I’m after a bit of legal-ish advice

Work appears to be looking to get rid of people on the cheap and are using the performance review process to do so

All of a sudden they’ve arbitrarily increased the number of people who are underperformers and have then started hassling them through performance improvement plans which they try to make as difficult as possible to complete successfully

If you fail to complete a series of these plans then you will have racked up enough written warnings to warrant being fired

Despite many years of good performance at the company I now find myself marked as an underperformer and being pushed through the above process

I’m worried and not sure how to play it – any advice?

you dont work for an Accountancy firm in Manchester do you?

Complain to your union.

become “stressed” – those people are hard to fire

Constuctive dismissal.

Constuctive dismissal

trouble is – you can only claim that after you’ve gone.

Its constructuve dismissal if they force you out/ fire you by changing the demands of of your job without consulting the work force. Get yourself (and any colleagues who feel teh same) into a union (GMB will take on anyone, but there is better groups out there who may know more about your area).

Trouble is, if you become a militiant PITA your head is still first on the block, but at least you’ll get a fair pay off?

Removing people using performance managment usually takes about six months, so it’s not a cheap way of managing a reduction in force; indeed it’s more costly and more risky typically than a simple redundancy procedure. If they are doing this, then the business is likely to have gennuine concerns about how well people are performing; perhaps people have got too used to an easy life or have not previously been held accountable for poor performance, probably because the leadership never held anyone to account. (I see and hear this all the time from businesses as this is related to the work I do.)

You’ve got two options. The first is to really make the effort to improve your performance. Work with your manager, ask for clarity as to exactly what it is they need you to do. There should be clear goals, agreed by both you and your manager and a time frame by which these are to be achieved. I know you feel your performance has been good but there is clearly a difference between what the leadership now determines is good and what you feel it is. You can spend a lot of time being bitter and angry about that, ultimately that will only cause you more problems – you have to come to terms with the changes and work to improve.

Alternatively, you could ask them for an off the record conversation and look to get them to offer you a compromise agreement to go now. Compromise agreements are basically a pay off for you to waive your rights as an employee; in return for signing away the right to bring any claims of unlawful dismissal etc, you get a financial pay out, much like a redundancy payment and like this I think they are tax free.

How you play this is up to you but I would strongly advise you not to go the ‘sick’ route. That way just puts off the innevitable and will leave you in a far worse place than you are now. Being angry will do the same thing.

If your company follows the correct procedure for a performance management plan then there will be nothing anyone can do if they are fired as a result because the business is entitled to ask for better performance from its employees. The fact that this is coming now and appears to be a ‘moving of the goal posts’ is the reason why they have to go through a performance management plan – so they can reset their expectations and communicate this to the business.

Good luck – I’ve been where you are now and it will feel pretty rough if you do get fired. The hardest lessons to learn are the ones that are about ourselves and this is one of them.

First thing is you’ve got to go anyway. Never work with @rseholes because you get sprayed with their sh1t. (They have just demonstrated that’s what they are.)

Now start planning your exit strategy. You’re not going to save your job, so work out how best to screw them.

Epi this is bad advice – sorry mate I am sure you’re just trying to make the guy feel better, but this is not the way. It will complicate things, burn bridges and worse of all, the longer you hold onto the anger, the longer it will take to move on.

This happened recently to a friend of mine who worked for the Bank of Scotland. He’d been there 23 years and towards the end of 2008 he was put on a performance management plan. He sold investment services so with all the bad press the bank was going through he couldn’t meet his targets. He went to the union but the problem is they put an offer on the table and if you decide to fight it through the unions you could walk away with nothing.

Had he been made redundant he would have walked away with 23 months salary plus 3 months notice – he was offered 10 months salary plus 3 months notice which he decided to accept. He had thought og going sick with stress but at the end of the day he would just have been putting something off that was going to happen anyway.

Oh and to add that he did argue that the targets he was expect to meet were impossible, his boss said, ‘with your experience you should meet them whatever the state of the market’.

I had a similar situation for 12mths last year. I was getting major stomach acid problems, i was grumpy, i was being short with the wife & kids and i was putting in loads of hours at work with people i hated.

Its not worth it. Get out at the earliest oppertunity

Redundancy programmes – especially if they involve more than 20 employees (as the programme then needs to be notigfied to the Secretary of State) are difficult, complex and time consuming. Performance management is the way that employers get around this. It is also hard work, but at a time when businesses are looking to cut costs, they will do whatever they need to do.

Where I work, there are never any performance management programmes – work is simply taken away from an indivudual until their position becomes untenable, and then they are invited to leave. I work for one of the world’s largest law firms; this is normal practice in the good as well as the bad times.

Geetee has some great advice.

Constuctive dismissal

trouble is – you can only claim that after you’ve gone.

AFAIK constructive dismissal can be pursued whilst still employed.
Though the pitfalls are pretty obvious, plus if it’s happening to many others it will not appear to be aimed at an individual.

