When to Fire vs. Coach: Performance Management for Recruitment Business Owners

Handling underperformance in your team is one of the toughest decisions you will make as a leader, especially in the recruitment business. The question nags at you every day: should you put in the effort to coach someone who is falling short, or is it time to let them go? Katy and Jane take on this dilemma in detail. They share practical frameworks and personal stories that can guide you through the decision-making process. If you find yourself lying awake at night, wrestling with whether to offer one more chance or feeling paralysed into indecision, all the answers from their conversation are here.

Why Deciding When to Coach or Cut Can Be So Difficult

Before you start breaking down the process, it is important to understand why this is such a painful crossroads for recruitment business owners and leaders. As Katy explains, the dilemma often comes from wanting to be seen as a nice human being. You have put energy into hiring, invested hours into training, and now you are left wondering why someone is not grabbing the chance you have given them. There is an emotional conflict at play. You do not want to upset anyone, you do not want to admit you made a hiring mistake, and you also want to avoid losing money or seeing your team’s morale suffer.

Jane shares that it is entirely normal to feel conflicted. She has been in situations where you keep someone for too long, hoping for a turnaround, or let someone go too quickly and miss out on their potential growth. Whether you wait too long or not long enough, both mistakes come with a steep cost. The anxiety in making this decision is a result of wanting to be kind, not wanting to fail, and feeling uncertain about what standards to use for comparison. Katy points out the difficulty of being your own boss with nobody else to help you benchmark your expectations, which makes the process even more complicated.

The “Can’t vs Won’t” Framework: A Clear Path to Follow

Katy and Jane introduce a framework that takes away much of the guesswork: the “can’t versus won’t” approach. The difference between the two is simple, but critical for your business. You need to figure out:

• Can’t: Is underperformance the result of a lack of skill or competency? Is the person trying but struggling and just needs coaching or training?
• Won’t: Does the issue come down to their attitude or motivation, and are they not putting in the necessary effort or making more excuses than progress?

Mistaking one for the other can mean you spend months coaching someone who does not want your help, or you let go of someone who would have thrived with the right support. Jane uses her own career to highlight this point. When she started out in recruitment, she had no placements in her first six months, but worked incredibly hard and was always present. Her regional director recognised her effort and provided coaching. Within one month she made her first placement, and a year later she was in the top ten. Her story shows how spotting a genuine willingness to learn can be transformational.

Katy describes this as the turning point. Jane had the hunger and was not making excuses. She just needed the pathway and some guidance. All the coaching in the world will not help those who simply lack attitude.

Signs of “Can’t”: A Case for Coaching

• The activity levels are high, but the results are missing.
• The person is present, asks questions, and takes responsibility for their own performance.
• They put in full, consistent days of work and ask for help when stuck.

Jane shares that people who want to be coached display their intent in their behaviour. You find them making an effort, staying engaged, and asking for input.

Signs of “Won’t”: Time to Consider Letting Go

• They might have the skills, but refuse to apply them.
• Missed activity targets and a lack of care.
• A mindset of making excuses, lacking accountability, and showing no interest in feedback.

Katy explains that you will see a lack of motivation in these people. They have “checked out” and are actively disengaged, spending excessive time distracted in the office. These are the people physically present but mentally absent.

Jane points out that as business owners, you often lose sleep over how to help someone who has probably already started looking for another job. Quicker, clearer action almost always leads to a happier outcome for everyone involved.

Diagnosing Underperformance: Your Step-by-Step Process

It can be easy to blame the underperformer in your team. Katy advises you to first check in with yourself. Have you set clear expectations? Did you provide every resource needed to succeed? Are you giving regular feedback and support, not just tracking figures? Most importantly, are you recognising wins along the way so your team stays motivated?

Jane highlights the risk of assuming new hires with experience can skip training. Even experienced people need to learn your business’s unique processes and standards, so training is never optional.

Katy outlines five core needs to check:

1. Clarification: Do they know what success looks like?
2. Tools and Resources: Are they equipped to do their job properly?
3. Feedback: Are you providing feedback regularly and specifically?
4. Guidance: Are you actually coaching, not just monitoring statistics?
5. Rewards: Do you recognise progress and effort, both financially and non-financially?

After you confirm these five areas, you can begin to assess performance.

Holding the Honest Conversation

Most leaders find it uncomfortable to talk directly about underperformance. Katy admits she struggled with how to do this, often resorting to email, a method which rarely motivates anyone. Jane, being a people-pleaser herself, dislikes telling people they have missed targets. However, you need to support your feedback with evidence and be as clear as possible about what you expect.

