A bit OT, but people on here have jobs, so why not?

Bit of a frustrating situation at the moment. I’ve verbally accepted an offer of a new job, and have handed in my (3 month contractually) notice. The only fly in the ointment is that my new employer wants me to start about ten days before the end of my notice period of my old work.

This isn’t an issue with my line manager who is fine with the notice I’ve given to stop a bit earlier. But I work for a large company with a centralized contractor HR department. They’ve already been a bit off; they didn’t reach my bosses notification email for a few days, so have said my last day should be 3 months + those few extra days. I’m not having that, but sense a bit of a battle.

I want to leave on good terms and I’m suggesting using unused holidays to close the gap. However, if push comes to shove, how can they penalise me for leaving early? Anecdotally, I’ve heard of people handing in their notice and never coming back the same day. Sure, you won’t get paid and are unlikely to get another job there, but they can’t legally force you to work. On the other hand, I did sign a contract, and as mentioned I work for a big company and I’m not in a unionised kind of role, so could be stuffed in a legal battle.

I’m struggling to find real world experiences of this online, just formal advice from job websites who are probably reluctant to share any potentially ugly details. Hence, I would much appreciate any advice or experience from STWers if it’s out there.

Cheers

phone in sick.

How much damage could you do to their systems/reputation while they’re forcing you to work those extra days? I suspect your manager is being realistic and he needs to persuade HR of the practicalities of the situation.

Be honest.

Discuss with line manager, telling him/her that, yes, you’ll work your notice, but also that your new employer has asked for an earlier start date. As such, and again, be honest, you’re hardly going to be giving your all (or much at all!) to your current and soon to be old employer. You’ll be working to the bare minimum, especially after the planned new employer start date, etc. Get that escalated to the HR function. Make it very clear to them that you’ll be doing the minimum amount of work to fulfill any contractual obligations, not a jot more.

Be honest with your line manager, though. Have a proper discussion about it. Not that you want to leave on bad terms, but that you are leaving.

have said my last day should be 3 months + those few extra days

get bent. you gave your notice to your line manager. no requirement on you to proliferate that information through the business. maybe they should read their email in a timely fashion.
do your time though. new employer might want you to start earlier but you have to fulfill your obligations unless released from them.

Yup, notice means exactly that, not notice + handling time.

Leaving early isn’t just about your current employer of course- if literally the first thing you ever do in your relationship with the new employer, is fall out with the old one, it’s not a good start. But this shouldn’t be a matter for falling out, using holidays to reduce notice period is very standard except where they absolutely, genuinely, need the full notice period

(I got it from the bank, being dickheads as usual- fannied around for the first month of my notice then insisted I couldn’t get away early because they needed to download my brain before I left and that would take right up to the last day…)

I was involved in a case of this kind at my last job. Had a few meetings with the CEO and the HR consultancy. One of my colleagues resigned and didn’t serve any notice. The CEO was incensed and wanted to sue his arse for every penny. Basically the HR wallah said the company had to show breach of contract AND that they had suffered financially as a direct result. We couldn’t impose any ‘punishment’ on the leaver, we could only try and recoup any lost money. We discussed getting a contractor in to replace him and charging him for the cost, but the HR wallah said just to let it lie.

To summarise the CEO said “basically there’s nothing we can do. The emmployee can leave us in the shit at a days’ notice, even though we have an employment contract and there’s nothing we can do?”

Yep.

So replace the “him” with you, and there’s very little the company can do. Loss of reputation perhaps

That’s a nasty case of rideyourbikeitis I see developing. There’s only one possible cure.

Only slightly more seriously, what are the old guys going to do if you leave early, sack you or something? You’ve already broken the terms of your contract by handing in your notice, it’s all negotiable now (whether they think so or not). Worst case, you’ll never work there again (you’d be surprised), but you were leaving anyway, right?

Sounds to me like your line manager gets it – maybe get their thoughts?

As you’ve verbally accepted the new offer, I would keep my head a long way below the parapet until until you have everything signed and sealed. The last thing you want is to fall out with the current mob, and the new ones change their mind or find someone who can start earlier.
Don’t rock the boat just yet.

Push comes to shove there is f all they can do if you just walk. By all means try to play nice but don’t take any crap from them. You’re an employee not a slave and 3 months is pretty unreasonable anyway.

Your employer should be reasonable and agree to an earlier termination date, after all they will save money as they will stop paying you sooner. Central HR is just being lazy with “computer says” leaving date.

Of they are not paying you for unused holiday its common to take those days off the notice period too.

When handing in my notice I have generally not come back in again but thats due to finance insdutry standard practice of putting you on gardening leave during which time you have to remai available and can’t start your new job. Old comoany doesn’t want you there half heartedly or worse still being disruptive.

Push comes to shove there is f all they can do if you just walk. By all means try to play nice but don’t take any crap from them. You’re an employee not a slave and 3 months is pretty unreasonable anyway.

You have a contract for which you are paid. There are onligations on both sides, one being they pay you and you work 3 months after giving notice. We’d all be hacked off if we got sacked and they ignired the contractual notice period

I’ll say it again but it’s been said before, 10 days before your due to leave phone in sick. Indeed, if it were me and my soon to be previous employers were making things difficult they’d find I was ill considerably short of that 10 day period.

