I asked a partner recently:

"If I were underperforming in your firm, when would I first find out?"

"When we sit down to agree the timeframe for your departure."

It didn't surprise me. That approach is not unusual in the City, but it's about to get more expensive.

Yesterday (1 July) marked an important milestone that many employers may not have noticed. I was lucky enough to spend a couple of hours with a People team that knew full well what it meant.

People starting new jobs in the UK from now on are on course to gain ordinary unfair dismissal protection from 1 January 2027, when the qualifying period reduces from two years to six months. At the same time, the cap on compensatory awards for ordinary unfair dismissal is due to disappear.

If that sounds dry to you, or irrelevant if you're running a UK operation from the US, believe me, it isn't. The economics of addressing performance concerns are about to change.

The window for assessing and, where necessary, addressing performance is about to become much shorter.

The tax on avoidant people management is about to go up.

That puts a premium on things that many organisations already know they should be doing, but don't always do consistently.

• Recruiting well and making full use of probation periods.

• Equipping managers, and people generally, to excel at giving and receiving feedback.

• Ensuring that HR has the influence to set the tone across the organisation and challenge decisions where necessary.

It's one thing to talk about a feedback culture. It's another to create one.

The gap between those two things is about to become a much more expensive place to be.

For years, some organisations have found it easier to write a cheque than to have a conversation they didn't feel equipped to have.

Those conversations aren't going away.

The cost of avoiding them is about to increase significantly.

Will your organisation prepare now, or be left scrabbling later?