Kate Underwood (Image: Newspage)
An HR expert believes many employees are hired into roles that don’t suit them because employers refuse to pay competitive salaries. They then remain in those jobs for years, receiving little meaningful feedback, before eventually being dismissed or made redundant.
Kate Underwood, founder of Southampton-based Kate Underwood HR and Training, said the result was that workers lost “valuable” years of their careers “without ever being told the truth”. Kate said employers often complained that they “can’t find good staff”, when in reality they’re offering salaries that fail to attract the right candidates.
She added: “‘Nobody wants to work anymore’ is the most comforting sentence in British business, because it puts the fault out there somewhere. It is almost never true. There’s no shortage of people who want to work. There’s a shortage of people willing to do that job, for that money, in that building.”
According to Kate, businesses frequently compromised during recruitment, hiring the best candidate from a weak pool of applicants before convincing themselves things will improve.
She said: “You didn’t hire nobody. You hired Gary.
HR conversations can be difficult (Image: Nitat Termmee via Getty Images)
“He was the best of a thin field, and a thin field is what your salary bought you. He was never a bad person. He was a bad fit, hired in a hurry, by someone who couldn’t afford the person the job needed.”
The bigger problem, she said, was what happened next. Rather than addressing performance issues early or admitting the role needs to be paid more competitively, employers often keep someone in post for years because replacing them would cost more.
Kate added: “Owners tell me they’re keeping someone on out of kindness. I have never once found that to be the actual reason.
“You’re not keeping him out of loyalty. You’re keeping him because letting him go means admitting what the job actually costs.
“That is not kindness. That is a cost-saving measure with a human being in it.”
Kate believes this can be devastating for the employee, who may have no idea their employer has already lost confidence in them.
She said: “Gary is 34. He’s spent three years being quietly tolerated.
“Nobody has told him the truth… He thinks he’s fine. He’s walking around with a completely false picture of his own working life and everyone in that building except him knows it.”
She said that by avoiding honest conversations, employers denied workers the opportunity to improve or find a role where they are better suited.
Kate added: “He’ll find out eventually. When the business cracks, or gets sold, or when a new manager arrives with no history and does in a fortnight what should have been done in month three.
“You didn’t spare him anything. You took years off his career because you couldn’t face 20 minutes and a payroll decision.”
Instead, Kate believes employers should recruit realistically, pay market rates and tackle performance concerns quickly rather than allowing problems to drag on.
She said: “When it isn’t working, say so early, out loud, kindly, in month two rather than year three. Give the person a real chance with real support and a real deadline. If it still isn’t working, let them go while they’ve got the confidence and the CV to land somewhere better.”
Kate added that while small businesses face genuine financial pressures, pretending recruitment and performance are separate problems only stores up bigger issues for both employers and employees.
She said: “We have to stop pretending the recruitment problem and the performance problem are two different conversations. They’re the same conversation. You had it with yourself when you decided the job wasn’t worth the money.”
