Ex employer keeps contacting me

[northchesterforest]

I was made redundant in January after 5 years in a role. They asked me to leave the same day. It wasn't personal as a lot of others in the company got the same treatment. The thing is, for the last two weeks I've been getting emails from my old boss asking where certain files are. Most of them were saved on my personal work g drive, which they are saying they can no longer access.

I must admit I wasn't great at organising my files for other people but I always knew where to access them, and honestly I was great at my job and a lot of what you would need to know was stored in my head, from working in the role for so long. I feel like they are accusing me of withholding information but do they even have a leg to stand on? Should I start ignoring them? I'm politely responding for now and trying to help them find things but I don't have access to anything anymore so there is only so much I can do?

Not so much a written reference, depending on the industry or where the Op lives, its the informal references you need to watch out for.

The ones over private LinkedIn messages, the ones from other ex-employees, the ones from Bob's BIL - do you know this person, their cv lists your company, what to think?

Those are the references that people need to look out for.

I do get that - but unless it’s a small or tight knit industry, prospective employers won’t know who is likely to have managed OP or how to contact them. Even so, most people don’t want to put anything negative in writing.

Yep, do this.

But she didn't leave them in order. Rather than save in folders on a shared drive under standard folders -say Client a then 2023 work and 2022 work, it's all in one big "Jane's folder"

So sure one can maybe find stuff with key words but it's a big effort to open and check each item to see if one they are after.

Any reference could potentially mention this -yes it could have been fixed with a weeks notice of redundancy but it should not js r been like that in first place

(Plenty of places will tell you you are at risk of redundancy and then send you home whilst they consult, paid, rather than risk an unhappy employee in the office -that part is typical and Legal)

THIS

But the fact is that she wasn't given any time to put the files in order.

And she's outside of the notice period, all paid, done and dusted.

Even if she does have a clause in her agreement, are they really going to take her to court to reclaim some of her payment? That would be a horrendous PR move and unlikely to win, given that she helped them plenty inside her gardening leave.

erm no. Because she doesn’t work there anymore

Nobody should need time to put files in the correct place. They should be there.

It almost sounds like op was choosen for redundancy because she wasn't following the companies procedures.

So while the company might never have her back, if she is in a small place or industry people know one another. People ask people who they think might know a potential employee. Those are the references that people need to look out for.

It almost sounds like op was choosen for redundancy because she wasn't following the companies procedures.

Well then they're really stupid for not making sure everything was sorted before they axed her, if they were axing her for not having things sorted! As well as acting illegally, because if that
was the reason for letting her go, her job wasn't actually redundant.

I work in IT and the manager requesting this info can go to IT and ask for the access they are just being lazy coming direct to you. Some companies don’t see this access as an urgent request though and it may take IT a few days to sort it out. Your manager should of done this the day you left and should not be contacting you now

I would just ignore them they have had enough time if you have left and since been paid also

An employee can’t be ‘chosen’ for redundancy because it’s not the person who is redundant, it’s the post they hold. If the company were using redundancy to deal with a difficult employee instead of following disciplinary procedures, they were acting illegally. And if there were issues with her following procedure they were pretty stupid to kick her out the same day without giving her time to properly hand over any parts of her job being shared among other employees. Doesn’t sound like this was the case anyway, as OP wasn’t the only one made redundant at the time.

@Rosscameasdoody what a prescient observation. Yes posts are made redundant and there are pools. Within the pools there are selection procedures as set out in restructuring policies.

Whilst poor performance should be dealt with by performance management, it is nine times out of ten dealt with by a restructure. It is how the real world works, even in unionised environments.

I agree documents should always be in the right place. However, some of my best staff would not be beyond reproach, principally because we are so lean and whilst I have argued for a digital co-ordinator endlessly (modern day filing clerk), I know I won't get one.

Depending on the size of the company, the redundancy process may have been a bit ... hurried ... and proper procedures (which would have included ensuring access to IT assets) wasn't followed.

Meaning the OPs manager is unwilling to involve IT, as their own behaviour could be subject to disciplinary.

I have no idea if that is the case. Just joining in with the tide of posters who appear to have made stuff up in their head to then have an opinion here 😀

Lol if people were made redundant for not uploading docs to the G Drive immediately, I imagine we’d lose about 60% of the workforce.

Yeah yeah they decide we have 5 people but only need 3 people in that role.

How do they decide who stays and who goes, they might on paper say its getting done on a matrix, based on future prospects, lenght of service, absence records, whatever way they do it, someone makes the decision. And as long as it appears to be transparent there is little people can do about it.

What happens when people are off ill 🤒 does their work just sit their without any one being able to access it?

A decent IT system will have measures in place for that. It's why a large part of IT management is policies and processes.

