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?

I would reply one more time with something along the lines of

'Any information you can't find on the shared drive, now or in future, will probably be in my G drive. I didn't delete anything, so if you can't find/access it in either of those places I don't know where it is and can't help. Obviously as time goes on I'm struggling to remember the folder structure in my G drive and therefore can't give you specific information about where to look.'

Then stop replying, and/or block.

You don't have any obligations to them beyond the day you left the company as you are no longer their employee. If hey told you to leave the same day, they didn't give you time to move anything.

You've been good to have been assisting so far, and I'd send one last message saying "if you are unable to locate x in the G drive, it will be in the local folder of the laptop I used while employed by you".

I wouldn't engage any further.

Just tell them that they are “triggering” you every time they contact you and ask that they desist.

There is always one.

I’d offer to go in and organise the files for an hourly consultants fee.

Depending on how Google docs are set up, documents disappear when the account is deleted.

The standard set up is that any document you “owned” disappears when your Google apps account is deleted even if it was placed in your team’s Google drive and not in your personal drive.

Transfering “ownership” takes time, I once had to do it and although it didn’t look like there were many documents I was using there were hundreds of one-use documents I had created and therefore owned (like a receipt for one client, or a record of a transaction). Transferring ownership of those hundreds of documents took a big chunk of my notice period, but we knew it was necessary after we had lost tons of data when the previous person left (and obviously we blamed her for years for deleting every single document she used, when in fact it was deleted by the company when theY deleted the company Google account. It took the issue repeating when other two people left that we realised it was all about deleting accounts).

Next time they contact you mention about this. If their IT team has not fully deleted your account, they may be able to reactivate it so someone can get in and transfer ownership of folders and documents to your boss.

Personally, I wouldn’t do any extra work for them even if they paid me. They had shot themselves on the feet for trying to get you out of the office on a day. I suppose you weren’t allowed to spend the rest of the day at your computer after they terminated you with immediate effect. They asked you to leave immediately to protect their data and with that they cut access to that data themselves so, if they insist or cause you a headache, check your insurance for legal advice, but I am sure that if they let go of a lot of people at the same time, yours are not the only docs that are missing, so wouldn’t worry too much about legal action.

I don’t at all agree you need to offer to help only by being paid, that just sounds arsey and like you are burning your bridges. You may also have a clause in your settlement agreement like others have said, but mostly it’s just short sighted; you never know when you need those connections again and you could end up working alongside these people in some capacity again in the future.
BUT it’s entirely reasonable that after this much time you’ve forgotten. As someone above said, just say something to the effect that nothing was deleted and all saved in your G drive, so IT should be able to recover it.
After that this isn’t your problem anymore.

I was made redundant a few years ago. I had a long notice period (can’t remember the terminology) due to my length of service. I wrote extensive handover notes, which I gave in about two months before my final day of employment. This included a request that they told me who to transfer the Facebook account to, and a few other things. I heard nothing else (despite chasing) so on my final day I deleted myself from the fb account, handed back my laptop and keys and that was that.

Several months later I had a message from an existing employee asking for access to fb. I explained I no longer had access myself. I had several messages from different people asking for the same/similar information, and I had to grit my teeth and be polite, but it could have been avoided if the general manager had bothered to look at the handover document in the first place.

What was the terms of your redundancy. Did you get standard or enhanced. Often companies ask you to sign T&Cs when being made redundant. I did in my last roll.

There was a clause in there that said they had the right to contact me after redundancy to ask any work related questions. Initially this did not have a time period so I got my solicitor to put in a 3 month clause. After that if they hadn't got their ducks in a row, it wasn't my problem.

They need to pay contractor rates, not just a week's salary at the rate the OP was paid.

I had a bit of a similar situation once, as I was being redeployed because of bullying at work. The bully boss kept contacting me asking where things were. I eventually got my union rep to intervene on my behalf and say that they weren't to contact me.
In your place I'd be blocking them, after stating please do not contact me, I am not your employee.

@northchesterforest use it to your advantage. I am sorry there are things you are unable to access but my employment ended and I was paid in lieu of notice. Those circumstances prevented me from handing over as I would have wished.

Naturally I don't want any ill will to exist between us but note that I am no longer your employee. However I shall be happy to come in and assist you. My daily rate is [£ ].

I'd double your usual hourly rate x 7. Don't offer less than a day because this will disrupt an entire day for you.

agree with this,
they CAN find them

Old mumsnet edict. ‘No is a complete sentence’. They made you redundant. They let you go the same day, with no opportunity for a proper handover to anyone. If they’re now finding that perhaps you weren’t as expendable as they thought, that’s their problem, not yours. I’d block them.

OP said she was made redundant and asked to leave pretty much immediately. Seems there wouldn’t have been time to hand anything over. So the employer reaps as they sow.

You haven't done anything wrong. You left on the same day and you weren't given a chance to do a handover or move things to the shared drive. They should know to ask IT to access your personal drive by now. You've already completed your gardening period so I think you can send a final message to "check the g: drive" and ask them not to contact you further.

Your personal One Drive can always be accessed. Even if you leave

Same for your emails

Honestly, I'd just ignore them.

I'd say that as your gardening leave has ended you are no longer an employee and can they please delete your phone number or you'll have to ask HR to do it.

I agree with @Duh @VioletMoonGirl . Whilst it's very tempting to be arsy and you may feel quite bitter about redundancy which is only natural.
Check your settlement agreement first off. Does it have a reasonable assistance clause?
Consider whether you may need a reference or cause to work with these people ever again? In my current job, I've hired a good few people I worked with previously. Some of whom we're made redundant ( not by me I hasten to add). But just to say redundancy is not uncommon and moving around the industry and working with people again also.
So no need to be rude or demand high consultancy fees. It sounds like they just assumed you'd put everything on the shared drive. You can simply say that you didn't have your files on the share and IT will need to recover all files from the personal drive. I hope you didn't have anything actually personal there too! As they'll recover the whole lot.

Much as I would love to reply to these with a monetary value.
I would just go for.

"I am no longer able to help you as it has been X months since I was last on the system and can no longer ensure that the files stored on the company system would be were I saved it."

Perfect. In other words, go fuck yourselves.

Definitely ignore. They're just being lazy rather than searching your files. They're taking you for granted.

I'd like to say that not only do you no longer work for them, they say your job doesn't exist, so how can they be asking you to do anything at all?

In reality I guess there might be something in your old contract or employment law, I don't know. If you're not legally obliged, though, and if it won't affect your reference or anything like that, I'd be inclined to ignore them. If they aren't smart enough to make sure they've got everything they need from someone before they axe them, that might be why they're in trouble and making redundancies in the first place.

I'd just be far clearer that you saved it all on the g drive local folder and give some idea of whether it's all in one huge folder called work or sone organised sub folders.

A 2 minute job.

Then move on.