Commuting costs vs others in team staying at home

The Spider

Dav010 wrote: »

Was he on €75k a year. Compensation for unfair dismissal is usually capped at the equivalent of 2 yrs pay. Any company who is subject to a complaint like this, from the outset would know how much they could have to pay.

Oh easily, I wouldn’t consider 75k high, well not in IT anyway

Dav010

The Spider wrote: »

Oh easily, I wouldn’t consider 75k high, well not in IT anyway

I bet that stung.

The Spider

bucketybuck wrote: »

Ah yes, the solicitor, the magic man that always wins, 2nd only to Joe Duffy in making companies tremble.

Do you really think businesses don't have their own solicitors? That they can't make sure every i is dotted and t is crossed, that every procedure and regulation is followed to the letter?

You began by saying that "Nope", "getting rid of people was "almost impossible", "extremely difficult", "won't have a leg to stand on".

Now you may talk about companies that do it wrong, that **** up and leave the employee with a very strong case, of course they exist. But the suggestion that companies cannot effectively manage people out the door is demonstrably untrue, it is happening quietly and constantly all of the time.

Actually if you read my post, I said that the usual way around it is to write a check, and getting rid of people is almost impossible, your options are a pip, and you have to have realistic goals checked every month and if the employee meets them, then that’s the end of the pip, and you can’t have unachievable targets written in, that’s a court case waiting to happen.

You can go the other way and promote them and put them onto special projects that you intend to get rid of, but if you promote them then you have to issue a new contract, and they’d be well advised to get their solicitor to look at it.

You can go the route of taking away their responsibilities and not inviting them to meetings and making life uncomfortable and hope they leave, but if they do that leaves you open to constructive dismissal.

Finally you may somehow have done all of this right and managed to get them out by some miracle, but you have no control of any communication between them and their supervisor, and an email or two maybe dragged out that could prove libelous etc, like I say if someone decides to fight you on it, it can prove very very difficult.

The Spider

Dav010 wrote: »

I bet that stung.

They could afford it to be honest, and that was just one I was aware of way bigger sums were handed out to other individuals.

The Spider

screamer wrote: »

I think the sense of entitlement amongst some employees is unbelievable. I’ve also had someone moan about the 25 euro they spend on petrol being a waste of money when/ if we return to the office. Getting to and from work is not your employers problem, you chose where you live, you chose to work where you do, it’s your choice and your duty to get to the office if you’re needed. I certainly find this sense of entitlement stronger among the younger crowd, although some of the crusties are equally demanding but it’s more awkwardness in their part. With uncertain times ahead I’m very glad to have my job and have been able to work from home. I’ll go back to the office when my employer requests and I’ll be grateful to have a job to go to each day.

Yeah well you do you, let everyone else do them, personally I use my skills to make money, I sell those skills to employers that allow them to have better products etc, however I will not be dictated to by anyone about where I work etc. Nature of the business that Im in means that two or three years with one company is a long time, and I’ll more than likely be moving to another company that I’ll choose to sell my skills to and help them make a better product, but make no mistake si don’t consider myself duty bound to any company, and certainly won’t be told how I should work etc.

I think people should be aware that they work for themselves not a company, it’s not entitlement to want what you want, if that company won’t give it to you, go to another one that will.

Dav010

The Spider wrote: »

Yeah well you do you, let everyone else do them, personally I use my skills to make money, I sell those skills to employers that allow them to have better products etc, however I will not be dictated to by anyone about where I work etc. Nature of the business that Im in means that two or three years with one company is a long time, and I’ll more than likely be moving to another company that I’ll choose to sell my skills to and help them make a better product, but make no mistake si don’t consider myself duty bound to any company, and certainly won’t be told how I should work etc.

I think people should be aware that they work for themselves not a company, it’s not entitlement to want what you want, if that company won’t give it to you, go to another one that will.

