When the Person You Need to Dismiss Is Also the Person Holding the Rota Together

The evidence was sitting in front of the manager, but so was the rota. A senior care worker had repeatedly ignored parts of the medicines procedure. The first concern had led to supervision and retraining. The second had resulted in closer monitoring. Now there had been another incident, and this time the explanation did not match the records.

The manager knew the matter had to be addressed. She also knew that removing this member of staff would leave six uncovered shifts before the end of the week. This is one of the hardest tests of leadership in care. The person whose conduct or practice has become unsafe may also be the person who accepts emergency shifts, knows every care plan and answers the telephone when nobody else will. They may be popular with colleagues and trusted by families. Without them, the service could struggle to operate. That reality does not make the concern less serious. It makes acting on it more stressful.

The value of a worker does not cancel the risk

When staffing is stretched, managers can begin negotiating with evidence. Perhaps the incident was an isolated lapse. Perhaps another supervision will be enough. Perhaps the staff member can remain on the rota while the investigation continues because there is nobody else available.

Some of those considerations may be legitimate. Allegations must be investigated fairly, immediate risks assessed and decisions made according to the facts. The problem begins when staffing pressure quietly changes the threshold for acceptable practice.

A worker should not receive a different safety standard because they cover weekends. Reliability cannot compensate for unsafe medicines practice, rough handling, dishonesty, repeated failures to follow care plans or conduct that places people at risk. A member of staff may be operationally indispensable and still be unsuitable to continue in their role.

Managers understand this intellectually. Emotionally, the decision is far more complicated. They can already see what happens next: agency costs, exhausted colleagues, angry families and calls from senior leaders asking why shifts remain unfilled. Removing one unsafe worker can appear to create several new risks at once.

The temptation is to keep managing around the person. Their duties are adjusted, trusted colleagues are placed beside them and managers check their work more frequently. This may provide a temporary safeguard during an investigation, but it can also become an unofficial arrangement that continues because nobody wants to face the staffing consequences of a final decision. Meanwhile, the rest of the team notices.

What the team learns from delay

Staff rarely know every detail of a disciplinary concern, nor should they. They do, however, recognise when somebody repeatedly behaves in ways that would not be tolerated from anyone else.

If a high-performing or highly available worker appears protected, the team receives a message about what the organisation truly values. Policies may talk about dignity, openness and safe care, but the lived message becomes: if the service needs you badly enough, the rules are negotiable.

Good staff can find this deeply demoralising. They may be covering for the person’s mistakes, correcting records or reporting concerns that seem to go nowhere. Some will stop speaking up. Others will leave because they no longer trust leaders to act. The manager may believe they are protecting the rota, while unintentionally placing further pressure on the safest and most conscientious members of the team.

There is also a danger in confusing popularity with suitability. A worker can be warm, energetic and well liked while still failing to practise safely. Families may defend them because they have seen kindness but not the omissions in records, ignored instructions or incidents occurring elsewhere. Colleagues may rally around them, particularly if management cannot disclose the evidence behind its decisions. Leadership sometimes means accepting that people will judge a decision without having all the information required to understand it.

The fear beneath the decision

Managers may worry about dismissing the wrong person, particularly when evidence is contested. They may also fear being accused of unfairness, discrimination or targeting somebody who has raised concerns. Those possibilities demand a careful and impartial process, supported by appropriate HR or employment advice. But another fear often sits beneath them: what if the service cannot cope without this person?

That question can make the manager feel responsible for impossible alternatives. Keep the worker and carry the risk, or remove them and destabilise the service. In reality, the fact that one person’s departure could threaten operations points to a wider problem that already existed. The service has become too dependent on an individual.

The worker may have accumulated responsibilities that were never properly distributed. Perhaps only they know how to complete certain tasks, families ask for them by name or managers have routinely relied on their willingness to work extra hours. Their apparent indispensability may have developed because succession planning, recruitment or knowledge-sharing was neglected.

That does not mean the staffing consequences are imaginary. Shifts still need to be covered and people must continue receiving safe care. It means the manager should not treat organisational dependence as a reason to overlook conduct that would otherwise require decisive action.

Holding safety and fairness together

Acting promptly does not mean deciding the outcome before an investigation. The manager’s immediate task is to assess risk. Depending on the concern, that may involve changing duties, increasing supervision, removing the worker from certain activities or suspending them while the facts are established. Any action should be proportionate and based on the circumstances rather than used as an automatic punishment.

The process must also be fair to the staff member. Care work takes place under pressure, records can be incomplete and allegations can be mistaken. A manager who has already decided that somebody must leave may interpret every piece of evidence through that conclusion.

Equally, sympathy for a valued worker should not cause evidence to be explained away. Fairness belongs to the member of staff, but it also belongs to the people receiving care, the colleagues who raised concerns and the wider team expected to work safely.

The manager in our scenario reviewed the evidence with senior support, ensured the staff member had the opportunity to respond and separated the employment decision from the rota problem. One question was whether the person remained suitable to work in the service. The other was how safe care would be maintained if they did not. Combining those questions would have allowed staffing anxiety to determine the outcome.

The rota is a leadership problem

Once a worker is removed, the pressure becomes immediate. Managers may need to reduce non-essential activity, ask senior staff to provide short-term support, bring in temporary cover or speak honestly with commissioners and families about capacity. If the service cannot safely accept additional work, leaders may need to pause growth or decline new packages until staffing stabilises.

Those choices may be commercially difficult, but continuing to operate as though nothing has changed only transfers the pressure elsewhere. Existing staff become exhausted, managers work unsafe hours and the next incident becomes more likely.

Senior leaders must not leave the registered manager alone with the consequences of a decision made to protect people. If the organisation expects managers to act on unsafe practice, it must provide practical support when they do. Praising a manager for “doing the right thing” is hollow if they are then expected to personally fill every vacant shift.

Providers should also examine how the dependency developed. Was one worker carrying too much knowledge? Were warning signs missed because their flexibility made them valuable? Did recruitment problems cause leaders to tolerate behaviour they would otherwise have challenged? The answers may be uncomfortable, but they can prevent the same dilemma recurring.

The person who always says yes

The most operationally useful worker is not necessarily the safest worker. Availability is not the same as competence, and loyalty to the service is not the same as accountability to the people it supports. There will be occasions when concerns are resolved, improvement is demonstrated and a staff member safely remains in post. There will also be occasions when the evidence leads to their departure, despite the disruption it creates.

In those moments, the manager may feel as though they have damaged the service by removing somebody it relied upon. The truth is harder but clearer: the service was already vulnerable because it depended on a person whose practice could no longer be trusted. A full rota can create the appearance of safety. It cannot provide safe care if the wrong person is filling it.

The strongest leadership decision may therefore be the one that makes next week more difficult but protects the people receiving care, preserves the standards expected of the team and makes the service safer in the long term.

Keep looking after you

Wellbeing looks different for everyone, and sometimes the most useful thing is simply finding the right information at the right time. Explore more from Daily Round with our dedicated Women’s Health, Men’s Wellbeing and Wellbeing for Leaders sections, or head to the Leaders Library for our latest book recommendations, ideas and inspiration for life in and outside work.