Bonus Docked Unfairly

NeedSomHelp

The agreement doesn't say what I can tell my future employer, but it does say that the pure existence of the offer, letter and documentations, settlement, deals and negotiations must not be disclosed unless required under a court order and I cannot speak negatively about the company, it's clients or anyone connected to the company or it's staff.

The agreed reference finishes by saying:
<my name> decision to leave the organisation was a voluntary decision and we wish him well with his future endeavours"

However the settlement payment is being provided as a redundancy one so from a tax point of view I surely will have to say that since that is how the deal is being disclosed to the taxman.

Undervalued

NeedSomHelp wrote: »

The agreed reference finishes by saying:
<my name> decision to leave the organisation was a voluntary decision and we wish him well with his future endeavours"

However the settlement payment is being provided as a redundancy one so from a tax point of view I surely will have to say that since that is how the deal is being disclosed to the taxman.

Well those two statements contradict each other!

Normally the first £30K of any settlement agreement is tax free anyway as it is compensation for the loss of employment. Technically there is no such thing a voluntary redundancy (despite it being a commonly used phrase). If you are genuinely redundant then you have no choice in the matter and an employer only has to pay you what is set down by law. Anything else is a mutually agreed separation.

Fine, you can probably tell a future employer it was "voluntary redundancy" as it seems unlikely you old employer will contradict that.

Hopefully the agreement say that any verbal reference will be consistent with the agreed words although it is very hard to police.

Mersey_2

NeedSomHelp wrote: »

We had clearly defined criteria for bonus.

I was stated that I lost a large percentage of my bonus because of the reasons I stated,

Verbal warning doesn't impact bonus

There is caselaw that an employer cannot dismiss an employee eg in March to avoid the annual bonus being paid in April. But that was also a clearly defined bonus ie a % of salary based upon billing £ above target pa.

Mersey_2

NeedSomHelp wrote: »

As the companies position got weaker and weaker after my doctor sent a submission that the stress caused

Following legal advice, I accepted their offer off a sum of several months pay, rounded up to the nearest thousand after tax was removed, an agreed reference, non deduction of overtaken holiday and pro rata sick days in exchange to drop all legal action and non disclosure of the settlement.

Following my departure, approx a third of the team handed in their resignation.

Well done for maintaining a strong stance. It must have been difficult.

NeedSomHelp

It was very difficult, honestly the bullying over the past few weeks became quite serious, lies, dishonesty and downright intimidation and my solicitor said 90% of people would have walked before it got to that stage and I did exceptionally well to get a settlement out of them because of the fact that they had spent the last several months trying to make me go by resigning and all sorts of intimidation which the company turned a blind eye to since they were in on it, which one of the managers basically admitted to me, saying business is business, but only after I had signed the agreement (gotta love their ethics!)

To be honest over the last few weeks I have been 'cute' myself in my dealings with the company in order to strengthen my position in any deal that would be negotiated and have wasted no time in getting my doctor involved, stating on several occasions the support I have and the fact that if the company do not resolve this issue themselves and the grievance procedure doesn't I would claim constructive dismissal and would bring them through the courts and that witnesses would not become intimidated into not coming forward there and it'd be silly to risk the reputation damage to the company when the truth comes out.

In essence, I gave them a taste of their own medicine, and the fact that I even slightly hinted at a deal could be welcomed, they bit my hand off. They first asked for figures, I wouldn't provide one, they made two offers, the second I accepted subject to agreeing on the conditions of them. Later that day they sent me the conditions, I found 3 issues (that were not really issues at all) said the deal was off unless the clauses were removed, they offered extra compensation to remove them, just before signing I stated I was unsure so maybe I'd leave it a few days. They made a slight improvement to their offer = signed.

I honestly felt that they were worried, I've negotiated a lot of things in my working life in my roles, and honestly they were there for the taking and put up very little of a fight, it gave me the impression that they knew they had done wrong and that any impartial person would see through the treatment they have handed out over the past few months so they were happy to see me go. However it may be too late to prevent a major fall-out which is now underway with another resignation going in today.