Being Nice Is Not a Performance Metric

Nice people can quietly become your most expensive employees.

Not because they are bad people. Because nobody wants to tell them the truth.

Every growing business has had one. The person everyone likes, everyone protects, and everyone has quietly worked around for far too long. Warm. Loyal. Great with birthdays. And somehow, nobody wants to say out loud that the work isn’t good enough.

Everyone knew except her

We worked with a founder who had someone on the team from the early days. She organised birthdays, brought in muffins, remembered everyone’s anniversary. Everyone loved her.

She also hadn’t consistently hit a deadline in years.

The team had adapted around her. They redid her work, covered for her, and quietly lowered their own expectations so the gap stopped feeling like a gap. Nobody built this on purpose. It just accumulates, one small workaround at a time, until “covering for Linda” is basically a second job nobody applied for.

The founder knew. Every time it came up, the answer was the same: “She means well.”

She did. That just wasn’t the job.

Why good owners get stuck here

Most SME owners don’t avoid these conversations because they’re lazy. They avoid them because they care. They know the person, know their family, remember the early days when titles barely mattered and everyone just mucked in together.

So they keep giving the benefit of the doubt. One more month. One more reminder. One more “let’s see how she goes.”

Meanwhile, your better performers are carrying the cost. They fix the mistakes, absorb the pressure, and eventually stop raising it because nothing changes anyway. That’s where the real damage starts, not with the underperformer, but with the good people who quietly conclude the standard isn’t really the standard.

Nice isn’t the problem. Confusing it with capable is

Being nice is a good thing. You want decent humans in the business, people who make the place feel less transactional. But nice isn’t a substitute for competent, and loyal isn’t the same as effective.

“She means well” won’t help you when the work is slipping and you finally need to do something formal. Avoiding the conversation doesn’t keep things kind, it just means that by the time you finally say something, you’re not dealing with one missed deadline. You’re dealing with years of silence.

What Fair Work actually expects

Here’s the part that turns “she means well” from an awkward feeling into a real legal problem.

There’s no rule that says you need three written warnings before you can act on poor performance. But the Fair Work Commission has been consistent on one point, if you never told someone plainly that their job was at risk, don’t expect the Commission to accept that they should have known anyway.

In Dean v Sybecca Pty Ltd t/as Sleepy Lagoon Hotel [2010] FWA 8462, a hotel manager was dismissed for underperformance after the employer relied on vague, informal comments rather than a direct conversation. The Commission found he was never expressly warned his job was in jeopardy, and ruled the dismissal harsh, unjust and unreasonable, even though the business was small and had no dedicated HR support. “He should have got the hint” is not a defence the Commission accepts, no matter how many pointed sighs were involved.

“Everyone knew” isn’t enough. “We told her clearly, gave her support, gave her time, and explained what would happen if it didn’t improve” is a completely different position, and it’s the one you want to be standing on.

What the conversation should actually sound like

Not an ambush. Not a performance review that mentions it in passing. A proper reset, said plainly,

“I want to talk about the gap between what the role needs and what’s currently happening. This isn’t about whether we like you. It’s about the work. The role requires X. At the moment we’re seeing Y. That needs to improve by [date]. We’ll support you with [support]. If it doesn’t improve, your employment may be at risk.”

That’s not cruel. It’s clear, which is usually kinder than letting someone keep failing while the team quietly loses respect for how the business is run.

Before you sit down, get your own house in order

Give yourself an hour first.

Not feelings, actual facts:

• what the role is meant to deliver,
• what’s actually happening instead,
• how often,
• what’s already been said,
• what support has already been offered, and
• whether anything’s changed (workload, training, health, personal circumstances) that you need to understand before you act.

Sometimes the answer is a clear performance conversation. Sometimes it’s retraining. Sometimes the role has quietly outgrown the person, or the owner let the role get so messy nobody could do it well. Know which problem you’re solving before you start solving it.

Then give it a real chance

Set a timeframe, agree what improvement looks like, check in, and write down what was discussed. If they improve, that’s the best outcome going. If they don’t, you’re acting after a fair process rather than out of frustration, and that matters culturally, legally, and for your own confidence making the call.

What happened in the end

She chose not to close the gap. They parted ways. It wasn’t easy.

A few days later, one of the team said something that stuck: “It feels like we’ve all exhaled.”

Not because someone had left. Because the business had finally stopped pretending, and the standard was the standard again.

The HR Gurus take

If someone is only still in the role because everyone likes them, your best people are probably paying for it, in extra work, in frustration, in quietly losing trust that the business will deal with the obvious things.

And if you ever need to act formally, “everyone knew” won’t protect you. Only “we told her clearly, gave her a fair chance, and documented it” will.

Being nice is a great quality. It’s just not a performance metric.

Got someone on the team where you know the conversation is overdue? We help SME owners have that exact conversation properly, fair to the employee and protected if it ends up at Fair Work.

Talk to the HR Gurus team.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to give three warnings before dismissing someone for poor performance?

No. There’s no automatic “three warnings” rule. But you generally need to show the employee was told what the problem was, given a chance to respond, warned their employment could be at risk, and given a genuine opportunity to improve.

What if the employee is lovely but not doing the job?

You can like someone and still need to manage their performance. Keep the conversation on the role and the gap, not the person. Kind and clear aren’t opposites.

Should I put someone on a performance improvement plan?

Sometimes, particularly if the gap is serious or repeated. The document isn’t the magic part, the clarity is. The employee needs to know what must change, by when, with what support, and what happens if it doesn’t.

What should I do before starting a performance process?

Get clear on the facts first, then get advice before you say something you can’t easily walk back.