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?

Absolutely.

I'd write once, saying the company required you to leave immediately, so there was no time to do a handover. If they require this for future smooth running you might consider returning on a freelance consultancy basis. You cannot spend any more unpaid time replying to their emails.

Then just resend this every time they get in touch, or ignore them.

(The going rate for freelance consultancy is at least 2-3 times the day rate of an employee btw as there's no holiday pay, sick cover, NI employer contribution, job security, so it is fair, not greedy to set a much higher rate.)

Then just resend this every time they get in touch, or ignore them.

The word harassment starts to crystallise ...

It sounds like you haven’t been there for some time as your gardening leave has ended. Is it possible that someone has already accessed those files and moved them or lost them completely?

Dh has been through this a few times and a settlement agreement is just what it says.
Everything is settled.
That means no more work. No contact with or from the company.
Usually there is a clause in the agreement that states that the person should not resume working for that company for a set amount of time.
I would say that this could be a way of recalling her settlement agreement if this clause is in there

The extra money in a settlement agreement is for terminating a work contract without notice, activating a ND agreement and for not being able to sue the company for anything regarding how or why the persons contract was terminated.
Unless there is a line in the Settlement agreement that refers to a handover period after termination then what op is doing is resuming her employment with said company

It isn’t money to keep someone for free advice in the future.

If someone had got another job do you think the new employer would be happy to pay for the persons time spent doing work even for a 1 minutes phone call for another company

If you want peace and the calls to stop then stop working for free.
Tell this company you no longer have a contract with them. If they want to give you a new contract as a consultant then your costs will be £100 per hour with a minimum 4 hours per day.

Either you will finally get peace or you will have £400 per day for what could be a single phone call.

I ask northchesterforest do you think any of your other colleagues who’s contracts were terminated are working for this company for free or do you think you are the only one who hasn’t told them they don’t work for free or against their settlement agreement

This. And add you are willing to help on a freelance basis and your rate is £300 per hour.

This. Unless you are currently dependent on them for a reference, ignore them.

They didn't allow you any paid handover time, so no you can't help them.

This.

You just say, "Sorry, I an no longer an employee of x company since x date so I will not be able to assist with this request. I also no longer have access to any of the materials you have requested. I would appreciate if you could refrain from sending similar requests of this nature in the future, as I will be unable to assist."

I had to do this as well as weeks after I voluntarily left my last job, people were calling me about how to do certain reports etc.

I have inattentive adhd and not so good at storing files in the ‘right’ place either.
I personally feel that since you did not do what was expected of you - ie file the files on the shared drive - I would help them out but say you are happy to do this until x date and then you need to move on. I would be considering you need a reference and at the moment their last thought of you is your filing chaos.

I would send a simple reply along the lines of:

"If you can't find a file saved on the shared network, the only other place it would be filed was on my G drive, which IT support should be able to access for you. I obviously no longer have access to anything, as I am no longer employed by the company, so cannot help you any further on this."

You could add a passive aggressive "If I'd had more notice, I would have had more time to check and reorganise the files, but there is only so much I could do in one day."

We have the equivalent of your "G" drive. I'm the boss and can access anyone else's G drive if I need to and I'm not in IT! I just know how to find them.

We've always warned staff that they are still company drives and to not use them for personal files though. I use them just to store personal templates and control files that aren't for whole office use.

Because they are accessible to anyone that can get access to the server, I don't even use them for confidential business files anymore - that's all on my OneDrive.

Their IT Department should have access to anything on the company drives, whether it's the individual drives or the consolidated "shared" drives. After all they can see whatever is in your email accounts, including where you've emailed stuff to, what you've accessed on the intranet, including printing stuff from their intranet, external internet sites etc etc.

They made you redundant without any proper notice (which might have given you time to put things on the main drive), the settlement is completed etc etc and two months after completion they have no right to hassle you. Be polite by all means, but stop answering them -
Block them from your phone, socials, emails, etc. Take care if you. 🌹

It doesn't mean that.

There could be a clause that states you may be required to assist but it would be timebound and not indefinite, that would be an unreasonable requirement.

A settlement agreement has to be countersigned by an employment lawyer or qualifed representative - they should have flagged this with you when you discussed the agreement with them. Did they mention this to you? Have you even checked your settlement agreement to see if there is such a clause?

This with an added; I will no longer be replying to any correspondence from you!

It depends entirely on the wording of the agreement. Unless cooperation is specified then it is not required.

cooperation should be limited to particulars e.g the employee will sign off on regulatory documents as reasonably required / cooperate with any investigation related to employment / provide such material as required to discharge third party obligations etc.

what they cannot do is expect you to provide general information as and when required.

Check the agreement, so no more than is required. Oh and they cannot withhold a reference that is part of the agreement because you won’t go beyond its terms

"I am not able to assist with any further queries regarding my previous employment. However, if you would like to employ me as a consultant to assist with this matter my fees are £XXX per hour. I would suggest that to avoid being in a similar situation again, all employees are given adequate notice and a proper handover is organised. Regards, NorthChesterForest."

Op don't ever burn bridges, you never know when you might need them. Or when you ex-boss turns up at your new company.

You answer politely, the information is on my files on the computers hard drive.
Or sorry I can't remember anything about it. Don't ever be rude,

Redundancy is hard and it's brutal being on the hard end of a 'difficult decision' much easier to cope with mentally when a company goes bust.

The only realistic situation I can imagine would make the OP somehow liable is if they had encrypted some files (for example zip files) with a password they had not divulged on leaving.

Not that makes anything better. There should have been a policy in place expressly forbidding such behaviour. I don't want any files like that on my network, thank you very much.

Its really poor form that you stored work files on your personal drive.

We have a similar system at my work and all work related files need to be on the shared drive, for obvious reasons.

Your personal drive on a work computer is for stuff no-one else needs to see, such as you planning what leave you will take, or whatever.

You really should have known better than this and I imagine they are mightily pissed at you for such unprofessionalism.

Surely you now can just say sorry I really can't remember where that was now as I can't see the fileshare anymore. If you don't have access how ware they getting to the files once you tell them where they are? they must have access so why can't they just search for the files?

Above is rubbish bth - work IT admins can access personal drives as well as long as under the company tenancy.

unless you mean local drives on the computer? in which case you gave th ecomputer back and they have access to it presumably.

Be polite (you may want a reference from that manager, or they might become a colleague again in the future) but firm about not answering work related questions. Then block them / don’t answer their emails if they persist.

Absolutely not and I can’t believe they are doing this! They should have asked you to work a longer notice period and paid you for it if they needed you to continue providing support. I work in HR and wouldn’t dream of asking someone to do this after we had made them redundant.

You should have been ignoring them the whole time, tbh.