A short piece of railway track? Once upon a time…… Now the devious new way of using your contacts and corporate purchasing power to move on those difficult people in your team who just won’t go.

Let me explain….

Performance managing people out of a business takes time, effort, extreme persistence and lots of very uncomfortable yet honest constructive feedback. Let’s face it, most managers are appalling at this. Hence the grievance and tribunal culture that exists. Sad attempts are made to bully people out, ostracise them, or perhaps even fire them or wait for a round of redundancies. In the meantime morale suffers, performance suffers. A person who might be better elsewhere rots in a job unsuited to them, potentially blissfully unaware of their limited potential.

A sharp senior manager I met let me into her secret. Rather than putting herself through the uncomfortable and long process of managing PersonA out (after, I hasten to add, very concerted attempts often to help develop said individual), she picks up the phone to the Company’s retained recruiters and suggests they make a call to PersonA about possible new jobs, artfully chosen to appeal to their known strengths. PersonA, given the appeal to their vanity and ego and some emergent recognition of a souring current role, is lured away. Not long after, they hand in their resignation to the manager, who expresses her sadness at this news but immediately accepts it.

Four weeks later, the leaving party is held for PersonA, who leaves the Company, feeling somewhat triumphant and with their pride intact. The manager, champagne in hand, gets to toast their departure. Only she knows why she is beaming so widely.

And that my friends is Headshunting