When you sit down to discuss underperformance, keep your questions open:

• What’s happening from your perspective?
• What, specifically, is preventing you from hitting target?
• What help do you need to turn this around?
• Do you believe you can make the change?
• On a scale of one to ten, how motivated are you to meet your targets?

Wait for real, honest answers and look carefully for signs of accountability. If someone is thankful for your feedback and keen to improve, it is a sign they fall into the “can’t” category. If they make excuses, place blame elsewhere, or are disengaged, this is more likely a “won’t”.

Work with Evidence, Not Just Instinct

Jane stresses that gut feeling should not be the key driver of your decisions. In recruitment, metrics matter. Look for effort in activity even when results are slow to appear, since persistence often pays off. If the activity and the attitude are there, that is a coachable employee. If activity drops as results lag, you should be concerned.

Katy adds that while your gut can be a guide, particularly if your feelings about someone are strong, it can be misleading if you do not have evidence. If your frustration is leading your choices, rely on the data to maintain objectivity.

Spotting Favouritism and Managing Emotional Attachments

It is sometimes hardest to make a decision about someone you like personally. Jane speaks about staff she found charming and good company, but who were ultimately in the wrong job. Hanging onto someone because they are fun to work with is not doing them any favours if they are not suited to the role.

Katy has also experienced this. As soon as people left for roles in other industries, they would flourish and thank her for freeing them to pursue something that felt right for them. Jane recalls meeting friends who worked with her in recruitment; both went on to be successful in careers elsewhere and only regretted not leaving recruitment sooner.

If you spot someone in the wrong environment, it is kinder to help them move on, rather than allowing personal feelings to cloud your professional judgement.

The Expensive Mistakes Business Leaders Make

Katy and Jane point out three common mistakes that come with a heavy cost for your business.

• Waiting Too Long

Katy describes a client who kept an underperformer for 11 months, only to realise that £140,000 in revenue had been lost, along with nearly losing a top performer. Clear timelines are needed. For example, after four weeks without billing, schedule a conversation to discuss performance. Having a process in place removes emotion and uncertainty and ensures everyone is treated equally.

Jane compares small agencies with larger ones. In the bigger businesses, both performance rewards and consequences are clearly communicated. In smaller companies, while commission structures are obvious, the consequences of underperformance can be vague. Jane believes outlining both is important. Everyone should know what happens when they succeed, and what processes are in place if targets are missed. This provides safety and structure for decision-making.

• Coaching a Won’t Problem

Katy urges you to consider if you are working harder than your employee at their success. If the answer is yes, you must stop. No amount of coaching will help someone who is not prepared to accept it.

• Ignoring Your Top Performers

By tolerating underperformance, you send a message to your best people that results do not matter. Jane points out that spending too much time on the wrong person leaves your top performers feeling ignored. High achievers want to see standards enforced. If you do not act swiftly and decisively, you risk damaging morale and potentially losing the talent your business depends on.

Proactive Steps for Lasting Improvement

To prevent indecision and regret, Katy and Jane recommend following these steps:

1. Check Yourself First: Have you provided everything needed for success, including resources, feedback, support, and clear expectations?
2. Decide: Can’t or Won’t?: Use evidence from your diagnosis, activities, and honest conversation to determine if you are dealing with a coaching scenario or if it is time to consider letting go.
3. Set Timelines and Follow Up: Build clear processes for intervention and exit if needed, and ensure you stick to them.
4. Remember Your Top Performers: Always be aware of how your decisions impact the rest of your team. Act quickly to avoid creating frustration or resentment.
5. Stop Sitting on the Fence: Indecision is itself a bad decision. Whether you coach or cut, choosing a direction is always better than doing nothing.

Jane shares a favourite quote: “No decision will ever destroy your life. Only indecision can do that.” Making a choice is never wrong if you decide based on the information you have at the time.

Bringing Everything Together

Katy encourages you to make a list of team members in your mind. For each one, ask yourself: is this person a “can’t” or a “won’t”? If you are unsure, gather the evidence and have the honest conversation. Then trust your process. Each decision you make carves out more space for those who truly want to succeed in your business.

Katy and Jane offer a downloadable Cut vs Coach decision framework at the end of the episode, which includes a checklist for diagnosis and questions you can use in underperformance conversations. If you want to save months of worry, their approach will help you move your team and your business forward.