I’ll reply again later with a longer reply but IMHO I think the company I work for are trying to flush me out to give a more established employee his old role back. I’ve been a salesman with them for 2.5yrs and the other guy in question has been 16 years, when they took me on he moved into a role to explore ‘vertical markets’ which have not materialised.

Over the last 12 month they’ve had redundancies in every dept of their 400 employee business except sales and 3 months ago I was placed on a ‘performance review’, none of this mentioned levels of business btw, just about every one of the dozen or so sale guys are under target, our whole market place is governmental so budget cuts have decimated the value of the market.

I feel they’re trying to sacrifice me to give other chap his area back. I had a meeting with my boss on Friday who concluded he doesn’t have the confidence I can do my job. He’s been extremely nit picky on record keeping and pipelines etc. He doesn’t like the way I run my record keeping despite them giving us nothing at all, no CRM system so how can they moan if they don’t provide themselves?? In July I did £140K against a target of £45K but not enough and has suggested I can resign, or they will make this a messy disciplinary issue OR we could agree a mutual exit strategy. In my eyes suggesting this alone puts this into the constructive dismissal ball park?

Our company cars have trackers fitted and when they fitted them we were whole heartedly assured by the MD they weren’t for spying on us 🙄 but were for Health and safety to stop us speeding as the trackers know the speed limits of the area you are in. As a ‘olive branch’ we were given access to the software so we could see what they could…

Interestingly in the two years and 70K i’ve done in my car I’ve never ONCE been told off for doing 90mph on loads of occasions (quiet stretches motorway of course) but he whipped out my tracker Vs Diary summary and pulled me up for being home early one day as an appointment had cancelled but I forgot to remove it from my diary and he even went as far to accuse me of having an interview with a competitor because I had an appointment in the same town as our largest competitor!!!!

It was left with him saying he needs to have a think and I do too and report back this week and conclude, I have to tell him whether I can do the job but he’s adamant I can’t. I’m going on holiday to Cyprus for a fortnight Sunday and the timing is impeccable. I think they want me to quit so I have my holidays on notice, save them money..

Reading between the lines of our discussions on Friday the options are a) resign,b) try and convince him and plough on and wait for them to dismiss me for gross misconduct for a tracker misdemeanour etc or talk turkey and agree an exit strategy. Interestingly they set the budgets for the business early September where we all have to put forward what we will bring in next year. If someone leaves the business that budget still stands, example being a chap retired and me and my colleague had to take his area but the budget too.

The market conditions are dire and they normally want £1m per man, if they reduce my area down to one man then it will then reflect what it;s probably worth at present not the £2m we would have to aim for. I think they’re squeezing me out instead of making me redundant……

Do not quit. Quite possibly they are trying to manage you out. forget constructive dismissal – hard to prove and a load of stress.

Don’t worry about being dismissed when on holiday – it will make no difference to the money you get.

IMO the best strategy is to say nothing except to deny things that are wrong, wait until the redundancy notice comes thru ( or dismissal) at that point tell them all the mistakes they have made in procedure or fact and that you will be going after them at tribunal unless they pay you a load of money to walk away ( a compromise agreement)

ex union rep BTW

Surely suggesting you should resign is constructive dismissal in itself? At least that is what I have been told as an employer myself.

^ What the anti-unionist union man said.

Make proper notes of that last conversation (more lucid than that post if you can!) and wait for them to make a move. Then frame your response in a way that makes them think you’re going to go kicking and screaming without an extra month or two’s pay-off.

You’ll have a lot of difficulty winning a constructive dismissal tribunal without documentary evidence or at least a hand full of witnesses. And I doubt you’ll get your hands on many of those.

m_f – there’s “suggesting” and evidential proof that they made the suggestion.

EDIT: you could have a go at seeing if your boss is dumb enough to “outline your options” in an email that you can hang him with?

As above but start looking for a job asap.

It wont be a pleasent place to work unfortunately.

mastiles_fanylion – Member

Surely suggesting you should resign is constructive dismissal in itself? At least that is what I have been told as an employer myself.

No its not.

This will most likely rest with how well they manage the performance review.

If they do it OK, then you won’t have much to go on with a claim, which would have to be for wrongful dismissal unless you can show that they have treated you differently on the grounds of age, race, gender etc.

If you do resign, you can still bring a claim for constructive dismissal within, I think, 30 days of your last contractual day of employlment. But as TJ says, that will be harder to prove becuase at the moment, it would be based on what’s been said, not what’s actually happened as documented fact.