You seem to be ignoring the obvious. When you agree to join a company, your contract outlines what you agree to. Feeling that you are hard done-by just because you have to come to work is a strange way of interpreting that agreement. There is no doubt that the op thinking he is due compensation for travelling to work, as he had done since taking the job, smacks of a misplaced sense of entitlement. It is hardly his employers fault that he has to drive to work. He of course could do what you do and test the market to see what he is worth, no problem with that.

doxy79

I don't think there's much you can do about it. I understand the frustration though. I have had to continue working on site through the pandemic while several fellow employees are at home/temporary lay off on full pay for the last 16 weeks, when they come back, they'll do so with their full holiday entitlement in tact, while I and the others that worked through it have used up a good chunk of our holidays in that time.

I think there are a lot of disgruntled employees out there who feel like some of their colleagues won the covid lottery, and feel hard done by but their employer, even if their employer was simply forced into a position where they couldn't treat everyone equally. There's nothing to be done about it really, and nobody's really to blame in most cases, but it still grates on a personal level I know.

devnull

bucketybuck wrote: »

Ah yes, the solicitor, the magic man that always wins, 2nd only to Joe Duffy in making companies tremble.

Do you really think businesses don't have their own solicitors? That they can't make sure every i is dotted and t is crossed, that every procedure and regulation is followed to the letter?

You began by saying that "Nope", "getting rid of people was "almost impossible", "extremely difficult", "won't have a leg to stand on".

Now you may talk about companies that do it wrong, that **** up and leave the employee with a very strong case, of course they exist. But the suggestion that companies cannot effectively manage people out the door is demonstrably untrue, it is happening quietly and constantly all of the time.

From my experiences (on both sides of the fence) the pay off or settlement agreement is normally only used when all other cheaper underhand tactics of getting an employee out have failed or that employees presence in the company is become so disruptive that the amount of damage they are doing in costs by being there outweighs the cost of the settlement agreement.;

The companies that the other poster talks about are the companies who are so desperate to get someone out of the company and so hell bent on doing so, perhaps because of the fact that they have a strong dislike for that person, that they make mistakes along the way because they are so focused on trying to make things happen that they forget to apply their policies fairly and forget to apply the principles of natural justice and leave themselves open to a case.

Some of the things that I have seen happen.

• Pulling someone into a meeting room, swearing at them and abusing them verbally, having left the meeting room door slightly ajar. They will talk until a certain time and then have pre-arranged with someone else to walk past the ajar door at a certain time at which point the colleague will walk past just as the employee who has been abused will start to reply. That person swears, this is heard and reported to HR and they are then in trouble for verbally abusing their boss.
  
• Deliberately setting a staff member after a bereavement complex and tough tasks that required intense attention to detail, in the knowledge that the distracted person was more likely to make a mistake.
  
• Telling a staff member in private he is going to post on twitter about them and where to look. Said manager spending time on twitter tweeting from a work computer about a colleague anonymously after getting a screen protector added to his monitor because people were spying on his confidential work when it was just so he could use twitter. Then reporting the staff member for reading the tweets he was slagging them off in - the same employee was also in trouble for reading an email from funeral directors about collecting a body in work time .
  
• Doing random '10%' quality audits of someones work which actually involves sampling all of their work and only picking the 10% worst. Doing the same for other staff members and ignoring all of the junk work and only selecting the little good work. Presenting a table that shows them by far under everyone else to senior management. Putting them on a PIP. Saying they only need to reach 90% in quality ratings and this is not a tough task as everyone else hits 95% which is only the case because they doctored what was being picked. When staff member fails this as the targets are impossible, the company highlights the fact everyone else has higher average despite the fact the scores are rigged.
  
• Running investigation meetings where certain facts are established ahead of a disciplinary meeting, then presenting new evidence in a disciplinary meeting which was not previously mentioned in the allegations or the letter ahead of such meeting, giving people no chance to defend themselves.
  
• Having sly digs at people in public, accidentally tripping over their feet, accidentally spilling water on someone to goad them into an aggressive response in public to use in their case against them.
  
