To think she’s lying? Or do companies really do this?

yes, very senior managers can get about 1million in payouts

Very common and for a lot more than the figures mentioned. In education your entire career as a teacher counts towards the calculation for “redundancy” even if you’ve only been with your current employer for a year or two.
In DH’s world £250k would not be unusual. However it depends on why you left how easy it will be to find another job. Go to a tribunal and win or lose it can be difficult afterwards.

Do you meant couldn't?!

70k is low - I know people who have had 6/7 figures to go quietly. They’re pretty high up tho.

If she hasn’t negotiated an agreed reference then she isn’t much of a lawyer. That is standard practice.

For me the ‘fuss’ was to work my ass off for 11 years and then have an attempt to demote me whilst on maternity leave. This included a challenging few months of legal negotiations.

I think if you set yourself with this as your goal without legitimate reason - you may not get far and risk being let go for poor performance. No offence but I wouldn’t want to employ someone whose goal is to get let go with lots of money!

It's common in some industries. As a lawyer I have been involved in the process of paying off someone suing the firm. And also had my own claim settled.

It's not a fun process. Most people getting these payoffs will have been bullied or discriminated against to get to that point, and leaving process itself is immensely stressful. And then you are without a job.

Yep.

Someone I know was caught taking drugs in their office. £90k later he was released from his contract.

Being paid out by the insurance for an injury is very different to the settlement agreements being referred to in the thread.

She was referring to the post that said someone got their life time salary paid which ran into millions. Not the £70k op.

Yes, part of the agreement when it happens at my company, the company pays for you a lawyers of your choice - so they can’t say they were forced to agree or were unfairly pushed to sign the agreement.

That doesn’t ring true. It’s extremely rare to get an award like that from a tribunal and no law firm would settle at that level

But there wasn't a tribunal.

What do you mean by 'at that level'? 70k is a lot to some companies and very little to others.

Having managed PIPs, these are very stressful time consuming - you have to do a lot of paperwork, meetings etc. paying people to fuck off can be a much easier, cheaper and better option. Especially when the role is key to business needs and you need a decent replacement.

Yeah happens, friend of ours got 70k to leave his job- he was about to kick up a huge legal fuss and they just wanted rid of him.

Someone in my team got a decent payout recently. It's a bit depressing our employer would rather do that than actually address the issue!!

It’s true. She got paid out under their insurance as being totally permanently unable to work again as a workplace injury. Basically she said she can never work as a lawyer again, so she got all the lost wages for her working life.

NHS paid my mum off a significant amount in exchange for her silence when she accidentally discovered malpractice

I know of a lower ranked person who got one of these payouts.

She was constantly off sick with made up health problems (I know this, we were friends til she decided I'd betrayed her by having my own issues to handle). Mostly she used poor mental health as the reason but also some physical things with very little evidence, but that don't necessarily have a lot of medical evidence.

Whenever a sick review was done she would threaten ACAS, the union, claim she was being treated unfairly and differently to others (she wasn't).

She would make a fuss every time annual leave was brought up as she always wanted to be off at the busiest leave times (i.e. Christmas) and as there needed to be staff in wasn't always allowed it. I know she wasn't given any less than others but she claimed she was.

We had to work "shifts" to ensure phone cover, and because one other staff members contracted hours predated this arrangement and therefore she didn't have to change them (and actually, she offered to do one of the days no one else wanted to as it suited her, when she could have done none), this woman complained that it was unfair to her that someone else's contract said differently.

In the end they offered her a settlement to allow her to stop working (which is what she wanted) for a year, meaning she had time to sort out something else. But it was essentially so she'd go away.

OP - this is common in senior roles. I received a settlement of £120k 12 years ago. Part of the agreement was that my employer absorbed most of the tax and it was calculated so any deductions meant I still ended up with the full £120k. This was for the company to avoid a tribunal (and significant reputation risk), as I had documented evidence of serious sexual harassment which they failed to address for months. The settlement was almost triple my annual salary.

What I think you’re missing is most people who get such settlements have gone through a really crappy time to get there. I would rather not have been harassed, ignored and threatened for months, and just got on with the job I was meant to rather than get a massive payout. The process before settling is stressful, expensive and unpredictable. My mental and physical health suffered and even after the settlement it took a long time for me to feel confident and ready to work again. It’s not a pleasant experience at all.

Normal in the corporate world but you have to remember she is now unemployed, probably with no reference and less than a years’ salary in the bank.

If so I want to try it as that’s basically two years of my entire income after tax!

Maybe you should retrain and get a job with a bonus.

It might sound fun but that would have been incredibly frustrating for him. Imagine being paid off to not be able to use your skill set that you’ve honed for many years and have to do gardening instead. He’d have been bored to tears.

My husbands friend agreed to a similar settlement (albeit a year garden leave), and nearly went mad in the first couple months. In the end he and his wife pulled the kids out of school and went travelling for the year so it worked out - although expensive.

Something that is worth thinking of - usually such agreements are a positive in a bad situation. Sometimes a redundancy (as opposed to a hush payment) comes at a perfect time in someone’s life and the payout is sort of free cash (I’ve known people made redundant while planning to quit, or who got snapped up so fast they negotiated a holiday in between jobs).

Companies often require NDAs and you give up your right to take legal action, lodge complaints. The company is only doing this because it makes business sense for them. The individual at the centre of it might have lengthy (even life long) medical treatment (especially mental health). They might struggle to find work again. Or they might have been underpaid, blocked from pay rises, abused in their workplace etc.

For very senior people it can also be the simple way of changing direction, or having a visible scapegoat for a problem. Lower ranked people are unlikely to get a payout for something like this.

It is more than possible. Especially in Law.

DC had a friend whose father was a specialist commercial lawyer. He was paid off and given two years gardening leave to prevent him working with the competition. That was two million pounds for a two year holiday. They used to visit the friend's mansion and the dad was just milling around, making the vast lawn perfect, working out on his Peloton. I couldn't believe it and was pretty envious. Two years later, he was straight back in, working silly hours as a lawyer elsewhere. I'd have retired, but he is clearly driven and I'm not.