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

So? Unless he's a teacher or a nurse or a police officer or something that matters.

If it's a pointless office job flogging goods, what does it matter.

Does he get the job done? Which is all that matters. And is there enough work for him to do.

Sounds like a combination of ineffective leadership at the top in creating a culture of performance, combined with overcomplex disciplinary/performance management procedures and risk averse HR (probably reflecting a generally risk averse senior management approach to people issues).

With less than 2 years service the fear will be of an ET with an alleged disability or other discrimination reason popping out of the woodwork. HRBP may also be inexperienced or risk averse relating to dismissals and possibly hasn't sought or isn't receiving good advice from their seniors. If employee is being represented by the trade union that will also increase management/HR risk averseness and so slow things down too. Even much more experienced, proactive HR people (I like to think I am one) can find it difficult to overcome a prevailing culture.

It is common in Higher Education, partly because dismissing academics is really difficult and often enshrined in very old Statues or Articles of Association especially for the older pre-1992 Institutions . This then often carries over into the disciplinary policies and procedures for professional services staff

Some posters will tout how much better the private sector is at this sort of thing but it's actually not always the case. The private sector can be just as risk averse the difference is they often throw settlement money at even simple dismissal cases. But many are just as slow to go down that path. I worked for one of the Big Four accounting firms and even dismissing at probation was quite clunky.

Your husband needs to be challenging the advice and speed of approach, and asking for more HR senior involvement if necessary. He should also make sure he has his own line manager and head of department/SLT member on board. If it is a risk averse culture he can't really fight against that as it will be a brick wall.

We do get rid of people but always pay them off, which seems really unfair! You behave so badly you effectively get fired only with 9 months pay and a reference. Meanwhile everyone else works hard and gets a measly 3% payrise. Very demotivating.

We had a lot of that too. Sometimes it would be refused and they'd quite happily have it unpaid.

There's a teacher at primary school for three years running she's gone on the sick late autumn not returning until after Easter. It's so unfair on the children who have agency staff when she is absent. Apparently nothing can be done.

I worked in a supermarket, now retired and the amount of staff we had who were useless and took absolute liberties with timekeeping, attendance even uniform and nothing was ever done about it. I witnessed one colleague shouting and swearing at another colleague in earshot of customers. I actually was pretty upset and wrote my own report of what I'd witnessed and reported it but they just had a word and carried on as if nothing had happened. The only time I've known someone be sacked was when we all refused to work with him. They had grounds but not the balls but eventually they had to. All this does is bring morale down and that's not good for anyone.

Hope no one recognises the scenario on real life from your husbands view point.

What is an inappropriate use of annual leave?

Sounds exactly like a situation I’ve had. Similar kind of employer. Absolute jokers in HR. All support was for the new person who needed to be fired, not the legacy team who were victim to his bizarre behaviour. Plus we had to cover his work in the meantime! I have never known anything like it, it was like the twilight zone and took up most of my time for months, logging issues and gathering evidence. I did everything by the book, followed all proper protocols and it took the best part of a year. Thoroughly depressing. No one had the guts to, or would allow me to, fire him point blank, even in the face of irrefutable evidence of poor/dangerous performance.

I think you should ask for this to be removed.

What are you doing sharing all this on line. You could've easily asked this without any actual detail . Why is your husband showing you paperwork from his work?

Definitely a breach of confidentiality if I had showed anyone my work notes about a specific person I would be getting fired.

Pretty much everything you've disclosed here should be kept confidential.

Very common in the public sector unfortunately. Very risk averse and are shit scared of the Unions and any bad publicity,

I have previously worked in the civil service and a local authority. Both were absolutely useless at getting rid of poor performers,

HR matters are confidential. You’ve got a bullet point list of this person’s misdemeanours. I’m assuming you know their name. And you’ve seen notes. I accept he’s frustrated but it’s definitely a breach of confidentiality.

Risk averse organisations
Lengthy processes which are required under ACAS codes and good practice
Useless line managers who don’t want to have that difficult conversation

In my workplace they’d have been dismissed during probation.

Sounds like the HR department are scared of potential consequences, maybe due to a protected characteristic, or cost of legal action. Having said that, it's highly inappropriate for your DH to be discussing this with you in detail and showing you his notes.

See NHS virtually impossible to sack anyone.