• Not praising people for doing certain things but then in team meeting praising someone else for doing exactly the same thing.Criticising someone for things that are turned a blind eye to when everyone else does it.
  
• Changing the company award scheme so the manager of an individual has the right to a veto for any nomination, famously leading to a situation in a certain multi national team of which I was a deputy TL of, where one person had 75% of the inner team vote and was disqualified as the manager had a complex about him. The managers pet won despite only having 5% of the vote. I was told if I reported it, I would be the next to be 'managed out' since he was dating someone in HR.
• The previously mentioned desire to create new job titles, offer someone a job in the knowledge it would probably not be needed in 6 months because you know something about the company that the staff don't.
• Pure outright lying and dishonesty about events that never happened. Sometimes this can backfire though because I've seen on one occasion where a manger falsified a witness to an event on a day where he never was even the building. Unfortunately if you want someone out enough though and there's more than one person willing to do it, honesty in some companies need not apply.
• Deliberately making speculation about a department being at risk of redundancy, in a short period, offering them a fixed term contract in another department with a big pay rise and when the fixed term contract expires, using the clause that protects them against unfair dismissal claims - this isn't used so much now, but was popular in years gone by where an employer was afraid of being done for unfair dismissal.

devnull

I have worked in a big multinational where I have successfully seen almost 15 people managed out in that company in four years alone, I've seen about 4 paid off. Many don't get to the pay off stage. Some resign under the sheer stress that they have been put under. Some of them snap and become aggressive which allows the employer to take them down the disciplinary route and fire them eventually and other ones find another job and leave that way.

I had an experience myself about 5 years ago, a manger who spent 9 months trying to kick me out of a job and I went right through the system. I had a solicitor friend who guided me through it and every trick in the book was tried (far more than the list above) but I also knew a few tricks on my side. I was told to my face four times to resign or else and had my chair broken at my desk, equipment went missing, payroll incorrectly completed on purpose, lied to on a daily basis, even stupid things like verbally told to report to another building to pick something up verbally before work next day and when I waited for nothing, I turned up at my desk and was given a strike for being late (3 strikes in 2 months = meeting with HR) and he denied any acknowledgement of previous conversation. This is just some of the things.

In the end I got a large pay off because I told them I would not to resign no matter what they said to me and colleagues in my team started to resign. I was invited to a meeting was offered a sum of money, told them to double it they wouldn't so I told them I was going back to work and they know what my price was. So I went back to work and 15 minutes later I was told to come back and was offered the money, my bonus for the whole year, unused holiday, healthcare for 12 months, a reference and I signed the form and the money was in my account the next morning all upfront. The official company line was I resigned, as for anyone else who asked I took voluntary redundancy. I had a nice long letter that told me I couldn't sue the company and that if anyone asks 'this letter does not exist and should not be disclosed to anyone but the courts'

The irony of the whole lot is since I've left that company I've connected with some former colleagues who I was not that close to, but were there one day and gone the next with no real explanation. Turns out exactly the same tactics were tried with them and we all agreed, that however bad our managers were at wanting us out, it was clear the whole thing was driven by HR and in the meetings I had with HR in that company, they were just as bad as the managers who wanted to remove the staff. They were completely blinkered to what was really going on and trusted their managers through thick and thin.

Worst thing I've ever seen was 10 years ago a colleague putting a private and confidential grievance in about their boss to HR. Within 10 minutes of the grievance submission being emailed to HR a copy of it was on the bosses desk. HR made absolutely no effort to properly investigate the situation impartially and the staff member was a model employee yet the new boss was worried they were too popular and that had to be tackled.

The Spider

Dav010 wrote: »

You seem to be ignoring the obvious. When you agree to join a company, your contract outlines what you agree to. Feeling that you are hard done-by just because you have to come to work is a strange way of interpreting that agreement. There is no doubt that the op thinking he is due compensation for travelling to work, as he had done since taking the job, smacks of a misplaced sense of entitlement. It is hardly his employers fault that he has to drive to work. He of course could do what you do and test the market to see what he is worth, no problem with that.

