but the normal process is to restructure them into a position they don't like, isolate them and create a department of just one, and so it goes. Eventually they either leave, become part of the cobwebs
You obviously have some insight and experience in the workings of the modern public service Soteria. I know from a friend of mine that works in a different department that it is also a technique used. Simply because a physical disability required managers to put a bit more effort into managing. He was shuffled off to an area which like you stated became a department of one.
Had another friend in the PS who inconveniently didn't die from the life threatening illness he had gone on long term sick leave for, then came back to work only to find his job had been abolished!