Their reasons for doing it are their reasons; unless there is a discrimination element to it, you need to put those feelings to one side and focus on documenting and establishing facts.

I’m also in sales and can 100% empathise with how you’re feeling. In fact your cirucmstances resonate a lot with me as well but for different reasons.

A wrongful dismissal claim is limited to £50k so any negotiations you make will be based around that figure; i.e. their worst case scenario of going to tribunal and losing to the tune of £50k plus costs.

Best strategy is to do nothing proactive until they do something proactive, i.e. by written note/email. State your arguments in response to those communications clearly and without prejudice. If they don’t initiate anything formal, through written note, it’s going to be very hard for them to prove they went through a due process so the less they do on this front, the better your case will be.

Good luck mate, I really do feel for you. It could feel very stressful the next few months so make sure you ride your bike as much as you can. That will genuinely help with the stress.

Take someone with you for all subsequent meetings and get written proof of your alleged shortcomings and also their company policy or targets.

Make copies of your car tracking output and all your sales performance, and all your client records and go and see that competitor…

I’ve nothing constructive to add, but even having never met him, I have an urge to punch your boss hard in the face.

Pretty poor management if they think they can succeed by tracking employees rather than inspiring them, get out mate they aint worth it

Good luck mate – try and stay calm, stick to verifiable facts, and get everything you can in writing.

OR we could agree a mutual exit strategy

First thing, ask for a meeting with your boss. say you’ve been thinking over the w/e and that its probably best for all if you take up his offer.

Ask him/her when they want you out and how much they’re gonna pay.

I would expect in the circumstances that today would be your last day…

Then go look for another job.

br – let them make the mistakes first to give you more leverage? No?

sounds to me like the type of boss who will do what he wants and deal with the consequences later so is unlikely to get the hoops right to make a dismissal fair.

So once they suggest an unfair dismissal you have the leverage to get a bigger payoff

BTW Op – do take real professional advice please

Have a word with an employment lawyer (a proper one, not one from here :wink:)

For whatever reason it does sound like they want you out, no doubt part of the reason will be because it’s much cheaper to get rid of you with 2.5 years service rather than someone with 16.

If I were you I’d be looking at negotiating a “compromise” agreement. That’s a confidential money shaped exit with no fault on either side – and you can agree a reference as part of the agreement. As a minimum you should get what they would have had to pay you if they made you redundant but you can probably negotiate more than that.

But as I said at the start get proper advice, and not from here.

Good luck

From recent experience with a friend – I am not referring to me 😉

Extract as much written info as possible whilst you can. Old emails that might contain portions of what has been discussed , as above ^^^ your car tracking stuff.

Stoner makes a good point about an email to your boss. Try and construct something that doesn’t come across as baiting but in its response gives you solid answers to questions raised.

Sadly in my friends case it got down to having written evidence and as such they were glad they had extracted as much info as possible before things went belly up.

Sage advice above too about getting out on the bike – can help clear your head of vengeful thoughts and make things a bit easier.

Chin up fella.

TandemJeremy – Member
mastiles_fanylion – Member
Surely suggesting you should resign is constructive dismissal in itself? At least that is what I have been told as an employer myself.

No its not.
Whatever TJ 🙄

Shall I believe your opinion or listen to the professional advice I have actually paid for as an employer? FFS.

Shall I believe your opinion or listen to the professional advice I have actually paid for as an employer? FFS.

TJ knows everything about everything, didn’t you know?

TJ knows everything about everything, didn’t you know?

I know that he thinks that he knows.

MF – its a simple statement of fact – suggesting someone should resign is not constructive dismissal. Constructive dismissal needs a lot more than that.

No CFH – But I do know a little about this sort of stuff

Constructive dismissal is a form of dismissal. If you resign from your job because of your employer’s behaviour, it may be considered to be constructive dismissal. You would need to show that:

1. Your employer has committed a serious breach of contract
2. You felt forced to leave because of that breach
3. You have not done anything to suggest that you have accepted their breach or a change in employment conditions

Possible examples of constructive dismissal

The reason for leaving your job must be serious – there must be a fundamental breach of your contract. Examples include:

* a serious breach of your contract (eg not paying you or suddenly demoting you for no reason)
* forcing you to accept unreasonable changes to your conditions of employment without your agreement (eg suddenly telling you to work in another town, or making you work night shifts when your contract is only for day work)
* bullying, harassment or violence against you by work colleagues
* making you work in dangerous conditions

Your employer’s breach of contract may be one serious incident or the last in a series of less important incidents that are serious when taken together.