Fair enough can't argue with that to be honest, I agree I think if you're not happy getvanother job with more favourable terms, but again as I've said earlier this all depends on what you do, if you're a brilliant UX leader or a brilliant aengineeting leader then you've obviously got more choices available to you than if you're a software tester or someone who works in customer service.

The Spider

devnull wrote: »

I have worked in a big multinational where I have successfully seen almost 15 people managed out in that company in four years alone, I've seen about 4 paid off. Many don't get to the pay off stage. Some resign under the sheer stress that they have been put under. Some of them snap and become aggressive which allows the employer to take them down the disciplinary route and fire them eventually and other ones find another job and leave that way.

I had an experience myself about 5 years ago, a manger who spent 9 months trying to kick me out of a job and I went right through the system. I had a solicitor friend who guided me through it and every trick in the book was tried (far more than the list above) but I also knew a few tricks on my side. I was told to my face four times to resign or else and had my chair broken at my desk, equipment went missing, payroll incorrectly completed on purpose, lied to on a daily basis, even stupid things like verbally told to report to another building to pick something up verbally before work next day and when I waited for nothing, I turned up at my desk and was given a strike for being late (3 strikes in 2 months = meeting with HR) and he denied any acknowledgement of previous conversation. This is just some of the things.

In the end I got a large pay off because I told them I would not to resign no matter what they said to me and colleagues in my team started to resign. I was invited to a meeting was offered a sum of money, told them to double it they wouldn't so I told them I was going back to work and they know what my price was. So I went back to work and 15 minutes later I was told to come back and was offered the money, my bonus for the whole year, unused holiday, healthcare for 12 months, a reference and I signed the form and the money was in my account the next morning all upfront. The official company line was I resigned, as for anyone else who asked I took voluntary redundancy. I had a nice long letter that told me I couldn't sue the company and that if anyone asks 'this letter does not exist and should not be disclosed to anyone but the courts'

The irony of the whole lot is since I've left that company I've connected with some former colleagues who I was not that close to, but were there one day and gone the next with no real explanation. Turns out exactly the same tactics were tried with them and we all agreed, that however bad our managers were at wanting us out, it was clear the whole thing was driven by HR and in the meetings I had with HR in that company, they were just as bad as the managers who wanted to remove the staff. They were completely blinkered to what was really going on and trusted their managers through thick and thin.

Worst thing I've ever seen was 10 years ago a colleague putting a private and confidential grievance in about their boss to HR. Within 10 minutes of the grievance submission being emailed to HR a copy of it was on the bosses desk. HR made absolutely no effort to properly investigate the situation impartially and the staff member was a model employee yet the new boss was worried they were too popular and that had to be tackled.

I've seen similar to what you describe above, but maybe not as underhanded as some of it although I'm sure it went on, but where I worked there was a general realisation I would say amongst the majority that these tactics would be used, and in general as soon as it started, people contacted solicitors etc, and knew if they hung in there they would get the money.

Also in my experience if you go back far enough through your email inbox you'll find something incriminating, no one where I worked deleted emails.

Where I work now (remote) its generally anything that may be dodgy is done over A Skype call, but those can be recorded, and slack messages people tend to be a bit free er and easier, and say all sorts of incriminating things anyone with their head screwed on will be keeping an eye on these.

screamer

The Spider wrote: »

Fair enough can't argue with that to be honest, I agree I think if you're not happy getvanother job with more favourable terms, but again as I've said earlier this all depends on what you do, if you're a brilliant UX leader or a brilliant aengineeting leader then you've obviously got more choices available to you than if you're a software tester or someone who works in customer service.

There’s no one brilliant enough to be able to demand not to return to an office where they have always worked, nor to turn in less than satisfactory work and expect to be kept on. All of us are just a pps number and infinitely replaceable, anyone who thinks differently is absolutely away with the fairies.