Son's awful experience in first week of job

[ArmyofMunn]

Sorry this is long but I wanted to get it all down!

My 18DS started his first full time job last week. He has A Levels but is not degree educated and was taken on as one of four, the other three being in their mid-to late twenties and two of them with degrees. It was with a financial services company and paid £4K more per year plus commission than another job he’d also been offered, so he was very pleased.

He spent last week and the first two days of this week completing training for the job and he's been coming home each day saying how much he loves it - the training, the people, the office, the role etc. The training has been intense, involving two powerpoint presentations per day to prove he understood the training, but in which he said he kept coming second from top.

This week, following the training, he’s had to do three mock calls to a fake customer (his line manager) and he apparently made three ‘breaches’ in total, all involving not noticing that the customer had used some wrong letters during the security checks of emails and addresses etc. He thought he’d done well though as he was confident and affable and just thought next time he’d get the breaches right. He was shocked therefore to be taken into a room after his final call by two managers and told that because of the breaches he hasn’t passed his probation week and would have to leave and couldn’t appeal!

He’s completely shocked. The company didn’t tell him that his first week was probationary and he also remembers reading clearly that breaches by employees in their first month should not be regarded as breaches. He unfortunately read this on their own system so he can’t access it now, and his employer has his contract, so he can’t check that over either.

I just think this is an absolutely terrible way to treat an employee and my son is struggling to understand how the breaches he made were so serious as to warrant being asked to leave. He did ask to opt out of their employee life insurance and pension scheme, so I’m wondering if that just didn’t go down well with them!

Does anyone on here have experience of this type of thing? Are companies allowed to treat people like this these days?

Agree. That's three major errors on test calls.

if the contract says you can't be fired for that, I think that's odd. Are you sure he hasn't confused the contract with something he heard elsewhere?

it doesn't sound like they treated him badly. Sorry. Must be a hard job but dealing with customer financial details requires those skills.

Of course they are obliged

Some of you are positively gleeful that this lad has made a mistake. He’s 18. I think some of you just enjoy telling someone their kid is crap.
Says more about you than him.

The investment in training in regulated finance is immense, so holding onto people who, at early stages demonstrate incompetence, is an expensive endeavour. If someone is making that level of errors it is not only correct to let them go, but kind to do so. Unfortunately your son is not cut out for the job and couldn't be let loose on the phones. You should also consider that he might have demonstrated some other behaviours that were deemed an unsuitable fit that he either hasn't told you about or didn't realise proved he wasn't up to it. Tough lesson but I would also have fired him, and regardless of the moot point over whether breaches are counted in the first month or not, if you are not showing aptitude in the first week of training then you absolutely can be let go.

It sounds harsh to me. It sounds like KYC stuff? I work in compliance and I was shadowed for MONTHS when I started out. I hope he finds something else soon.

Most employees start work with a probationary period. Good practice would’ve been for the employer to explain this to him during the interview & include it in any job offer. Perhaps this is something your son could ask about at future interviews ?

During a probationary period either the employee or employer can terminate the contract without notice- the company don’t seem to have done anything wrong and are completely within their rights , unless of course discrimination was involved – this doesn’t sound to be the case
In future make sure your son asks for a copy of his contract on the day he starts work.
The fact that the contract mentions breaches wouldn’t really make any difference in your sons case as it’s sounds as though they are talking about the disciplinary process during the first 3 months ( with real clients )
This isn’t the case with your son - he failed his probation based on not completing his training satisfactorily

He could ask for a copy of his personnel file under a subject access request , a copy of the contract and induction training etc should be in there but to be
honest, i can’t seeing him getting anywhere with this . He’s better putting it down to experience and moving on as it seems as much as he liked the job , your son didn’t meet what they were looking for .

I can’t see that him opting out if the company pension would have any influence on this - if he opts out his employer doesn’t have to make contributions on his behalf so he would have been saving them money !!

Is he dsylexic @ArmyofMunn or Adhd?

If he has either-which would account for him mis-reading the codes or not being able to fully pay attention when mistake was pointed out to him?

If so, Acas might be able to advise.

OP, sorry your son must be gutted. Does he have an issue with attention to detail?

It is not everyone's strong suit, but compliance in a financial institution is critical. There can be serious consequence (fines, regulatory sanction, adverse publicity) to the firm if your son gets it wrong, however unintentional. This is particularly so if the firm expects to get telephone phishing attempts and your son is effectively the gatekeeper.

