On paper, yes. In practice, especially in a larger company? It's often a long journey that involves a lot of energy on the part of the manager. And then of course you may not get a backfill rec. So then one needs to ask themselves: is this person truly a net negative when compared to the energy that'd be required to jettison them *and* replace them with nothing?
Often the answer is no.
That's the main challenge I have coaching management folks - now you have the option of doing work, and often you'll be tempted to take the path of least resistance, but that'll usually lead you astray.
Edited to add - sorry I missed your net negative comment - to touch on that, as it's another thing I see often.. Giving up on the org's ability to satisfy your needs is another toxic pattern for management - it is a lose/lose essentially. Management is often in a position of needing to push for the things it needs and advocate for the people relying on them.
In fact every difficulty I've seen is simply that someone didn't follow the clearly defined procedure.
It's literally written out for you. You don't have to think or care how you feel, just follow the process and you're done. If the process says someone should stay then you got something wrong. Simple as that.
1) Need to set up a clear paper trail over a period of time. For instance, a track record of being marked as an underperformed in their reviews with concrete complaints. In places that require this to be tied to the review, and f they only have annual reviews, this can take a LONG time.
2) Bring HR into the process, where they'll do the equivalent of "did you turn it off and on again?" for quite some time
3) If they let you, set up a PIP, which itself will take several weeks
4) Finally the person is let go
OTOH, why shouldn't your team be able to say you're a bad manager and just get you fired? There is rarely a simple process to do that.
They're the productive ones so this seems a little backwards.
At any rate I definitely don't see why a managers job should be made easier to avoid the realistic implications of firing someone. If they can't cope with the clearly defined rules then maybe they're just not a competent manager.
IMO the problem from a management perspective isn't really the bad performer staying too long.
Also, dealing with HR as a manager is mostly fine. They actually respect you.
And just having someone that sucks on your team for one extra year is not really much of a burden. Sure you have to do extra paperwork, adjust morale, but that's just the job.
The problem IME is when this is used against you. When timelines are tight and the C-Level complain that "you already have N reports", but you can't fire or transfer the person who's disruptive, doesn't delivery or is clearly doing a second job instead, and the C-Level is too lazy to check what's going on.
This is a deliberate tactic. Don't accept their framing. You are following the correct procedure and...
This is the tough bit, you need to call out whoever is trying to keep you down.