About to be sacked and devastated

Nice one.

3 months to get another job.

Well thats a fairly good result Mog – all the better that you didn’t let them make the meeting go as they wanted!. Now you know what your employers are like you can use it as motivation to get a better role. Well done – you should be proud of how you handled this.

I reckon you played that spot-on Mog – nice one!

Get looking for a decent job and all the best.

Good layd…

You can’t use Inventor can you…? 🙂

Good stuff. Very well held sir.

Nicely done Mog. Good luck with the job hunt

Congratulations.

Take the many positives from your preparation and behaviours and the fact if they wanted rid they would have terminated you on the spot. Unfortunately the culture in a business is set by the senior person on site and if this behaviour is endemic you have 3 months to sort yourself out. You could take out insurance to cover the bills if the worst was to happen in a few months.

However if you are part of the interview and selection process for additional staff you may have a future? Take discrete soundings over the next few weeks and see what the feedback is from colleagues. No doubt it will be a talking point.

In todays climate performance is key and no one can carry passengers. I’ve sacked family members as a very last resort and after running out of every avenue available but they were negatively impacting their team. The business comes first so by all means look around but don’t discount staying and moving up the food chain. I appreciate the last statement sounds awful and I’ve paid a heavy price in terms of family but I have no regrets.

What i’m trying to say is your manager has been exposed as a poor performer and has been out manoeuvred by a new starter. His peers will have their own thoughts reinforced by todays meeting and their voices will not go un noticed. If they do their manager will risk losing respect and probably a cohesive and effective team of senior staff. Or get rid or re train the manger in question. Not a big choice there is there! Don’t under estimate your worth you bring but at the same time don’t think your indispensable.

Just make sure you don’t access this site from your office computer! Your fine from a legal aspect but why give them leverage?

Take time to reflect and think and act outside your comfort zone. This gives a whole different perspective to all the important things in your life and not enough people do it.

Of course all the above doesn’t apply in which case the very best of luck with your new career where ever that takes you.

Well done Mog.

Well done to the STW Collective for some excellent advice and support.

Well done Mog.
Whether you take slowmart’s advice depends upon how you want to live your life – personally I wouldn’t want to live like that (no offence slowmart).
I’m in a sort of similar position to you Mog and can tell you it’s not good for your health or happiness in the long run.
Good luck 🙂

OP – yep, you bought yourself some breathing space, which really was your goal. So good job!

But now you’re a marked man. If they are inclined to get rid of you, they will now meticulously document every little issue that they have with you and your group. You can’t win, and it would probably take a superhuman effort to even try.

So focus yourself on your job search and put your real effort into that. Do enough at work that they don’t have a real reason to get rid of you sooner than 3 months, but don’t kill yourself trying to hang on, either.

Go Moggie!

Evidence 2 – performance broken down per head in my team to demonstrate that if I had 4 more ‘heads’, as I’d been requesting, the targets would have been hit. (actual x 4 = as near as dammit)

This is the crucial part of your OP and follow up. Good on you for getting in early, getting your head down and confounding them with irrefutable evidence.

Well done – its nice to hear some positive(ish) news in the current challenging employment environment. Hope it works out in the longer term!

Perhaps STW could set up a rival service to ACAS 😉

Pleased this worked out as best as could be expected,now bring it in folks for a big STW group hug 🙂

Nice to hear some good news. Well done.

Congratulations Mog.

Well done – excellent result. I’m the first one to say a business shouldn’t carry passengers, but at the same time, part of management responsibility is taking ownership of issues. Clearly they have failed on several counts…..

As has been said, you’re now a marked man, not only from your manager, but also the admin team who you have exposed for failing in their function.

Spend your time getting out to interviews. Don’t waste energy trying to screw them by going sick etc, that’s not constructive use of your time.

You got a good result here – keep us posted how it all goes mate.

Maybe we should start posting job vacancies on here?

Well done Mog, sounds like they were woefully underbriefed/prepared for your interview.

Advice from my wife (employment lawyer) get a copy of your employee handbook, which should contain al the processes they should follow for any disciplinary. Failure to follow procedures gives you a potential unfair dismissal claim.

Yeah good result there, even if it does just buy you 3 months to get a better job elsewhere. It’s kind of odd to though, if they’d already decided they wanted you out then even though you proved the poor performance was baseless they could still have gone through with it. I’d say it doesn’t look good for your line manager and that he’d been telling porkies and got found out during the meeting as a result.

Great result Mog. Great result STW! 🙂

3 month probabtion extended = sit on arse using company internet to find new job/surf Singletrack

2 months and 30 days later = leave job with no mark on your CV

Good result

As above, very well done, it’s a minefield but you’ve been proactive and positive and they can’t walk out of there with anything other than respect (and probably frustration). They may be genuine in wanting it to work and you should talk to your boss about how to handle the 4-person shortfall. That said, get looking anyway.

Advice from my wife (employment lawyer) get a copy of your employee handbook, which should contain al the processes they should follow for any disciplinary. Failure to follow procedures gives you a potential unfair dismissal claim.