You have lots of options.

Easiest seems to be take the holidays you are owed- how can they moan at that?

Thanks for all the responses, a lot to mull over. I do agree that I don’t want to rock the boat; I have confidence in the new company but it’s not all set in stone, yet. I really hope it doesn’t come to anything drastic, I can talk quite freely with my manager and he seems to be on my side.

Sign the new contract…. agreeing to the early start date.

Then just send an email to your line manager saying:

Notice submitted on date x
Therefore last day of employment x + 3 months
However, I will be taking 10 days of holiday, making my last day in the office z.

Leave it up to him to talk to HR. Anything else that comes to you, just refer them back to your original email….. the rule of notice periods is: don’t be a d*ck.

Reading this, the biggest alarm bell is the fact the new job is only verbal so far. Get that sorted before going to war with current employer.

I remember the great feeling if handing in a months notice. Then right at the end of the conversation, handing over my leave card. “so, by my maths, my last day is Friday”.

Flipside- if the new company wants you that much they’d wait.

If your existing company wanted you to go they couldn’t say I know it’s 3months bit could you leave after 2 please’.

Sorry id think about a timely and accurate future reference too.

Sometimes new jobs don’t work out too. Is the push on start date driven by a recruitment consultant?

I should clarify a little, I’ve verbally accepted and have a hard copy contract signed by new employer,but the offer is contingent on references (no concerns there), agreeing to start date etc. which are in progress.

I think I *should* be ok with the holidays to close the gap, but they will likely pro rata them due to leaving before year end. Depending on what formula they use for that it could be tight however, so I don’t feel out of the woods yet.

Also, if it gets tight, how about this logic; if you have one calendar month’s notice and hand it in on the morning of the 1st, you should only work until the 31st of that month, not the 1st of the next i.e. the full month, not the month + 1 day. Likewise, if you hand in your notice on e.g. the 15th, you should only work til the 14th of the next month. It’s probably a moot point due to the ‘computer says no’ mentality above, but thought it could be worth discussing.

Employer can, in many cases, require you to work the accrued holidays during notice period and pay you for them if they choose.

I think the discussion here has been valuable but it’s not yet addressed the real issue which is not that your current employer won’t release you early, but that your (potential) new employer wants you to start before your contractual notice period has ended.

What they want and what you can agree to are different things. Sure they will be acting in their own self interest where they can (your new employer and your old one) but that should not be your problem.

There is no way on god’s earth that your new employer won’t hire you because you can only start the job ten days later than their request so while a conversation with your current employer to try and get them to release you early is perfectly reasonable, the outcome really shouldn’t be your problem.

Also, I would strongly suggest that if your new employer is leaning on you that heavily to exit early and especially if the job offer is conditional to the start date they’ve mandated, then you should think very carefully about whether this is the kind of company you want to work for.

If you think about it, that is exactly the kind of unreasonable behaviour your current employer is demonstrating.

As for consequence and whether there is anything your current employer could do to stop you, you are still under contract with them. Suing you isn’t the biggest risk. The biggest risk is you walk out and start a new job while you’re still on the pay roll of your old employer. The current employer doesn’t have to sue you to make life complicated. They just have to do nothing. You can’t work for two companies at the same time as that would be a gross breach of contract. The least pernicious outcome of that would a problem with the old employer (there would certainly be financial loss that could be proven in that case). The bigger problem would be getting sacked from the new job as a result.

You can’t work for two companies at the same time as that would be a gross breach of contract

Only for a contract that says that. Lots of people have two jobs. But worth checking.

Only for a contract that says that. Lots of people have two jobs. But worth checking.

Yes true, sorry I was asssuming the OP is a full time employee and therefore would end up working the same hours for both companies and being paid by both of them for those same hours.

I’ve never heard of anyone getting in trouble for double working through a job change in this way. So long as the overlap is leave from the first job, no one will know or care.

Btw your new employer can sack you whenever they want anyway without cause up to 2 years IIRC. Happened to a hated and incompetent director of our lab, how we laughed until she was parachuted into a high flying EU position (but at least she probably isn’t causing any harm there)

no one will know or care

While that may be true it doesn’t make it right and is still incredibly risky. Do you really know lots of people who have done this? I personally don’t know anyone who has.

Btw your new employer can sack you whenever they want anyway without cause up to 2 years

This is true. It used to be one year but they changed it a few years ago. Of course, you are still afforded protection against discrimination so they cannot sack you because of gender, sexuality, race, disability etc, but if your face doesn’t fit, you don’t like playing golf or boozing after work, or you have your own ideas about things and don’t toe the party line then it’s fine for you to get sacked for those reasons.

What can they do…
1) sue you for breach of contract- unlikely
2) be difficult if you ever crossed paths again in the future, either if you ever went back to your old company, or they (HR BOD/management) moved to a new company you subsequently wanted to go to.

