It’s a line delivered with theatrical certainty. Clean, decisive and final.  

As the 20th series of The Apprentice in the UK reaches its climax, millions will watch that moment unfold once again, a performance of leadership distilled into a single, sharp verdict.

But real leadership is rarely that simple.

In real boardrooms, not fake TV boardrooms, there's no dramatic music, no neat resolution, no clean exit. Instead, there is hesitation. Process. Ambiguity. And often, avoidance.

Because dealing with poor performance is one of the most complex, and most human challenges any leader faces.

Spotting underperformance is not easy and correcting it is even harder. It is not solved by clarity, courage, or capability. We can't simply call it out and watch it resolve itself. Under performance is a very uncomfortable truth of talent management.

Most leaders hesitate to act because they hope. They are often immobilised because they care.

They want a poor performer to be better. Many try to improve performance but there are no easy answers.

Employment laws are now in place to protect employees from the kind of “you’re fired” finger pointing aggression reminiscent of the TV drama The Apprentice, and rightly so.

But despite legal protections we’re still seeing a breakdown in the informal contract between employers and employees. For example, in 2025, Acas, the UK arbitration service, reported that they’d dealt with over 118,000 individual disputes, up 12% on the previous year. The Acas helpline fielded 600,000 calls and they estimated that the annual cost of workplace conflict in the UK is now £28.5 billion a year. Not surprisingly Acas has doubled its training for businesses.

In Q3 of 2025 there was a 61% increase in workplace claims, compared to the same quarter the previous year. More alarmingly UK employment tribunal claims hit record levels in 2025, up 167% in 12 months. There is an escalating backlog in claims which are now taking up to 6 months to be heard. Some regions are facing a delay of more than 2 years.

The UK Employment Rights Act, which came into law in December 2025, is expected to make matters worse and increase the number of claims still further. The legal changes are widely regarded, by most employers, as tilting the scales even more heavily in favour of employees. These changes are likely to significantly inhibit growth for SMEs, which may constrain the growth of larger businesses.

Workplace Dispute are Often Down to Poor Performance

There may be some genuine cases of inappropriate pay manipulation by unscrupulous bosses. There are some cases of discrimination, on grounds of race or disability, and all this should be dealt with robustly.

But if we look past the genuine bad practice, we discover that workplace disputes are often the result of persistent poor performance.

Most leaders and managers struggle to improve the performance of someone who is not delivering. Most try to help because no-one wants a poor performer on their team. It reflects badly on them and adds significant pressure on others.

But improving the output of a poor performer is extremely difficult, which is partly why most leaders and managers tolerate poor performance for months, if not years.

In 25 years working with organisations all over the world in all market sectors, I've never heard anyone say: “I exited that person too soon”.

Nearly always, people say: “I should have exited them much sooner”.

Eventually, many managers realise the only real solution to persistent underperformance is for the person to leave, which is better for all parties. This means one of two things, redundancy or exiting them for poor performance.

But exiting someone for poor performance is very difficult. In exasperation, some managers try to force the pace and end up contravening process. This can trigger a claim of “constructive dismissal” and a workplace dispute.

To avoid a dispute, which is painful for everyone, the manager may take advice and follow process.

So, they must set up a performance improvement plan (PIP). The duration of a PIP varies. There’s no legal minimum or maximum requirement. The law simply states that it must be “fair and reasonable”. In practice, many HR professions will tell you this means 6 weeks. But while the 6-week idea has become HR folklore, there’s no legal basis for this. The appropriate length of a PIP depends on several factors - the complexity of the role, the nature of the performance issue, how long the problem has been going on for, and what a reasonable improvement looks like. A junior administrative role with a straightforward, measurable output issue might warrant a shorter plan. A senior manager with a complex leadership deficit might reasonably require three to six months.

Either way employers must set specific goals for improving performance, offer support and give the employee time to improve.

Sadly, genuine performance improvement is the exception rather than the rule; According to one legal editor at Brightmine: "PIPs are very often ineffective because employers are using them for termination documentation instead of employee improvement."

Sometimes organisations are forced to go down the PIP route because it’s impossible to make the role redundant. But tribunals are well aware of this tactic. As one solicitor's guide bluntly states, "never use a PIP as a shortcut to dismissal; tribunals spot this a mile away."

