I want to fire him, but I don’t know how!

This is not perhaps the prime purpose of performance management, but it was a desparate statement from a frustrated manager in a recent client workshop. It wasn’t the lack of HR policy, it was the fact that without clear performance measures it was impossible to tell this particular employee ( who seemed to be spending half his working day on Facebook) that he wasn’t performing to the right standard. Should be able to sort this one.