Given notice at work

@Forgotwhat your notice period takes you over two years - legally that need

I've worked in similar organisations to the OP and seen / experienced similar (not to that same level, but in the ballpark).

You know, every time I (and colleagues) have done the professional thing. Trained others, documented processes, done shadowing, the lot. Worked full notice periods, turned up on time etc.

And decades later after starting my first job, now in senior management, i regret having "integrity".

if i had my time over in 2 particular jobs, i'd have played all the same games suggested here - made vague handover notes, or stupidly detailed and irrelevant ones. walked in a 1 minute to my start time, and logged off (putting down phone calls if needed) 1 minute after my end time, Just the bare minimum to do the legal minimum, but not been the diligent worker I always was in the first 20 years.

i regret not saying, through actions, a similar FUCK YOU to the organisations that said that to me through their own management decisions.

if i were taking over from someone in that situation (and i have, once before, when a chap had worked for an org for many years and was being let go) i wouldn't blame them one bit. good on them.

fuck being the bigger person, a job is a business contract -and you are not a slave.

The best bit was, I already knew what I would do if this happened - they had form for this sort of thing. I went self-employed. My first client was my old company doing a job they'd not given me the time or resources to do when they employed me. It was nice to charge them as much for two days work as they used to pay me for a month.

I later found out that they came very close to approaching me to go back. I guess that would have been about six months after I left when all the things I just used to quietly get on with would have started to need attention. Or it was when the person they chose to give my tasks to managed to single-handedly approve an illegal product for manufacture and sale to a customer - they'd switched off all the validation checks I had added as being "inconvenient". I wasn't supposed to find out about that, but I stayed in touch with a couple of colleagues for a while.

This! Take their money whilst literally working to your job description. Malicious compliance/quiet quitting is the description? You could spend the time doing some internal housekeeping and ensuring you don’t leave any ‘unnecessary’ files/notes/hand over passwords etc that don’t belong to the company….. iyswim.

Minimal risk unless they can pin it on a protected characteristic, but good you are not being tempted to take short cuts.

I suspect in a small and unprofessional firm nothing will get done done re training. Manager won’t sort training and staff won’t approach as they’ll feel shitty about situation or most likely are snowed under. If they don’t learn they can’t be lumbered with op’s job. Plus probably lots on holiday etc.
Then at 11th hour they’ll realise exactly what Op does and it will be panic stations.

I am currently trying to remove a member of staff with less than 2 years service, I still have to do everything by the book, there has to be minuted meetings etc or they can still sue me (according to my employment lawyer.)

Obviously depends on op’s financial position and if she has school age children but nothing wrong with taking parental leave it’s a statutory right.
So she’s on 3 m notice until say 1/9.
Nothing at all wrong with giving notice to have 6 weeks summer as parental unpaid leave.
If she can get a job sorted for a September start and can afford it (lots of women work at a loss in summer due to childcare costs) then I wouldn’t hesitate.

They are 'working to rule' on dropping you now that you have been used.

It would be perfectly reasonable to 'work to rule' during your notice.

(Teaching someone how to replace you doesn't sound like 'any reasonable work as required'. It sounds most unreasonable!)

If you do get forced to teach or feel that you must- be sure to start from the very beginning for the student. Be really thorough. Take pleasure in doing a really good job. Get them reading up on things you began with years ago.

This unskilled person can't leap in an learn about your job until you have gone over the grounding you got at the very beginning of your own career. Add to this things you wish you had had time to train on back then too.

It could take much more than 3 months to get to a point where you could start sharing details of your present job with them. (This solid start to training will be good for them - though not at all good for the company.)

Don't go off sick. It is bad for your record. Just make sure that you are not available - because of interviews etc. - whenever it suits you. Take a very fair amount of time. Interview for anything - and as far away as possible. The experience will be good and the freedom enjoyable.

You do have options OP - depends how you wish to play this and how you feel.

decline to train. You don’t train staff normally.

handover document - decline. Agree to review the procedures. Agree with whatever is in them, or go the other way and bury them in detail, or if they don’t exist start writing them, but ensure they are perfection, and no doubt incredibly detailed and focussed on the things staff already know how to do.

still some Covid going round.

get offended and raise a greivance about absolutely anyone’s behaviour apart from those you have in your team.

appeal the redundancy. Ensure that even though you have no rights to an ET, yet, they should still follow their processes. If they fail to follow their processes, raise a greivance and decline to attend work whilst they investigate.

all of this can be very stressfull. Might be worth seeing a doc.

have your contract reviewed by a lawyer anyway. Yes the two year rule will apply, but there are exceptions.

get another job asap and if possible, get any references sorted asap, then walk out no notice.

