‘Incompetent’ NHS staff sacked in record numbers
Record numbers of NHS staff are being dismissed in a crackdown on incompetence in the health service.
Interesting article. Fair play to Labour it's a start.
Sacking someone for not being good at their job is very difficult. 7000 were sacked, so they must have been blatant cases. You do wonder then how many more thousands are not pulling their weight.
When I was a manager I had staff who would just coast. These people were often late but not too often, sickness not great but not the worst. Never wanted to work overtime, and never offered to help a colleague who was struggling with their workload.
Because they were borderline it was almost impossible to sack them. Some of them turned slacking* into a fine art, a pity that they didn't put their energy into doing a good job. In the end the only way to get rid was redundancy** as they were never going to leave of their own free will.
I suspect that for the NHS this 7000 is only the tip of the iceberg and relates to the people who were so stupid they got caught.
*HR who of course are useless tell you to work with the person to improve their productivity. These were well paid white collar jobs if you can't work out that you need to work hard you shouldn't be in the job. I have never come across someone who was lazy but then responded to coaching. Don't get me wrong if someone is struggling to understand the technicalities of the job that is a whole other matter and they have my sympathy. I was once put in charge of an IT department and I was clueless. I didn't want the job but was ordered to take it. I doubt I was a great IT manager but then that wasn't my fault.
**You make the job redundant not the person. Easy enough you just have a re-organisation and rename the jobs with a few minor changes.