If your company follows the correct procedure for a performance management plan then there will be nothing anyone can do if they are fired as a result because the business is entitled to ask for better performance from its employees. The fact that this is coming now and appears to be a ‘moving of the goal posts’ is the reason why they have to go through a performance management plan – so they can reset their expectations and communicate this to the business

This is true but they must be asking you to do something realistic …no point asking you to sell houses at the moment for exanple or double your targets from last year and external factors [economic downturn)cannot be ignored…is everyone underperforming then the targets are not realistic. Are you working in different geographical locations are they actually equivalent
Have you worked there for 8 years and performed at this level for that time why is it suddenly not good enough … why have they suddenley raised expectations during an economic downturn does this seem like good business sense or realistic? tribunals are very good at seeing where companies have tried to use performance reviews to sack people unreasonably and I would not be afraid of mentioning this to them to hear their denials/explanation of why they are doing this and giving examples of why they think the targets are realistic etc and why what was ok lat year is not good enough this year etc.. they will need to respond to this and be prepared to defend this.
Get as many as you can together to do this.
Are they offering training to support you to improve the performance? They need to as part of the disciplinary procedure and give a reasonable time to improve and measure this.
Log everything that happens and get evidence of meetings send e-mail giving your account of meetings and ask if it is a fair interpreation etc.
Ultimately if this is their course of action they will probably get rid of you so join a union and after 3 mths you are covered.

Good luck be willing to change and adaptable but be assertive and stand up for your rights.

AFAIK constructive dismissal can be pursued whilst still employed.
Though the pitfalls are pretty obvious, plus if it’s happening to many others it will not appear to be aimed at an individual.

That’s not the way I understand how it works

In order for the employee to be in a position to resign and claim constructive dismissal, there must be a “dismissal” under the Employment Rights Act 1996 .In order for such a dismissal to occur four conditions must be met:

1.

there must be a breach of contract by the employer. This may be either an actual breach or an anticipatory breach (e.g. the employer refuses to ensure the safety of the applicant by agreeing to transfer the harasser if she returns to work)
2.

that breach must be sufficiently important to justify the employee resigning, or else it must be the last in a series of incidents which justify her leaving
3.

the employee must leave in response to the breach and not for a different, unconnected reason
4.

the employee must not delay too long in terminating the contract in response to the employer’s breach, otherwise she may be deemed to have waived the breach and agreed to vary the contract

There may well be other legislation that can be followed but until you actually leave I don’t believe constructive dismissal is one of them

Bottom line though – get advice from somewhere other than a cycling forum 🙂

Junkyard’s points are all excellent – this is what is meant by ‘following the correct procedure’. All these reasons are also why it’s quite hard to use performance management as a cheap was of making people redundant.

I think that what he is also saying is that if you are going to pursue a claim of constuctive dismissal, then you need to be very sure that this is what it is, hence why you must get everything documented.

The worst situation to be in is to be pursuing a tribunal simply because your angry and you want to get even. Keep it business like and non-emotional, although obviously that will be hard to do.

AK47 and three magazines? 🙄

geetee1972 –
Epi this is bad advice – sorry mate I am sure you’re just trying to make the guy feel better, but this is not the way. It will complicate things, burn bridges and worse of all, the longer you hold onto the anger, the longer it will take to move on.

Not suggesting anger, just acceptance of the fact that they are going to get rid of him by fair means or foul. So instead of faffing around with trying to save his job, work out his exit strategy, and if possible screw as much out of them as possible.

From now on his company’s interests are not the same as his interests.

good advice geetee 1972,

I have just resigned from my job after 20 years service (local council)It was I direct result of a “Personnel development review”.Basically I was given negative feedback to previous work/jobs,(that was untrue)
all of this came from a supervisor that was above me,position wise.
I felt this was a direct result of poor managment, and it lead to stress and health levels (back pain) getting to the point i could no longer work.

Get the Union involved as early as you can,thats where I went wrong! 😥

Thanks to you all for your excellent advice – I really appreciate it

getee1972 – Would you mind if I PM’d you with a couple of further questions relating to some subtleties of my situation? I’d rather not write it down here in case our human resources people are reading this forum 🙂

hey hey whatsap with my advice huh??!

hope it all gets sorted luther – you know where I’m at, and if you’re around sunday then it’s ride time…

Luther – very happy for you to PM me, though not sure how that works. Hopefully it will be obvious.

Get used to it! The world is full of bullying txxts with disproportionately inflated opinions of themselves!

If the business isn’t performing, they are resposible, not you! On this basis, if they were fair players, they would add themselves to this performance management process.

All you can do is be yourself, do your best, after this think “fick ’em”, but remain composed.

If you can get out, do it. Their current behaviour is a case of them showing their true colours.

By resorting to putting everyone under extreme pressure by making them feel insecure, they will not get quality work. They have set the mood – fear. This sort of mental abuse kills goodwill. They could just be frank with you about the situation, but they haven’t got the strength of character or the courage to be honest.

You are working for people with weak people managemnt skills – quite common. Nothing will ever change, even when times are good.

So mark this as the point where your commitment to the company ends and you begin to look to the future doing something else.

Good luck!

Actually getee1972 I don’t think I can PM you because no contact email address is listed 🙂

Would you mind PM’ing me by clicking on the word “Member” next to my name to reveal my contact email address?