SMALL businesses are copying football’s “sack the boss” culture as an HR professional warns: “It can turn into an expensive legal headache.”
Football managers are sacked at speed. One bad run and it’s “mutual consent”, an interim is in, and everyone moves on.
But an HR professional is now seeing the same reflex creeping into small businesses: a rushed leadership exit to calm the room, without fixing what’s actually broken.
In a small or medium sized enterprise (SME) you don’t have a PR team, a compensation clause, or time to waste on a messy exit, she added.
This comes as SME owners shared their “cautious optimism” for 2026.
Kate Underwood, Founder at Southampton-based Kate Underwood HR and Training, said: “Small businesses are starting to treat senior hires like football managers. One wobble and it’s ‘cheers for your service’.
“But SMEs don’t have the cushions football clubs do. No parachute payments. No comms team. No legal department quietly tidying up the fallout.
“If you bin someone just to calm the noise, without sorting the workload, the decision-making, the broken processes or the culture, you’ll get the same problems back again. Just with a new name on the email signature. Senior hires often stumble because the brief’s woolly, the authority isn’t there, or the goalposts keep shifting.
“Ted Lasso had it right: be curious, not judgemental. Ask what support, clarity and structure were missing before you decide it’s ‘the person’.
“And if there’s even a whiff of health, disability, pregnancy, whistleblowing or discrimination, a rushed exit can turn into a nasty, expensive legal headache. Practical tip: slow down, get the facts straight, and write it all down before you make a move.”
Kundan Bhaduri, Entrepreneur at London-based The Kushman Group, said SMEs shouldn’t blame one person for issues in the business.
He added: “We have got an issue here. A competent sales manager struggling with unrealistic targets, unclear authority and broken processes isn’t a people problem that warrants a swift dismissal.
“Those of us who have run a business over the years know that it is really a systems failure that requires an honest, adult conversation and tangible fixes. Football managers get sacked because underperformance is visible and measurable every weekend.
“Business performance, as we all know, is slightly murkier than that, and the temptation to scapegoat one person for complex operational failures becomes enormous in the face of organisational politics.”
Gary Parsons, Creator of Selfish Leadership at Belper-based Gary Parsons UK, said there could be a larger problem behind a leader failing.
He continued: “In small businesses especially, we’re too quick to blame leaders when the real problem is the culture around them, one that pushes overwork, fuels constant pressure and then acts surprised when people burn out.”
Photo by Vladislav Igumnov on Unsplash.
