Employment Terminated Inside Two Years

Sheroo

A friend had what she thought was a routine one to one with her line manger, instead she was told HR would be joining the meeting, she was then terminated on the spot and the line manager read from a script, she was asked if she has any questions, poor thing was absolutely shocked, mumbled no and the call was over, she was sent a letter of termination and asked to sign which would pay her her notice period.

She had been working there for around 1.5yrs, after recovering her thoughts, she asked by email for the reasons they let her go. HR replied on the day that she'd been under informal review for a number of months, it was documented in her review papers, she'd also received a few emails and had calls where her line manager had told her where to improve and she has not improved.

She has disputed all this, advising she was never advised of being on review, formal or informal and in fact had been commended for her work, also helped her colleagues out, even trained her peers.

Does she have any recourse? Should the company had followed a process, given her notice and the opportunity to bring in a representative?  She did notice that the male line manager had made some very inappropriate comments that can be seen as clearly discriminatory over her tenure, but also told her that anyone can get fired inside two years with no rights including her.

elsien

Unless she has had her employment terminated for reasons to do with a protected characteristic (which would be very hard to prove) then she really has no recourse.
Before she rocks the boat in terms of querying the manager possibly telling porkies. have there been any discussions around what a reference might say?

Sheroo

Thanks for taking the time to respond, for her reference it states the company will supply a reference confirming dates of employment and her position on leaving, she doesn’t understand this sentence though:

‘Nothing shall fetter our obligation to give full disclosure as required by law or any regulator, or as required under any statutory or regulatory authority and we reserve the right to withhold, amend or add to any reference in order to meet such obligations and/or as a result of information which comes to light after the date of this letter. For the avoidance of doubt, nothing in this letter shall in any way prevent or inhibit the Company’s ability to comply in full with its obligations to provide a regulatory reference on you if such reference is requested at any time, including updating such regulatory reference as may be required.’

Do you not think she can ask for a fair process to be followed or at least give her chance to make amends, if they have any real reasons for terminating her contract? They did not even give her due notice or allow her to have a representative present during the 'out of blue' call. It will be harder for her to find employment due to this unfair termination.

elsien

Regulatory references are those which are legally required for certain roles  eg within the financial industry.
I think if your friend was in a job where this applied she would already be aware of that so probably just a standard disclaimer that they stick on everything. 

Sheroo

Yes, she worked in that industry, so just walk away then? Just doesn't seem very fair...

YBR

One question is what is actually wanted out of this process?

Generally if a company is behaving like this it's better not to fight for a job back as the relationship between employee and boss is already broken. And in that case it's better to "grieve" what happened and move to a new situation whereas pushing back on the unfairness tends to compound the emotional hurt IYSWIM.

The sad truth is pushing back will not result in things going back to a nice job and working environment. So sorry your friend is going through this.

Undervalued

Sheroo said:

Yes, she worked in that industry, so just walk away then? Just doesn't seem very fair...

"Fair" is in the eye of the beholder I'm afraid.

All that actually matters is was it lawful (and nothing you have posted suggests it was not). Even if anything was technically unlawful is there any useful redress? Again not as far as I can see.

Sheroo

Having spoken to her, she just wants to make sure she gets a fair reference and was concerned about the 'fetter...statement', she absolutely does not want to go back there and is now actively applying elsewhere with interviews lined up. She did say that when she is applying for other roles, a few have asked if she has been dismissed from a previous role, hence why the 'fair' comment, poor thing is suffering due to someone else's whim...