Well, proper IT management. Which given some of the replies on here is clearly not "a thing" in a lot of places. Good for them I say. Nothing like the uncertainty of knowing whether your systems will run today to make a working day more spicy.

Part of any process to replicate/backup/archive data will obviously have a stage where it's validated by a restore from backup regularly. I mean imagine a company that didn't do that, and then discovered 2 years later they hadn't been keeping backups properly. Well, some of you can imagine. I will just remember ...

Can't people understand there is a difference between

Saving stuff on private drive but with correct file names and in appropriate sun folders

Or

Just saving everything as file 1,file 2 in one massive folder

It backups can't do much about item 2 which it sounds like had occurred.

Else the op would just say

Copy over my folder "work" it's all there by client /month (whatever is appropriate for their role)

And the email would take 1 mi it's to send to solve the issue.

I have no idea what you are saying. IT shouldn't give two shits about file names, and there are plenty of tools to search datastores if it's needed.

IT give you the systems. They should also give you the policies and processes and enforce those wherever possible with the tools available. Beyond that it's up to the business what they do with that resource.

Either the IT departments policies cover the situation where an employee is no longer available (for whatever reason). Or they don't. If they don't the IT department is incompetent - I would argue criminally so. If they do, then the OPs manager is bang out of order for contacting the OP. So much so I suspect they are covering their own arse.

SOP when I have written it, is to suspend the users corporate account. Then move it into a "leavers" security group which removes all the 2FA protection. Then assign a password, log in, perform a takeout, dump that in an offsite store, and delete the account which then prompts to sign over the documents and emails to a nominated user. Usually the line manager. The account remains recoverable for 28 days as well. So the company here missed that too.

(Been a while since I was using Azure/O365 but the principles are the same ...)

I am saying

IT can recover the data

But that may not help the manager at all if the files are badly named /organised so the manager needs to open many files to work out which one is what they currently want.

That sounds like the real issue here. But op can confirm which is the case. They say they were not organised at all with saving stuff.

Sigh

Once again, policies and procedures. Sensible management would have a naming convention and hierarchy for project work. And that would be that. As long as the OP was following that (and that would be a matter for them and their manager when they were working) then no drama.

It's entirely possible the manager wasn't enforcing that. Well more fool them. Or the OP was following the process but the manager has no clue how that works. In fact lots of things are possible. Including my rather cynical feeling that some companies have no clue about how to store and backup documents, but a 100+ page policy on pronouns. Such is modern life.

("What gender are backups ?" is a question that in a list of "Write me a backup policy for a small company using Google Workspace" if you get your ChatGPT-fu wrong.)

Making someone redundant is a pretty extreme reaction to their files being in a bit of a mess. Unless there’s been a whole lot more going on, this is not something people typically lose their jobs over; certainly not without a series of warnings, a PIP etc.

If what you’re suggesting IS the case, I feel pretty confident in saying that this is an “either or” scenario - i.e. OP’s manager makes it clear that her organisational skills aren’t up to par and works with her to improve it, or she cuts her losses, puts OP on the redundancy list and sorts the files herself. A third option where the OP loses her job, but the manager still gets her help in sorting the filing, is just untenable.

From the OP
Most of them were saved on my personal work g drive, which they are saying they can no longer access.

I must admit I wasn't great at organising my files for other people but I always knew where to access them, and honestly I was great at my job and a lot of what you would need to know was stored in my head, from working in the role for so long.

Trying to understand as I have no experience of company work using two parallel G drives, or however you'd like to term it. I've been skim reading and getting distracted by other posters' discussions.

Leaving aside how problematical it is when people keep things in their head, or fail to follow policy by saving work methodically as instructed, are they simply saying that upon redundancy they deleted the OP's personal side of the account and therefore the work is no longer there because it wasn't copied across as expected?

Is it there but they haven't found out how to access the OP's personal work files?
I'm not clear if the manager has contacted their own IT people and asked for the OP's drive to be accessed or if they've just gone directly to the OP instead of via IT, or whether with OP's redundancy, her account's been deleted and it's no longer possible for anyone to retrieve any of the files because they don't exist on the company's own drive?

If you were made redundant in one day then you were almost certainly unfairly dismissed - unless the employer was bankrupt.

There are laws on redundancy, and consultation periods are needed if a business is letting more that 20 jobs redundant.

But small numbers can be made redundant without much warning provided they are paid their notice period and any redundancy payments that are due.

If you currently have 5 roles but really only need 3, some how someone needs to make the decision on who stays and who goes.
Who would you rather keep, the people who follow company policy keeping all their files on the shared drive thats backed up or the people who think keeping stuff on a personal drive is a better idea?