Employers Genius solution to staff retention issues.

Rroff said:
Ultimately an enforced notice period would have to be reasonable - for someone in a upper management position for instance its quite reasonable to expect a longer period of notice - typically the full 12 weeks - for someone on minimum wage in a part time position quite hard to justify that if it came to court and the reasonable notice period would most likely be considered more in the region of 4 weeks.
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I'd be inclined to agree but as most of us are in a IT desktop support type role, 4 weeks on out current contract seems reasonable.

If i speak to a recruitment agency and tell them i have 12 weeks notice to serve, they'll just laugh and hang up.
 
I don't think it's + a week as it's not redundancy. Totally different.

I'd be trying to find out how many people are vocally opposed to it and will stand up for themselves. It's easy to say it's rubbish, etc. but to actually right and potentially go through the ending a contract phase can be worrying.


M.
 
SGCWill said:
They tried to do something similar to all our contracts at my previous employers. The solution was remarkably easy. Get everyone to say NO and put it in writing. Are they going to put everyone on notice for it?

Do you have a union that deals with such things?
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Most of us are not union members but we are trying to collectively object and say no.

Some people though are either just apathetic, too comfortable or not understanding of the potential impact if they want to move on in the future.
 
plasmahal said:
I'd be inclined to agree but as most of us are in a IT desktop support type role, 4 weeks on out current contract seems reasonable.

If i speak to a recruitment agency and tell them i have 12 weeks notice to serve, they'll just laugh and hang up.
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No they won't.

I've had that period for my last 3 jobs. Though what I do is fairly specialist so they need that length of time to find a replacement. It's fairly standard though.
 
plasmahal said:
OK, here goes.

Yesterday we were split into small groups at work and at short notice told we had a presentation by our senior on site manager.

When we arrived, there also someone from HR on the phone.

We were given a one slide presentation where it stated that out employer was having major issues with staff retention and recruiting replacements.

So there genius solution is for then to 'unilaterally' change the conditions of our contracts of employment so we no longer need to give four weeks notice but must give twelve weeks notice!!!!!!!!!!

Our manger kept saying it benefits everyone but clearly only benefits the company's incompetence.

So rather than address the retention issues they plan to shackle us down, with no incentives to a completed one sided change of contract that makes us extremely inflexible in the job market.

I have now come home to a letter referring the 'MEETING' we had yesterday telling me to sign the contract amendment and return it by 22nd february.

no letter formally explaining the proposed changes and no consultation period.

I'm looking at ACAS website and getting myself educated to my rights by we are mostly all in stunned disbelief at the moment.
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Thats priceless.

Don't sign, ask to renegotiate the contract and be like :p
 
Surely they have to put that in writing and you have to agree to it? And if you refuse isn't it constructive dismissal if they try and sack you?
 
so i assume that means the company must also give you 12 weeks notice??

honestly i would say thats a good thing for people working there as said above (its something normally reserved for high level people).
 
oldbag said:
Surely they have to put that in writing and you have to agree to it? And if you refuse isn't it constructive dismissal if they try and sack you?
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You certainly would expect it to be reasonable to have the proposals to the contract in writing and a reasonable consultation period.

But no, they have gone from a meeting to a letter with the amendment to the contract in less than 24hrs which tells me the decision was already made.
 
Ace Modder said:
If you refuse to sign the new contract there is nothing they can do to force you to sign it.

Thus your 4 week notice period remains at 4 weeks, any threat of not further employment = unfair dismissal.
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oldbag said:
Surely they have to put that in writing and you have to agree to it? And if you refuse isn't it constructive dismissal if they try and sack you?
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They can give you the statutory notice change your contract (effectively ending your contract and starting a new one).

It would only be unfair dismissal if you could prove they were doing it just to **** you off enough and ultimately get rid of you.

So for example if this contract change is going to affect all employees, and the OP was the only one to refuse to sign the new contract it would be very hard for him to argue unfair dismissal.

The best strategy, as someone said above, is to get everyone to refuse to the new contract. Technically the company could then legally get rid of all of them after a month but obviously no businesses is going to do that to win a debate.
 
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Ace Modder said:
If you refuse to sign the new contract there is nothing they can do to force you to sign it.

Thus your 4 week notice period remains at 4 weeks, any threat of not further employment = unfair dismissal.
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This is not the case, if you continue to work beyond your contract period, when a new contract has been issued, and continue beyond your notice period to work, then you are subject to the new contract.
 
aardvark said:
so i assume that means the company must also give you 12 weeks notice??

honestly i would say thats a good thing for people working there as said above (its something normally reserved for high level people).
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Nope, as already stated they give us the statutory 4 weeks but we have to give 12.
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
This is not the case, if you continue to work beyond your contract period, when a new contract has been issued, and continue beyond your notice period to work, then you are subject to the new contract.
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Not true as such.

