A common complaint I heard in an earlier life, in the (UK) civil service, was that it was impossible to sack incompetent people because the terms and conditions guaranteed job security. This was just a lack of management will. The process for documenting, counselling, warning and eventually terminating (if necessary) was certainly bureaucratic, heavy and took months, but you simply had to do it by the book (oh yes, there was quite a book!). And it made the manager examine their own role, and their responsibilities - to set and manage standards and expectations, train, counsel and offer support, to be honest and clear to the under-performer, and to see whether there was a different post where skillset and work would be a better match. It was a method for ensuring, documenting and proving fairness and even-handedness.

It could lead to a lot of personal soul-searching and required a lot of laborious work monitoring an individual, and it was no fun at all to be instrumental in someone's departure (termination or resignation). But the manager and workgroup benefitted from having a clear and fair approach to standards of work and under-performance, and from the removal of a major source of error and resentment.