Don’t give them any exscuses that could be minor and be factual into references. sick leave is one aspect that’s ok, but timekeeping is minor and not worth playing games with.

There is of course another angle which you could interpret from the CoE. They have given you notice, you respond to the notice letter In writing, and state that you release them from the notice period and wish them well. Keep a copy. The clause for notice periods is usually based around who services notice, it rarely includes anything about the requirement for staff to serve their notice.

Sadly, despicable companies like this exist. Make their life difficult as hell…. they don’t deserve you.

I’ve been in similar situations - some will accept the frank discussion that if they’ve made this decision, you accept it, but that you will only be working to your JD now. Nothing more. and that you feel your aggreived status is not going to help your team or any others.

Pthers - you just have to be a shit. One or two incidents usually help them understand, they have the power to terminate, but you aren’t someone who lies down. For instance, writing procedures is intensive and requires time, so who will be covering your role when you’re doing that.

Good luck.

You don't look well, OP. I think you need a few weeks off.

Take some holiday and catch something and not go back

I like the going off sick idea. 😆

PS I had a similar situation but was over the two years (by two weeks). They wanted me to go immediately but had to give three months notice so I negotiated an extra payment. As others have said, changed my passwords, deleted my current projects/contacts and walked out the door.

@DogInATent Someone after my own heart! As I said earlier when it happened to me I built in processes that only someone with an extremely high level of knowledge would know which caused them huge problems. I love the way that you thought about it all so carefully and drip fed problems for them to face once you had left. Revenge is definitely best served cold. Do this OP - it will make you feel better and can't be construed as your 'fault'!

Is staff training part of your contract/job description? If not, you do the three months but not the training as its not part of your job.

You can’t add annual leave on as it’s paid in lieu. Only notice.

I’ve seen a couple of daft employers making their employees work their notice period which takes them over the two year line though so it does happen!

I was in a similar situation years ago. I did what I thought was the right thing and worked my notice and did a proper handover.

If I had my time again I would have changed every password before I left on the Friday, called in on the Monday with a faked a family bereavement, then went to the GP to get singed off sick for stress.

Between annual leave and the 3 months notice, would it bring you up to 2 years?

And you either have a sense of humour or you don’t.

I was in a similar position, made redundant, put on notice and expected to train someone to take on my tasks. It helped that completely underestimated the training task and didn't instruct any of the team to actually seek the training they'd need.

I did the bare minimum that my job required, but I also pre-scheduled some automated tasks I was responsible for (if they'd known what I could have done with these tools I should have been escorted from the building and put on garden leave - my colleagues who knew were amazed they didn't) so that things would run smoothly for random amounts of time for different tasks. I resisted the urge to leave Easter Eggs on invoices, etc. I also found reasons to push back/pull forward a variety of meetings with external interested parties so they didn't fall within the most likely successor training period.

I took all the time they offered for job seeking, application writing, getting CV advice, interviews, etc.

I made sure I had copies of anything I had done that might be useful in the future, transferred some useful professional free subscriptions to my private email and home address.

There's not a lot you can do to get out of the notice period, but your employer now has very few sanctions available to make you do more than the bare minimum the role requires.

Although there isn’t an established legal system like gardening leave, one option which you could consider would be to go any have an open conversation about it with them.

I think that you could explain that you’re finding the idea of training people to replace you very very upsetting and stressful given that you’ve been given notice, and that you feel that it’s likely that the stress would make you too poorly to work if it’s pushed.

Explain that you want to leave things right and not just go off sick. And offer a shorter notice period with a written manual.

Bare in mind that they can force you to remain employed but realistically they can’t force you to train someone else. Worst case scenario they could technically sack you but they’d be crazy to do that if you’re already working notice and have offered to shorten it.

As a matter of interest, hands up please.... all those people advising the OP to develop a sickness for three months (setting aside what that will look like when asked about their sickness absences), need parental leave, childcare leave, dependants leave and whatever else they can think up - am I correct in assuming that you either don't know the rules and/or risks about those actions, and that you all get full pay for taking as much time off work as you fancy? Which you don't know the OP will.

Being indignant on behalf of the OP is fine, but some of the advice - a lot of the advice - is very bad advice. It could and probably would rebound very badly on the OP. Because it's all very well saying that there is nothing the employer could or would do. But actually there is a lot they could do, whether or not they would. If people are going to advise someone to do something they really need to lay out the risks of that action so at least the OP understands what the risk is. Not reassure them that they can do wahetver they want because the employer can't touch them. Because the employer can touch them. And actions can come back to haunt you even a long time after the event. Maybe the OP won't need a reference from this employer in five years time. Or maybe they may need a security clearance that they never, ever anticipated, and need this employer to confirm their employment?

There's never an excuse for being an asshole. You either have integrity or you don't.