Work settlement

[Naunet]

Hi,

So this may be a little lengthy, but I want to give a full overview.

My line manager was changed last year, and everything had been going ok until about a month ago. Firstly, in March I had my annual review, which was all positive, as it had been the previous 6 years. About a month or two later, my manager wanted another meeting with me regarding my review. She suddenly had some negative feedback for me and the whole meeting had a different tone to the first. I also happened to casually mention how I was starting to struggle with the isolation of lockdown, but this wasn’t in terms of my job being impacted, it was just a casual comment to her about general life - we’d always got on really well.

For the next two weeks she seemed to be unhappy with everything I did. This came from nowhere, I hadn’t changed the way I was working, I’ve done the job for 6 years and know it backwards. A lot of her complaints were things that were out of my control, like colleagues not passing information on to me.

I then asked for a chat with her as I had begun to feel like I was being pushed out of my role or something and it was really impacting my mental health. I told her this and asked her if my role was in trouble. She assured me that it wasn’t, however, she went on to tell me that one of my previous colleagues, who we’d been told was off with COVID, had actually now left. She was his manager too and she told me that he had come to her also struggling with stress/their mental health. Rather than offer support, my manager told him that if he couldn’t cope with the role, she strongly suggest he leave. After this he felt like he couldn’t work with her anymore, so resigned. She said to me that she would make the same suggestion to me.

I came away from that call actually feeling like things would be ok, but disturbed by her telling me this stuff about my colleague, and also a little “threatened”.

Two days later she arranges another meeting with me and this time, HR was also on the call, I’m told I’m going to face a disciplinary. I was devastated to be honest and felt so betrayed. I turned to the HR person and said I would rather agree to a settlement instead if that was possible, and she said it was.

So I was sent an agreement on Monday and asked to see a solicitor and give them my answer by Thursday (tomorrow). I didn’t feel the amount offered was at all reasonable so asked for more, and they came back with a final offer, which I still don’t think is great. My solicitor agrees, especially considering the issues around mental health. My company have refused to increase the offer, so my options now are to employ my solicitor to fight this for me and try and get more money, but of course that could fail and will cost me, which I really can’t afford now. Or I accept their offer and go.

I have also spoken to my ex colleague and let him know about the breach in confidentiality. He’s obviously angry and I’m having a call with him tomorrow. He’s confirmed to me that he very much felt pushed out by our manager due to his mental health.

So what is the best option here? Do I file a complaint on behalf of myself and my ex colleague before leaving, but accept the offer? Do I ask my solicitor to push for more? I really don’t know what the best option is here, or what rights I have, if any!

Thank for reading!

You might want to post over in Employment Matters OP as there can be more traffic over there. Sorry to be vague but I think you are really best placed talking this through with your solicitor who knows all the facts - what I'd want to know from them is

(a) How do they assess your chances of winning a tribunal case (presumably for constructive dismissal unless there's a discrimination angle) if you were to resign right now, and what would the likely compensation award be, bearing in mind the payout cap, the fact you would be expected to mitigate your loss, if you are likely to easily find alternative employment this will reduce your payout compared to if you are likely to be unemployed for a long time, and the fact you'll have to pay costs out of your settlement as well which could easily amount to £10k or more. So if your solicitor says you'd only have a 50:50 chance of winning (constructive dismissal cases v hard to prove esp if it's all based on verbal conversations which can be denied by the other party), the payout would be in the region of £20k and costs would be £10k, then a settlement offer of £5k, while low on the headline figure, starts to look/feel less bad). Whereas if it's a cast iron case, and the settlement would be in the realm 6 figures, then you would absolutely want to push for a higher settlement.

(b) How would things change if you remained in employment and let them put you through the disciplinary (what are they disciplining you for - was misconduct have they said occurred? Or is it performance management/capability which is a different kettle of fish? Have they actually threatened dismissal or no?). If they do actually dismiss you and it isn't for fair reasons/they don't follow a fair process you stand a much better chance of winning a case than trying to prove constructive dismissal but of course you have all the stress of going through the process and the potential impact on your career to weigh up as well. But then again if things are in really early stages I guess remaining in employment although of course difficult, does maximise your chances of finding another role, so swings and roundabouts.

(c) What would solicitor charge to try and negotiate a better settlement on your behalf? I would have thought an initial process of them simply writing a scary letter stating your case very strongly and asking for more money wouldn't be hugely costly - plenty of people do this and don't always follow through on the actual tribunal claim (or swap to self-repping) if it doesn't achieve the desired result, so may be worth a try. Remember your employers will also be doing the exact same calculations as you above, and the fact that (for e.g.) it could end up costing them £20k plus £10k costs, even if they think they have a good chance of winning, they may loosen the purse strings if they think you are serious about pursuing it...

What was the basis for the disciplinary? What level was it? Just a written warning or were they looking at gross misconduct or similar? On which grounds?

Thanks both.

They didn’t go into the disciplinary, but I do know a couple of points that would have been raised, which are both things beyond my control. One was management instructing me not to join call A and to join call B instead - something my manager approved with another director. And then when a colleague didn’t pass on information from call A to me, it was my fault for not joining call A!

It’s minor things like that that I feel I could challenge easily enough, but it’s more a case of knowing my manager wants me gone, I feel like what’s the point in fighting that? It’s just going to be stressful.

The solicitor told my the starting point of a few letters would be about £1000

Check if you have legal expenses insurance on your home insurance policy to cover litigation.

Your company should pay the costs of your legal advice in relation to the settlement agreement up to an agreed limit.