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?

This 🤣

I hope there are others out there that hate the G drive as much as I do

Reply to all future emails with

"I am no longer an employee of (company name) and do not have further time to devote to the company's needs unpaid. My consultancy rate is £150 per hour. If you wish to engage my services for any purposes please prepare an appropriate Purchase Order for the number of hours required (minimum 4 hours) and I will be pleased to find some time to fulfil your needs"

I'm exactly the same.

For the avoidance of doubt maybe call it the local drive rather than personal.

Are you sorted for a reference? Either way I wouldn't be going out of my way losing sleep helping them.

What’s the phrase? “Failure to plan on your part doesn’t constitute an emergency on mine”

God just hearing the term G drive has given me war flashbacks. There was this whole hoohaa at my old work where they were going to shut down the individual drives and delete everything in them so everything needed to be transferred to the G drive but lots of the work was confidential so it couldn't be in a shared drive where everyone could see it... just chaos.

But no, you've done nothing wrong. Your work was saved on your work computer and they sacked you. They still have the computer. Their problem to solve.

We have had situations at work where people haven't saved documents in the shared drive but on their personal drive (still on work computer) then gone off long term sick or on holiday and noone can access it. It is frustrating and its company policy that all work files should be in shared drive .
BUT they've made you redundant , you are no longer an employee so it's not your problem.
As pp said if you had more notice you could have moved them/ done a handover ( or destroyed them😆)
But ultimately you have to draw a line- youve been helpful enough given the circumstances and they are very cheeky to keep contacting you.

I am terrible at filing on all systems but the G drive truly is the worst of them all

Block them. What are they going to do show up at your house? Why didn't they have a procedure for handing stuff over when you left instead of booting you out the same day. Sounds like car crash management I would block

If you aren’t likely to need a reference from them I would just politely respond as pp that you no longer have access. If you do need a ref, I might be inclined to be a bit more cooperative with them. It’s poor practice from them def and you don’t owe them!

TL;DR they fucked up their IT decommissioning process. Presumably because they skimped om expertise.

Their bad.

However the OP isn’t employed or recompensed by them anymore so they don’t have to do diddly squat for the previous employer :)

You owe them absolutely nothing. They asked you to leave with less than one days notice!

If your employer wasn't sensible enough to have you work a notice period so that you could move files from your One Drive to the Shared drive and provide a handover that is 100% their problem.

You did nothing wrong and shouldn't feel guilty. Hopefully, you have a new job and can focus on that.

This is perfect.

"If you would like me to consult for you, my day rate is £X."

Or set an auto responder to reply to every message "have you looked in the G drive?"

This. They shouldn't be bothering you, they should be asking someone who is still on their payroll to do their job.

If you have a settlement agreement OP, I’d suggest you just double check that and see if there is a clause about ‘reasonable assistance’ after you’ve left. I have one in my settlement agreement from when I was made redundant about 7 years ago, which I only realised when they got in touch with me asking for help last summer. Unfortunately I can’t possibly remember stuff from that far back, but there is a clause relating to it.

I came on to say what @Matobe said. Tell them you'll consult for them at £50/hour (or rate you feel comfortable with) and they'll need to give you access to your old personal drive, but otherwise they're to cease harassing you.

Thank you that's good advice about my agreement!

If you signed a settlement agreement and therefore got an enhanced payment you need to be co-operative. That is a pretty massive detail to leave out of your original post.

I don't see why that makes a difference what I was given as my redundancy package?

Did you receive the minimum statutory redundancy package or did you receive an enhanced package for which you signed a Settlement Agreement?

Either way, what difference does it make to my employer contacting me two months after I was let go?

Definitely worth double checking, although if you have spoken to them and told them where the files are, but their IT department can’t figure out how to access them, I would think that fulfils ‘reasonable assistance’.

Because if you signed a Settlement Agreement you have ongoing obligations towards your employer which would likely include what they are asking of you now. You also would have likely given an undertaking that you performed your job properly (which may include saving things to the G Drive).