Merely suggesting someone should resign is not enough. It could be a part of case but saying to someone – “perhaps you should resign” does not fit the criteria for constructive dismissal

There is a lot of guff talked about constructive dismissial – its very hard to show.
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/RedundancyAndLeavingYourJob/Dismissal/DG_10026696

Guys the OP here is at risk of losing his job. I know first hand how stressful that is.

Can we keep this about the OP and his situation and not about what TJ does or doesn’t know.

Everyone’s trying to help and that help is well meant. It might not all be 100% accurate but that’s not what we should be focusing on.

Great, the OP asks for some advice and it’s about to turn into a TJ vs m_f et al argument. This is the point at which you could both agree to disagree and not ruin the OP’s thread. Neither of you is an employment lawyer.

EDIT: The post below suggests that you should both piss off and start a thread about this somewhere else and argue yourselves into a big white sticky mess.

Agreed geetee – I shall not rise to yet another attempt by TJ to ignite an argument on here.

Neither of you is an employment lawyer.

I think this is the crux of the problem here. The OP needs to seek proper, professional advice in this case. Not merely interweb opinion.

TandemJeremy – Member
mastiles_fanylion – Member
Surely suggesting you should resign is constructive dismissal in itself? At least that is what I have been told as an employer myself.

No its not.

Whatever TJ

Shall I believe your opinion or listen to the professional advice I have actually paid for as an employer? FFS.

Have you considered you could both be right?

As with all these things it depends on the circumstances. If you stood infront of a group of employees and shouted and screamed at one that they sound resign that probably would form a basis for a successful constructive dismissal claim. If you suggested it during a capability review meeting with an employee who was clearly struggling to do their job it probably would not be.

Now kiss and make up, or I will take your toys away.

Nothing to do with attempting to start an argument – just correcting bad advice. Read the stuff quoted

If the OP thinks constructive dismissal is on the cards merely because it has been suggested he should resign then he is on a hiding to nothing

Once again – take real professional advice but IMO letting them make the mistakes, document everything then use the threat of a tribunal to get a payoff in the form of a compromise agreement is probably your best route

send an e-mail to you boss asking if they could outline your options-
Say from our I would like to point out I will not be resigning despite what you say as i believe my performance is yadda yadda yadda
THEN
If as you suggest you will offer a severance what are you offering?

try an drop in their threat of messy disciplinary as well.
I would much rather avoid the threat of disciplinary action and do not think my performance warrants this – something like that?

They may just reply to it but if they dont reply with WTF are you talking about it is a tacit admission that this is what happened.
Try and get stuff in writing as it will aid any case
That said if they want you gone they will make you gone so I would personally go for the largest settlement I could get – getting evidence to suggest unfair dismissal will aid this

As a fellow worker said to me when i waas in a simailar situation many years ago, where the rules kept changing and it was obvious i was not needed, that advice was, “what ever you do or say a snowball has about as much chjance of surviving in hell as you have of still working here in a few months”, and she was right.

Start looking for a new job,

How secure is your boss in his position?

Minute properly that conversation and start a diary of your harassment NOW.

CYA on everything that you do, keep records of everything, and get all the info you can recorded on other peoples targets/performance/treatment etc. write down the time you start and finish and where you go/what you do for everything (if they try and do you for knocking off early, its hard to make it stand up as a disciplinary if you’ve done overtime every other day.

start building a case for constructive based on your treatment from now onwards, thats what the diary is for.

if you have something you can screw the company on, nows the time to make it into a proper insurance policy! – F*ck me, and I’ll F*ck you!

Get all the costs information, customer information, accounts information and anything else you can to take with you to a competitor.

Get all the costs information, customer information, accounts information and anything else you can to take with you to a competitor.

Steal data? That puts the OP in a strong position doesn’t it? What crass advice.

As above – take a witness to meetings, keep notes, emails, record conversations. None of this will save your job, but if they know you’re not a pushover, they’ll pay you more to leave.

Guys, thanks for the advice and the usual display of typical STW difference of opinion which I actually find entertaining, everyone has an opinion and a POV they are entitled to it and long may this free speech continue…..

