company who are very efficient and knowledgeable. Many companies big and small use them rather than use in house employees. Which takes the sting out of personality upsets.

Inappropriate use of sick leave and annual leave - HR has to believe the employees reason for Theo absence (even if they know it’s bullshit) and surely annual leave is signed off by the persons manager. How are these being used inappropriately?

In general it’s an information breach. In reality, in a loving relationship you’ll rant to your partner about the arsehole at work!

He’s still told you or you wouldn’t have been able to go into the detail of your OP. It’s very unethical and unprofessional to discuss personnel matters with a family member. I’d ask MN to delete the thread if I were you.

We wanted to end someone’s employment during probation as it was clear she wasn’t able to do the job… then we discovered our hospital no longer does probation periods and it took us a year to get rid of her! She even admitted she wasn’t capable. We had to strip her job back to the minimum and lower grade colleagues were picking up the slack. She then told us she was trying to get an adhd assessment and we made reasonable adjustments (changed working hours and moved whole team meetings - she would still be late). She even asked for a big part of her role to be removed from her jd - imagine an accountant asking for maths to be removed (example similar but not exactly). Even that wasn’t enough and we had to do daily support meetings with full notes etc. She was a nice lady and should never have been hired - hired by director without consulting with managers and no skills test at interview 🙄

I have no answer, just sympathy.