Not sure how that would work given up to 12 months you can basically just tell people to go for any arbitrary reason.

Approx 2 days after employing said strategy, find self in another meeting with one’s arse being handed to one’s self on a plate.

If STW can help Mog find a new job, this could be the perfect thread!

mog – post up with (approximately) what you do (we know sales, but industry etc), what sort of seniority and where you are and lets see what STW can do for you

Good point from FuzzyWuzzy ref your line manager having exposed himself and them not having got rid of you despite you thinking that was the way things would go – keeping you on suggests there may be something else going on. If it’s only your line manager who doesn’t like your face then maybe, rather than trying to find a way out, your time would be well spent making sure you deliver what’s been agreed. You never know – the senior management may have switched fire and now be building a case against him instead (despite him being best mates with the big boss – something like this would make it easier to let him go given the friendship)…

keeping you on suggests there may be something else going on

Yes, HR told them that they hadn’t done everything properly and as such, if they get rid of him, they’d be open to legal proceedings (likely ending in a settlement). As such, they’ve given 3 months with a view to doing the job properly. Probably.

Good point from FuzzyWuzzy ref your line manager having exposed himself

I think if this had happened we’d be back in American Beauty land and Mog would be looking forward to a significant financial windfall 🙂

Sorry I’m late to the party.

My first thought on reading the OP was, it’s a stiffing. I figured, it’s probably not personal, but they need to let someone go, and Mog drew the short straw.

The post-meeting results are interesting though. They had a pre-prepared list of things to throw at you, you went “ah, no,” and they went, “oh… ok then.” Now, at that point, if it was a foregone conclusion then they could’ve got rid anyway, they didn’t have to keep you on. I wonder why they did?

I can only speculate of course, but I wonder how transparent your immediate boss has been? Perhaps the MD has been kicking him for poor sales and he’s been going “ah, well, that new boy, he’s not working out too well…” It’ll be interesting to see what the atmosphere’s like over the next few days if you’ve just made him look like an idiot in front of his boss.

If you were out of probation, I’d be tempted to suggest fighting it; ie, trying to make a go of it and turn the department around. But with the sword of Damocles hanging over your head it’s just too risky. Take the money and run.

Incidentally,

CZ picked up on a point which made me go “what?!” as well.

Seems an almost deliberate Catch-22 there; they accuse you of not developing the staff, but accuse you of being out of line for taking steps to develop the staff through training!

This makes no sense to me either. “You’ve not done anything about training.” – “Well, actually, I have, I’ve made enquiries about training, look.” – “You’re not authorised to do any training, stop that.” What are you supposed to do, put together a training plan and then seek authorisation? Looks like that’s exactly what you were doing.

ditch_jockey – Member

Good point from FuzzyWuzzy ref your line manager having exposed himself

I think if this had happened we’d be back in American Beauty land and Mog would be looking forward to a significant financial windfall

Ba-dum, tish… I was kind of half expecting a comment like that at my rather clumsily worded sentence… 😆

Re staying. Given you’ve now seen the reality of the company culture, why would you want to?
Clearly unhealthy and dishonest, employing incompetent senior managers, which’ll be one of the reasons they’re not very successful!
If you stay, you’ll still be working in a failing company…

I suspect you’re still there because their prep and strategy were incompetent, not because they want you there…

IME incompetent people hate competent and honest people so you’re now even more unattractive to them having proven to be cleverer than them in political matters too! Watch your back…

Good work STW!

some great stuff here…loadsa great experience based ideas etc but whats great is without this place i think mog could have gone into that meeting without a plan and got tipped straight away…i cant believe how naive they were not to have anyone from hr theyre?

maybe time to get in touch informally or otherwise with the old employer? my 2p worth…anyhow,well done and good luck!

(this is loads more entertaining than some over engineered/pricey shed build) 😆

Oh, one other thing.

They sprang a meeting on you seemingly underhand giving you little time to prepare / organise a witness. If they do that again, ask them to postpone the meeting so that you have time to find a representative. (Apart from anything else, it’s taking charge of the situation rather than bending over)

Well done that Mog.

Mog.

Well done. Sounds like you played a blinder and batted away most of the half-baked accusations with ease because you were in the right and they knew it.

That has bought you some very precious time to get something else sorted.

Keep it going and get out to something better ASAP.

Glad to hear it was a (reasonably) positive outcome.

At the very least it sounds like some ‘advice’ has been given by HR to ensure correct process is followed rather than your boss making it up as he goes along.

If you are set on finding something new (and assuming you haven’t already done so) get yourself a LinkedIn profile. Great way to market yourself for your next job..

Good luck with it all anyway 🙂

Well done – excellent work, and well handled, by the sounds of it.

Now get the hell out of there. You’re obviously competent, judging by what you did in the meeting, and what you’d achieved before it. Good luck, and happy hunting.

Well done Mog, now if I were you I wouldn’t post any more about it on here as it could be spotted, double effort required now for them and finding a new job.
Good Luck fella and well played that man

Nice one OP.

Come on, let us know where you live and roughly what you do. The STW job agency is now OPEN 🙂