False work reference and possible redress

TELLIT01

When your friend applies for another job are they going to omit the current, short term employer? If so aren't they basically just as guilty of providing false information as the former employer allegedly was?
If they are going to include the new employer there is no reason to worry about what a previous employer said.

CYPER

TELLIT01 wrote: »

When your friend applies for another job are they going to omit the current, short term employer? If so aren't they basically just as guilty of providing false information as the former employer allegedly was?
If they are going to include the new employer there is no reason to worry about what a previous employer said.

The current employment is for a couple of months only and because it is a short period of time is likely for any new employer to request references from both places.

TBagpuss

Your friend would have to show that she had suffered loss.

If the old employer has an HR department then her best course of action may be to contact HR, and ask them to confirm that they will provide a factual reference if asked to do so. This may be limited to setting out the dates she worked there and her job title.

She cpould also request a copy of her employee file which should show what if any disciplinary rcord there is.

It is of course possible that she was given verbal warnigns which wer eclassd as isciplinary even if she did not see them as such at the time.

LilElvis

CYPER wrote: »

The current employment is for a couple of months only and because it is a short period of time is likely for any new employer to request references from both places.

A future employer may be very interested in receiving a reference from the more recent, short lived employment. An employment may be short for a number of "red flag" reasons - lack of commitment by the employee, disciplinary, not up to the role. It's up to your friend how she wishes to explain her short tenure and the reason why she doesn't wish to use them as a reference.

Kynthia

LilElvis wrote: »

A future employer may be very interested in receiving a reference from the more recent, short lived employment. An employment may be short for a number of "red flag" reasons - lack of commitment by the employee, disciplinary, not up to the role. It's up to your friend how she wishes to explain her short tenure and the reason why she doesn't wish to use them as a reference.

The OP didn't say her friend wasn't going to use her current employer for a reference. She said it was likely a future employer would want references from both the current and previous employers due to the fact this was a brief employment.

It would then be be a dreadful worry to go to all the effort of finding a decent role, going through the application and the interview process, all the while knowing you may get another false reference that loses you the job offer. So I can definitely understand wanting to do something now to prevent that.

Manxman_in_exile

As I think Bogoff and LilElvis have said, your friend needs to contact her previous employer and point out the hopefully obvious errors and libellous statements in the reference provided by her ex-manager. (I once had to do this regarding an oral reference given over the telephone. I put the fear of god in them - it was a county council.)


Also try SAR/GDPR route.


Just one thing - how far these days are references confidential? I know that when I had to challenge mine my then current manager would not tell me what had actually been said about me, but he said I needed to challenge it as it obviously was not true.

[Deleted User]

Well I had an interesting week. Turned out I had a problem with references, a certain courier company and their franchise instead of refusing to provide wants to claim I never worked for them. They have no record �� it's certainly a new way to do things! not sure how that works with available tax records.

Still their shabby record keeping didn't totally stop me passing stage 1.
I would SAR some of my previous employers but the truth could still be the courier company didn't respond then either.

# Be more careful who you work for.