The cost of getting performance management wrong is likely to rise rapidly from 2026, given the changes to the law brought in by the Employment Rights Act of 2025.

All these difficulties, in making people redundant or exiting them for persistent poor performance, means that most organisations end up settling via a compromise agreement.

But even the compromise process becomes a battle ground and a game of ‘chicken’ or who will blink first. Employees may quickly sign up to a trade union, so they have someone to come in and fight their corner. Often this means a union rep turns up and effectively threatens all sorts of things and then extorts a significant payout from an employer. Facing an impossible situation many organisations end up settling, because it’s cheaper and less painful for everyone than going to court. This is something that union reps know only too well and leverage to their own advantage.

How to Manage Poor Performance

There is some good news in this sorry situation, but it requires dedication, commitment and hard work. It is possible to get better at performance management, and this starts with recruitment.

It’s vital that you’re crystal clear on the role, responsibilities and performance outcomes you need before the job starts. You must assess the candidates effectively before you recruit them, otherwise you may increase the risk of a dispute later.

There are Five Capabilities you should assess before recruiting anyone:

1. Technical Competence. Most organisations simply assess the technical competence of a potential recruit or their ability to ‘do the job’ and go no further than this.
2. Operational Capability. Few organisations assess operational capability, which is not the same as technical competence. For example, an accounting degree may be evidence of technical competence, but it doesn’t mean someone can run the accounts department.
3. Strategic Capability. Even fewer organisations assess strategic capability. This can cause significant leadership issues. Most leaders make it to the C-suite by being very good operationally and few have ever been trained to think systemically let alone strategically. It’s no wonder then that many C-suites become dependent on strategy houses to tell then what their strategy should be.
4. Leadership Capability. One of the greatest challenges in most organisations is leadership development. When leaders are recruited, they often undergo a battery of personality test, typologies and strength finders. Such ‘descriptive’ assessment can’t predict future performance. Organisations must stop relying on these outdated test and pivot to ‘developmental’ assessments if they want to reduce the risk of hiring a poor performer.
5. Change Capability. Given a rapidly accelerating pace of change and the disruption of AI, organisations should be assessing change capability as well as leadership capability.

Once you’ve hired the best candidate, performance management should start immediately and, given the new legislation, it must be well documented from the get-go.

A failure to manage performance on a weekly or monthly basis could be the very thing that ends up costing you significant time and money later.

We recommend that you are very precise about exactly what sort of performance you are managing. There are four areas in which you must set goals, manage and document performance:

1. Operational Performance. Set goals for and document improvements in technical competence as well as people’s operational ability to do their job. What are the short-term commercial objectives and deliverables you need this week, this month and this quarter.
2. Strategic Performance. What are the goals for this role and how does the individual contribute to building the future. Performance outcomes will take time to deliver so you need to look for evidence that their efforts are contributing to the future.
3. People Performance. Who are the stakeholders you need them to build a stronger relationship with. What relationship improvements do you need to see. What should their contribution be to building a more positive culture.
4. Personal Development. This doesn’t mean increased technical competence or completing more training. This means an increase in an individual’s personal maturity and an improvement in how they show up. For example, are they bringing energy, enthusiasm, curiosity and a proactive desire to develop.

All of this doesn’t even begin to take account of the impact poor performers have on other members of the team and the wider business. The poor performer often plays the victim, demonises some of their colleagues and co-opts others to their negative way of thinking. This can massively undermine trust and create toxic cultural ripples.

The difficulty in dealing with poor performers and the conflict that often arises as a result is having a devastating effect on the HR profession itself.

According to "The Changing Face of HR in 2024" Report, a staggering 95% of HR professionals say they feel overwhelmed by the workload and the stress that comes from dealing with these employee issues. The stress in HR is so extreme that 81% report feeling totally burned out, and 62% are considering leaving the profession.

A survey of 300 UK HR decision in September 2025 revealed that 65% of HR professionals expect to leave their organisation in the coming year.

According to a CIPD report there’s no light at the end of the tunnel either, with 55% of HR professionals believing the problems will get worse

This people crisis means that all organisations will need to up their performance management game dramatically, starting right now, if they want to build a brighter future.

It is possible to create a great working environment. But it requires commitment, dedication, compassion, high quality thinking and dealing robustly with poor performers.