What would I do..
1) I would speak to your new company, tell them the situation, tell them you are trying to resolve it. Ask new company to put your notice +3 months in the contract, with a note on if possible to start sooner on date x
2) try to get your manager to resolve with current HR
3) Depending on your manager, either a) work notice period. b) work notice period -10 days, on last day give your manager a nice written handover/update on your work, clients etc, cough pertinently, say oh, I’m feeling a feverish… Leave, phone in sick next week, and the next

I only know directly of one person who has done the double-job-with-leave thing, because they had a lot of annual leave saved up and there was no mechanism for over-payment in lieu. But assuming it is even against the terms of the contract (which is not automatically the case), who is going to care, and why? It’s hardly the same thing as holding down two jobs and sharing your efforts between two employers.

Anyway, unless the job is something extraordinary, I reckon the original employer would have great difficulty in enforcing 3 months notice legally. At some point contracts become unreasonable and unenforceable even if signed by both parties. IME most employers cope with 1 month just fine, I’ve never had to give more.

At some point contracts become unreasonable

Three months is neither unreasonable or uncommon.

I’m amazed at the number of people here who think it’s perfectly ok to act like a douche bag when it comes to honouring the terms of your contracted employment.

3 months isn’t too bad when I was in the Navy I had to give 18 months notice.

So you’ve given them 3 months notice, which also includes holiday ‘credits’. So 63 working days minus 7 holiday days.

Only need to have 3 holidays in the ‘bank’ already and you’ve the ability to finish earlier.

But I wouldn’t have resigned on a ‘verbal’ offer… 😯

I’m surprised to hear of employers who want to keep employees who don’t want to be there, for as long as three months. Surely it’s in everyone’s interest to either get a new member of staff who wants the job, or cover it with overtime, or just let something not get done in the meantime. And to those who say that’s all far too difficult for a business to deal with, if the OP had had an accident or illness they could be off work tomorrow with no notice at all, and businesses have to deal with that all the time.

FWIW you only have to give 28 days for maternity leave by law (15 weeks notice of the pregnancy, but the dates of leave can change). And that’s much more trouble to deal with because the business has to arrange temporary cover to allow the employee to come back. So refusing to budge on 3 months seems pretty unreasonable to me, and trying to add on a few days due to their own incompetence in processing the OP’s notice is taking the piss.

There’s little practical difference between “three months” and “three months and a few days.” Reckon Batfink nailed it up there; “my last day will be X.” They’d have to be particularly spiteful to come after you for it.

Out of interest, who is your referee? Your line manager or HR?

I’m suggesting using unused holidays to close the gap

At our place, when you complete a staff leaving notification on the HR system it comes up in big red letters saying that staff should leave earlier to spend unused holidays.

Three months is neither unreasonable or uncommon.

Depends on the role, surely? Seems reasonable if you’re the CTO, less so if you’re a burger flipper.

Just start your new job when your new employer wants you to.

tell your current employer that you are leaving 10 days early.

All they can do is sue you for breach of contract.

As its a civil matter they need to show they suffered financial loss due to you leaving 10 days earlier than the 3 month notice period.

Quite difficult, especially as they will also have to show they took reasonable action to mitigate that loss, such as recruiting a replacement within 2 months 20 days.

As in the example earlier, there is basically nothing they can do.

Don’t expect to go back there mind!

Had this at my last place. HR didnt give a flying and said I could leave when I wanted, it was no bother to them, my line manager was a complete arse and insisted I stay. new employer was cool about it but come the last couple of week my noodle was well and truly fried and I told him to go and do one.

When I sent in my resignation I offered 6 weeks rather than the 12 I was contracted to. I then spoke to my line manager and explained what I needed to do to facilitate this and who could cover any outstanding tasks should the company not be able to find a replacement in time. After a couple of meetings my request was agreed to.

Remember when you give your three months notice then the clock is also ticking for the company to find your replacement. This means:

– advertising the role
– awaiting intial responses
– sifting applications
– arranging primary interviews
– reviewing
– arranging second (even third) interviews
– reviewing
– offering
– awaiting acceptance
– confirming role

The above can eat into 12 weeks very quickly and that’s not taking into account the notice period your replacement will need to provide. Holding you to 12 weeks might seem a PITA but ultimately the company has to cover itself.

As in the example earlier, there is basically nothing they can do.

They don’t need to do anything for it to be a problem. If you’re still in their employment then you either have to lie to your new employer and say that you aren’t (but you will get found out when they issue your P45) or you have to declare that you’re still technically employed at which point your new employer is going to say that they can’t possibly start you while you’re still on someone else’s pay roll.

And again, Gobuchul, you’re advocating acting like a douche bag.

Depends on the role, surely? Seems reasonable if you’re the CTO, less so if you’re a burger flipper.

I think it does but I think you’d be surprised where the line of reasonableness can be drawn. I’ve had three month notice period for every job I’ve had since I was 30 (ironically with the exception of the one I have now).

The notice period reflects the challenge associated with handing over work and/or replacing you. If have a client facing role for example (as I do) responsible for large accounts then that handover period is pretty important.

But to give you another example, our nanny has a three month notice period, again reflecting the fact that if she were to resign it would easily take us at least six weeks to replace her.