Resigned and now job has changed for my notice period?

[Delatron]

Hi,

I am on a year's contract which is due to expire shortly. I handed my notice in and agreed to work a months notice which takes me about 3 weeks over my contract period. My manager has basically now taken away all the interesting aspects of my role which is reasonably senior and I am expected to spend the next 4 weeks cold calling which was only a small part of the job originally.

Can they do this? Could I just insist now that I leave when my contract finishes?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

What reason have they given you for taking the interesting bits away? Do they need to train other people in how to do them? clutches at straws

I guess you could say that as you are clearly not needed for the job you had been doing, you have decided to leave when your contract is up. If they want you to stay for the full notice period then you will only agree if your work continues to be more or less the same responsibilities as it has been up to now.

Perhaps you could also suggest that a person who is about to leave might not be the most suitable for cold calling as you won't have the same enthusiasm or interest in the future of the company, so them might as well save themselves your wages and let you go early.

No, they are not replacing me. They have just said it's the best use of my time but considering as a company we haven't had any success in cold calling previously I think it is a waste.

I may just have to suck it up. I feel like I am doing them a favour by staying 3 weeks over my contract when I could have insisting on leaving then so to change the job now seems a bit unfair.

Exactly GreenMonth. I find you have to be in a positive frame of kind for cold calling or it is detrimental! I am struggling to summon up any enthusiasm!

Mind not kind!

Thanks hogwash, the argument is that it is the best use of my time. I work in an industry where it is very difficult to get hold of people, voicemails permanently on etc so you can spend hours calling people and not get through. It's quite demoralising too so it was good that previously this was balanced by other work.

I am leaving partly due to stress and anxiety issues and I don't think this change in job description will help.

Does anyone know about contracts? My notice period was a month but I didn't sign a new contract. This is about to run out in a few weeks. So can I legally just leave at the end of my contract? I think I can but it will probably mean I leave with some bad-feeling which I really wanted to avoid so references were good etc.

You can leave at the end of your contract - your notice period is for leaving sooner than the pre-agreed date. You just need to make a decision about the references/bad feeling issue.

It's not necessarily uncommon to remove responsibilities during a notice period, but it doesn't seem sensible or necessary for you to be there.

Thanks Flowery. I think I need the reference so will have to suck it up a bit. If it gets intolerable will have another discussion and see of we can come to some agreement about me leaving early.

If you were on a fixed term contract you wouldn't normally resign unless you wanted to leave early so I am not sure why you actually gave in notice anyway.
But now you have and have agreed to stay on for extra time. So I think you Will just have to suck it up especially if you will need a reference