Ito make some comments about customer records etc, they give me NOTHING to record them on and I’ve used my own PC anyway so it’s my intellectual property no theirs so they can GF if they think they will get any of that. The frustrating part for me is they are criticising my record keeping in the absence of anything they have given me, Every company I’ve worked for in the past has some sort of CRM system where you log your prospects, progression and sales pipelines etc and they hang you if you don’t use that, this lot don’t give you anything and then knock what you have done in replace of.

Interestingly I’ve just spoken to a colleague elsewhere in the business who has his third ‘review meeting’ tomorrow and his experience has been totally identical, except he works solo and doesn’t share an area with someone else.

I do realise constructive dismissal is a tough cookie to prove but use like the personal injury process seems to scare insurers, the threat of a lengthy expensive distracting legal process should incentivise them to make an exit package fairer and more worth my while, the difficult balance is not steaming in there too cock sure and ending up with sweetFA.

The problem is they are very tight and very aggressive in these situations, typical example being last July I was away with the sales team on a sales meeting and had a great night with a great bunch of colleagues, I updated my status on Facebook (yes i know and you know what’s coming!) commenting on a great night with the lads. What I didn’t know was after I went to bed a load of them had a tear up in the bar on the company barclaycard with a couple of internal guys. Next morning the two internal managers came to work boasting of their quadruple vodka drinking conquests FOC courtesy of the barclaycard, the office shoite stirrer got wind, he persuaded a weaker individual who was an FB friend to print off my status and in front of the MD it went, as he’s finalising a redundancy review.

I was royally marched for making the sales team look like we were living the high life and and subsequently given a 9 month written warning for breaching the company’s ‘acceptable internet usage policy’. I got in contact with a lawyer then who as good as said they can’t tell me what to do with my own phone in my own time, I didn’t mention the name of the company etc so tell them to go and get stuffed, but if I did they’d hit me down (as they are now doing) and find a fickle reason to get rid and libel me a troublemaker. So I took it on the chin, but I’ve never had it confirmed from HR that the warning is spent. It will be interesting to see if they plan to use this……

I have no idea if this is a good idea or not, but could you ‘minute’ your conversation with your boss in an email and send it back to him? Perhaps copy in HR.

With the premise that you want to clarify and confirm what was discussed…

At the moment he could easily turn round and say “that’s not what I said” or “I think you misunderstood me” if you end up having to refer to it in the future.

If they want a compromise then are they not obliged to pay for some initial legal advice for you? Independent.

I was heading in this direction so I instigated a grievance procedure against my MD. Made sure everything was put on record…

They ended up leaving me be and I found an exit in due course which suited me.

when they offer yo a compromise agreement yo will need some legal advice at that point which they will pay for.

It looks like they are trying to manage people out rather than making redundancies. Possibly bosses also trying to justify themselves by “managing”

TJ you have hit the nail on the head word for word there. In 2.5yrs with this lot I’ve not once had a manager accompany me on a sales visit, now the MD is putting pressure on the sales managers they all of a sudden seem to be very transparent and active. I know I’m being managed out and they know what they are doing, it’s a case of who’s got the bigger b0!!0cks now….

Shame really because I enjoyed the job and the people I work with be cest la vie! I would have thought 3 months garden leave and benefits (fully expensed car) would be acceptable?

6 months salary and benefits (cash equivalent) is what I would be aiming at.

I was in a similar situation a few years ago. On 18 000 pa. 2 years service. entitled to £400 redundancy. I walked away with £7000 because they were so incompetent and me and t;missus ran rings round them.

We gave them enough rope to hang themselves then in the crucial meeting took them to pieces. They knew they did not have a case they could make so then they were desperate to make a compromise agreement so allowed me to rack up the money.

OP

For a compromise agreement to be valid the employees needs to have received legal advice and the employer usually does pay but as a few have said get some proper advice but don’t go to the guy who said:

I got in contact with a lawyer then who as good as said they can’t tell me what to do with my own phone in my own time,

That’s wrong because if you are judged to have brought your company into disrepute they can most certainly take action (up to and including dismissal) even if you did it in your own time on your own phone.

That’s wrong because if you are judged to have brought your company into disrepute they can most certainly take action (up to and including dismissal) even if you did it in your own time on your own phone.

But the OP pointed this out:

I didn’t mention the name of the company etc

But the OP pointed this out:

I didn’t mention the name of the company etc

Read that to mean he didn’t mention the company to the lawyer?

If no mention was made on the facebook entry the lawyer may be right but if all the OPs friends on facebook know who he works for the fact that he didn’t mention the company by name could be irrelevant.