notice period - am i stuck with this??

[glitterball]

posted a couple of weeks ago as i was uncertain about going for a job interview i had with a firm i'd already been interviewed by sebveral months earlier for a job which never materialised....anyway the good news is i went along, and there is a (completely different) job now & it was offered to me on the spot!

so far so good. new firm want me to start asap. its to head a dept which doesnt have anyone running it at the moment - so the sooner im there the better!

but - theres always a but - my contract requires me to give 3 months notice. since ive been at this firm however only one person has given that much notice. when i raised this today, management pleaded ignorance as to the contractual notice period of others who left after a month (i know for a fact it was 3 months in most cases!) & the upshot was that i was required to give 3 months, i wouldnt be released earlier, & i was selfish for asking!

so, can i get round this? any opinions? i should add 2 further salient points:

1. all those who left were junior to me. i am essentially those most senior person at the firm below management.
2. our firm is owned by another organisation which is in known financial diffculties. there have been various rumours about the future of our firm for the last couple of months, and we have been given no assurances on that score by manangement. many of us dont expect the firm to keep going beyond Easter.......

bump

Congrats on the job glitterball.

Bottom line is they can hold you to your notice period. Just because they didn't do that with others, particularly given your seniority, doesn't mean they can't with you. You could just not work it, you could walk out and although that would be breach of contract there's very little they could do to stop you. However it would obviously effectively ruin your relationship with them and would affect any reference you might need from them in the future.

The fact that lots of you think the firm is in financial difficulties and may go under doesn't change anything, unless and until that happens.

If you are going into a new job as Head of Department the new employer is unlikely to be completely shocked at that level of notice period, although they might be disappointed.

I'd be inclined to just explain to the new employer that your current employer is refusing to release you. If you think it might help, you could take a couple of days holiday from your current job and use those to visit the new employer, meet people and so on, so you can hit the ground running.

How frustrating! I think since they are being so straight down the line about it, there's probably little you can do IF you think you will rely on them for a reference in the future. I mean as flowery says, if you tell them you're leaving on such and such a date there is in practice little they're going to do about it, it would be a huge waste of time and money for them to pursue it as an issue, but would they be within their rights to refuse you a reference or write a bad one? If this were me I think I'd phone a Union or solicitor for a quick bit of advice and see if you can get a better picture.

Very annoying though. No-one wants to wait that long for a new job!

There is no legal requirement for an employer to give a reference at all, except in very specific circumstances, although they do have an obligation not to give a misleading impression if they do give one.

Saying that someone is unreliable because they refused to work their notice period is factual information and wouldn't be giving a misleading impression. They could say that, they could refuse to give one at all, or they could give a very basic confirmation of dates rather than a glowing reference that they otherwise might have given.

Not worth it imo, better to maintain a reasonable relationship, for the sake of an extra 2 months.

flowery/stephanie thanks for the replies - i kind of did think i was stuck with it, but i'm always hopeful for a get out somewhere. i had another brief word about it today as i was asked what the new firm thought of me not being able to join til march (i said - truthfully - that whilst i hadnt spoken to them i didnt think they would be THAT happy) to which the response was well come back to us once you have spoken to them - from which i have somewhat optimistically inferred that there might be some room for manoeuvre. fingers crossed .

flowery, the idea about popping in for a few days before i start officially is a fab one i think i will definitely try that if i am stuck here till march!

the reference issue is a bit of an odd one in that we only ever get standard refs written by the HR dept of our 'parent' company - our management at our office are not permitted to write refs for us (!), so all we get is the HR lady confirming our start/finish date, no of days off sick etc - as such whatever i do there'll never be a glowing reference (shame, i think i deserve one!)

i think im going to try the nice approach & see if - on the basis i endeavour to get all my current work beyond up to date (ie try and do everything that may need doing in the next 6 months in the next 6 weeks so far as is possible...) - they will compromise and maybe let me go end of jan.....

Sounds a bit more positive, a compromise is a good option, hope you get something sorted.