If you have lodged objections and a grievance you will be deemed as working under protest.

You can they still give 4 weeks notice and quit and let them take you to court (or not) and you have followed all reasonable actions to show you didn't agree to the changes.
 
plasmahal said:
Nope, as already stated they give us the statutory 4 weeks but we have to give 12.
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Statutory isn't 4 weeks, it's 1 week (after a month) per year up to 2 years and 1 week more for every year worked up to 12.

So any employees who have worked 12 years or more will also be legally entitled to 12 week notice from the employer.

Statutory or contractual notice period
There are two types of notice period: statutory and contractual. Statutory notice is the minimum legal notice that can be given. Employers should give the employee:

one week's notice if the employee has been employed by the employer continuously for one month or more, but for less than two years
two weeks' notice if the employee has been employed by the employer continuously for two years, and one additional week's notice for each further complete year of continuous employment, up to a maximum of 12 weeks. For example if an employee has worked for 5 years then they are entitled to 5 weeks' notice.
Employees must give their employer a minimum of one week's notice once they have worked for one month. This minimum is unaffected by longer service.

However, contractual notice is the amount of notice that the employer can set out in the terms and conditions of employment which can be longer than the statutory notice. For example the statutory notice an employee must give to an employer is one week, however, an employer can state within the terms of employment that an employee must give one month's notice.
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Excluding CEO level and senior professional roles (university lecturers, fund managers, Doctors etc), notice periods are meaningless in respect of how and when an employee can leave (not when an employer can dismiss an employee though).

They can't make you stay and they can't with hold wages or holiday pay. They can't even mention it on your CV.

If you walked into your bosses office and stated you were resigning with immediate effect and not coming in tomorrow, there isn't a damn thing they will do about it.

Most employers wont let you continue working once you've given notice of resignation anyway (you're a security risk, can take clients etc). When I quit HP, I worked 2 more weeks then was told not to come in and got paid PILON for the rest of the 6 month notice period.
 
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I'm going through something similar at the moment. My employer unilaterally decided to change the way bonuses were paid and inserted a series of unreasonable restrictive covenants into our new contracts. Most of the employees, including me, refused to sign and got in touch with a solicitor.

As others have mentioned there are ways you can object to the contract and work under protest with unfair dismissal protection. Does the new contract include penalties if you fail to work your notice period? Such as deductions from your final paycheque for any unworked days? If not then realistically there's not a lot they can do if you decide not to serve your full notice. They'd have to sue you for breach of contract and then prove any damages your actions have cost them, such as having to employ a temp to cover your duties. You'll obviously have a better idea of any likely impact though.

Personally I took the changes as a sign that I needed to look for another job, which I got soon afterwards. I'm currently serving my 12 weeks notice, except that I'm refusing to serve the full sentence and I'm leaving after 9 instead. They had little choice but to 'agree' to let me go, so it's worked out nicely.
 
El Pew said:
I'm going through something similar at the moment. My employer unilaterally decided to change the way bonuses were paid and inserted a series of unreasonable restrictive covenants into our new contracts. Most of the employees, including me, refused to sign and got in touch with a solicitor.

As others have mentioned there are ways you can object to the contract and work under protest with unfair dismissal protection. Does the new contract include penalties if you fail to work your notice period? Such as deductions from your final paycheque for any unworked days? If not then realistically there's not a lot they can do if you decide not to serve your full notice. They'd have to sue you for breach of contract and then prove any damages your actions have cost them, such as having to employ a temp to cover your duties. You'll obviously have a better idea of any likely impact though.

Personally I took the changes as a sign that I needed to look for another job, which I got soon afterwards. I'm currently serving my 12 weeks notice, except that I'm refusing to serve the full sentence and I'm leaving after 9 instead. They had little choice but to 'agree' to let me go, so it's worked out nicely.
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Penalty clauses are now largely unenforceable in law (some exceptions aside) on a case by case basis however there can be cases where an employer could legally be awarded compensation from an employee breaking their contractual notice obligation.
 
Only having the notice extended one way sounds like an unfair clause - it only benefits one way. I mean that in the technical sense of an unfair contract, but IANAL.
 
refuse to sign it.... but also start hitting up recruiters/get your CV out there... you'll probably cause yourself some flack and you're likely going to kill any bonuses/pay rises if you're one of the few people or only person refusing to sign - just get out of there ASAP after refusing to sign... ideally get some interviews lined up before 22nd of Feb so you're reasonably confident that you can (figuratively) tell them where to shove their new contract
 
You should all meet together and threaten to resign immediately, but good luck getting people to do that. Would be amusing that their new clause causes the team to walk.
 
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