How important are contract terms over verbal terms?

cj_

Sandtree said:

cj_ said:
My main argument is "if it's not needed, why's it there?".  The people I've spoken to during the interview process seem nice, but it makes me weary of the employer because of those terms.

Because for a company it is an absolute pain in the rear end to have different employees on different contractual terms. 

Have one set of terms that is suitable at the lowest common demoninator or maybe 3 - workers, managers, directors - but thats it. Each time you want to change something or do something its massively more complex if you have to check the contracts of all 400 impacted staff individually rather than 1 or 2 standard terms.

Surely if that was the case then everyone in a company would have the place of work, same salary, hours, and job title.  It wouldn't be the case here.

I don't see any different in the variation of the "we might make you work extra hours without pay" or "mobility" type clauses that can easily make them variable.

Sandtree

cj_ said:

Sandtree said:

cj_ said:
My main argument is "if it's not needed, why's it there?".  The people I've spoken to during the interview process seem nice, but it makes me weary of the employer because of those terms.

Because for a company it is an absolute pain in the rear end to have different employees on different contractual terms. 

Have one set of terms that is suitable at the lowest common demoninator or maybe 3 - workers, managers, directors - but thats it. Each time you want to change something or do something its massively more complex if you have to check the contracts of all 400 impacted staff individually rather than 1 or 2 standard terms.

Surely if that was the case then everyone in a company would have the place of work, same salary, hours, and job title.  It wouldn't be the case here.

I don't see any different in the variation of the "we might make you work extra hours without pay" or "mobility" type clauses that can easily make them variable.

Many of those were not specified in the contract but covered by generic wording. 

Salary and job title are really oddities anyway... most people gpt an annual pay rise but that doesn't result in everyone signing new contracts each year, similarly you don't sign a new contract if you moved jobs internally (unless you switched grade).

If I am thinking of relocating a department though and want to consider if we will offer relocation, opportunities to train the new staff, what the redundancy bill is going to be etc I can get salaries from HR in 30 seconds but no HR system I have ever seen holds in a systematic format the redundancy payment clauses, notice periods, my obligations to give warning if I want someone to travel overseas etc. At best, they hold a code to represent the template used so at least you know all on the 2019CS2 terms are identical. The only way you get to know those details is by reading contracts and if there is no standardisation or records of templates used that is having to read each and every contract... its times like these when mistakes are made.

Savvy_Sue

I suspect those clauses are fairly standard for a large employer with more than one possible workplace. And equally, I suspect that they will not randomly / frequently / regularly increase or radically alter hours or places of work - because staff retention would fall through the floor. 

Even my contract states that my regular place of work is X, but that I may be required to work elsewhere. At the moment, the only elsewhere we have is five minutes down the road, and some of my colleagues have that as their regular place for work, but they may be required to work where I do. My employer is unlikely to open an office beyond our city limits, but if they did, I could be required to move there. (Actually I'd retire, but that's a separate issue ...)

cj_

Savvy_Sue said:

I suspect those clauses are fairly standard for a large employer with more than one possible workplace. And equally, I suspect that they will not randomly / frequently / regularly increase or radically alter hours or places of work - because staff retention would fall through the floor. 

Even my contract states that my regular place of work is X, but that I may be required to work elsewhere. At the moment, the only elsewhere we have is five minutes down the road, and some of my colleagues have that as their regular place for work, but they may be required to work where I do. My employer is unlikely to open an office beyond our city limits, but if they did, I could be required to move there. (Actually I'd retire, but that's a separate issue ...)

The problem I have is that my current employer just did it (joined them as they were local, but they've decided they're not going to go back there now and they're going to the nearest city, where I didn't want to work).
A previous employer did it to me in the past, too - went to them as it was 10 mins down the road, and 3 months in they moved everyone to a congested city you couldn't drive in or park in.

I understand why they might have them, but I'm basically saying I don't want to go through that again and want to be up front.  They're saying it's not an issue, but it's perfectly likely to happen again in a post-covid world where the contract allows it to (or at least that's my concern)