The firm is obliged to not have your son on their payroll if he fails otherwise they may risk their FCA licence. They cannot let him off into the wild as he is unsupervised once he earns his stripes and so they need to trust him. 3 times in a row is not a good start.

Many 18 year olds (mine included) are not really mature enough for such a responsible job. He should be aiming for 100% accuracy. Check and check again because even once wrong in the work context is once too often. It is completely different from school where I can see my dcs ignore teachers without adverse consequences and they are given upteen chances to pull up their socks.

Financial institutions pay well but they are not forgiving.

Of course they can.

paid £4K more per year plus commission
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

For whatever reason this company decided that your son didn't fit. It may have had nothing to do with his work. They probably did him a favour. Onward and upward.

He doesn't need to be told his first week is probationary - there's almost always a probationary period in any job and its almost always longer than a week, usually the first few months! That should be in his contract. Employers can also dismiss for nearly any reason in the first 2 years so they haven't done anything illegal.

It does seem very harsh not to give him a warning first but from their pov it's more important to have someone who is security conscious than affable - data security breaches can result in huge fines, a grumpy staff member is neither here nor there. Does sound like maybe they didn't make it clear that the security aspect was the most important part of the test rather than content or delivery.
I highly doubt the pension or insurance thing would have made any difference to them or had any impact!

He is entitled to a copy of his terms and conditions of employment. I doubt that there would be any contractual term though that would preclude dismissal during the probationary period.

It appears to be a regulated role that he was employed in, dealing with personal data. It's pretty impressive to breach GDPR, be informed exactly why, to immediately do the same thing again, not once, but twice. It's not unreasonable for them to think careless, maverick or completely incapable of following fundamental instructions.

In a 'real' situation, this would possibly be ICO reportable (& maybe FCA). The fine for breach of GDPR is up to €20million. This could have been a very expensive week for the company.

I assume they paid him a week's notice? There's potentially a wrongful dismissal for failing to provide the right to be accompanied, but if notice has been paid, then really they have mitigated.

Let’s just say he was working in a shop and not a corporate environment, would you feel the same.

So a shop that gave him training in his first week and still made big mistakes that could cause a lot of damage (say, leaving the stock room door open, giving out the wrong change, walking away from an open till), would you expect them to keep him on?

He failed the training. They tought him how to do it and then he did it wrong. Not once, not twice, but 3 times. And on top of that he made light of it, “I’’ll get it right eventually. So yes, they were absolutely within their rights to not take his employment any further. They probably have enough candidats to choose from. I think your son threw out a mayor chance and should learn to be more carefull. You only get one chance to make a good impression.

Sounds like a terrifying job!

The company took on four trainees at the same time. They probably only need one or possibly two new members of staff so they will ,I am afraid, be pretty quickly weeding out those who are unsuited to the job before investing in any more training. As others have said financial services compliance is a priority, companies will not risk their good names and the financial penalties that come with compliance failure.

The breach thing: maybe they weren't classified as breaches, in the formal sense, because it was training/practice. However he could be dismissed for failing to respond to feedback in relation to the 'breaches', surely?

I think this sounds like a really tough job for an 18 year old. I don't know many at that age who have above average attention to detail. I'd suggest your son gets more training/experience if this is the field he wants to work in.

In a different field, as he is obviously not suited for this one.

Weird, isn’t it? He’s probably heartbroken and some people are very eager to stick the boot in.

@TheMarzipanDildo hardly. It’s bizarre to me that OP has a level of entitlement that she’s passed onto son.

Oh God. What a shit employer. Poor lad
Honestly yes get the contract, demand pay in lieu of notice via small claims and help him focus on getting a better job before even more of the economic shit hits the fan this winter

I think most people are pointing out that the lad made repeated mistakes which could have had serious outcomes for the company. I think I had been given the push from two jobs by the time I was 18, and quite rightly too, the best one was from a steakhouse pub where the immortal words “ there’s a steak dinner and your cards upstairs when you’ve finished wiping down” saw me out of the door.

The lad needs to pick himself up, dust himself down and file it under experience, which is what most 18 year olds entering work without training or experience learn to do . I hope he succeeds in his next job and finds his niche. Maybe it is time to think of more formal training, an apprenticeship perhaps, to give him time to mature and understand how the world of work operates.

Unpleasant and unnecessary

never accept a job until you have a copy of your contract

Maybe making the same mistake 3 times is the issue. Making mistakes in your first week might be understandable, making the same mistake in 3 consecutive calls is less understandable.