New job - is this reasonable re. notice period?

[Bellebelle]

Hi,

I've recently accepted a job offer and I've received the contract to sign. All fine but the notice period has jumped out at me. Once my probabtionary period is complete (6 months) I would need to give them 12 weeks notice if leaving but they would only need to give me 4 weeks notice if making me redundant etc.

Is this normal? Where I currently work it's the other way around, only have to give them 4 weeks notice but they have to give me 12 weeks. Admittedly the company I work for is a large organisation of almost 70k employees and I'm going to a small company so I know there will be differences but would I be unreasonable to ask that they make the terms equitable i.e. If I have to give them 12 weeks they need to give me 12 weeks or meet in the middle somewhere?

[soupmaker]

Redundancy notice periods and pay are subject to legislation which means that the notice period and minimum payment depends on your length of service.

You could try and negotiate with them on this but if you want the job I'd take it and then when the time comes negotiate on notice period then. 12 weeks is standard notice for many roles now IME.

[Figure17a]

12 weeks is normal for any job that carries any seniority imo. Ie at my firm it's 4 weeks at admin asst level, 8 weeks for team leader type roles and 12 weeks for management

[Bellebelle]

Thanks for the replies, I'm not surprised by the 12 week notice period for me as it is a senior position but not so keen with it being so weighted in their favour regards only having to give 4 weeks notice. However I get that for a smaller firm needing to potentially make redundancies to save money committing to paying people for another 3 months could be an issue.

Let's hope it never comes to that!

[Figure17a]

Check the ACAS website but I think the legal requirement for notice if redundancy us one week per year of service, so they've actually enhanced that initially. Once you've done more than 4 years, you'd still be entitled to the legal notice period, regardless of what your contract says

[pericat]

I queried a similar situation with ACAS recently. The notice period is supposed to represent the time it would take to recruit a replacement which is why most contracts have the same notice period for the employer and the employee.

I was informed it would be very hard for the employer to insist on the employee sticking to the 12 week notice period because the employer would have to prove they need 12 weeks to recruit a replacement when the contract already shows their time period is 4 weeks.

Hope that makes sense. You may want to check with ACAS yourself.

[flowery]

It's better practice to mirror notice periods, so I wouldn't be happy in that case- not particularly reasonable of them to require 12 weeks if they're only prepared to give 4. I'd probably raise it and ask for parity.

But bear in mind that if they terminate your employment with 5 years service, they'll have to give you 5 weeks notice, 6 years service 6 weeks notice, etc

[ShotsFired]

I had a very similar situation. Turned out to be a typo and was corrected when I raised it.