Former employee messed around
Discussion
Recently a former employee (and friend) asked me to reply to a email from a prospective new employer who she had been for a interview with and been offered a job with to give her a reference. This was done and the prospective new employer told her its with HR and should everything be ok with it she will then be able to start..
To make things a little more interesting my friend had been offered another job before she went for a interview at this place but as they had rung her out of the blue and asked her to come in she felt it was only fair to hear them out (manager called her as a couple of her friends work there and they told him she was looking for work)....In the interview they offered her the job and told her to turn the other one down as it would be to hard for her to do "from personal experience", which she subsequently did.
She had the interview on a Wed and was told she could start on a Tuesday. She was due to start her other job on the Monday but had to go through the embarrassing action of calling them and telling them she had been offered better position. Come Monday she had heard nothing from the new Employers so she called them and asked when she would be starting. The manager told her the HR woman was off and he would call her at the end of the week to confirm she was starting Monday (Now lost 1 weeks wages). Come Monday she had again heard nothing so called him again and he said she was still off and he deffo would be in touch (said they are not allowed to start anyone without ref)
Anyway today she called them as she felt it had gone on to long only to be told the MD had decided not to start her as she "used" to work for a rival company (we shut the business down 3 months ago). At this company they were at one point actively poaching my staff whilst I was open and has so far employed around 5 or 6 of my former employees.
I feel so sorry for my friend as she is jobless and skint to say the least and this kind of behaviour is way out of order..
Does she have any grounds to take this further?
_______________________________________________________________________________
To make things a little more interesting my friend had been offered another job before she went for a interview at this place but as they had rung her out of the blue and asked her to come in she felt it was only fair to hear them out (manager called her as a couple of her friends work there and they told him she was looking for work)....In the interview they offered her the job and told her to turn the other one down as it would be to hard for her to do "from personal experience", which she subsequently did.
She had the interview on a Wed and was told she could start on a Tuesday. She was due to start her other job on the Monday but had to go through the embarrassing action of calling them and telling them she had been offered better position. Come Monday she had heard nothing from the new Employers so she called them and asked when she would be starting. The manager told her the HR woman was off and he would call her at the end of the week to confirm she was starting Monday (Now lost 1 weeks wages). Come Monday she had again heard nothing so called him again and he said she was still off and he deffo would be in touch (said they are not allowed to start anyone without ref)
Anyway today she called them as she felt it had gone on to long only to be told the MD had decided not to start her as she "used" to work for a rival company (we shut the business down 3 months ago). At this company they were at one point actively poaching my staff whilst I was open and has so far employed around 5 or 6 of my former employees.
I feel so sorry for my friend as she is jobless and skint to say the least and this kind of behaviour is way out of order..
Does she have any grounds to take this further?
_______________________________________________________________________________
Nope. Sadly not.
An offer is not secure until it's in writing with a start date/salary/benefits package all clearly defined. Until that happens you shouldn't turn down other offers and should keep your options open.
You friend has made the mistake of turning down other offers as she was expecting to start with the company that has changed its mind. Nothing she can do about it unfortunately except chalk it up to experience and move on.
An offer is not secure until it's in writing with a start date/salary/benefits package all clearly defined. Until that happens you shouldn't turn down other offers and should keep your options open.
You friend has made the mistake of turning down other offers as she was expecting to start with the company that has changed its mind. Nothing she can do about it unfortunately except chalk it up to experience and move on.
You are actually employed as soon as you are unconditionally offered the job.
There is case law around a woman who after being offered and accepting a job, before she was due to start she found she was preganant and told the prospective employer who 'changed their mind'. It was ruled that employment started from acceptance of the contract in terms of dismissal.
How this has relevance to this is whether the offer of employment was conditional or not. You don't need to sign anything to make a contract binding, however if she was given the job subject to receiving a satisfactory reference then they can use this as their get-out.
However... even if this is the case she would have a very good argument if the reference was a glowing one. This brings up two questions:
1) Is the contract binding as a good reference was received, regardless of who it was from?
2) Is she being discriminated against due to her previous employer?
There is the legal route, although this will take a solicitor, and although it will ultimately get her some money, after causing that ruckus she wont get the good job and career she was hoping.
The less informal route would be for her to make contact with the MD to explain the situation that she had turned down another job on his HR's advice and on that she was offered a job here. Talking to him may allay some of his probably completely unfounded fears.
The other factor may be that the HR person is 'off sick' but has really left the company, been pushed out, or has gone on long term illness and the MD is taking over and overruling her decisions.
JustinP1 said:
You are actually employed as soon as you are unconditionally offered the job.
There is case law around a woman who after being offered and accepting a job, before she was due to start she found she was preganant and told the prospective employer who 'changed their mind'. It was ruled that employment started from acceptance of the contract in terms of dismissal.
How this has relevance to this is whether the offer of employment was conditional or not. You don't need to sign anything to make a contract binding, however if she was given the job subject to receiving a satisfactory reference then they can use this as their get-out.
However... even if this is the case she would have a very good argument if the reference was a glowing one. This brings up two questions:
1) Is the contract binding as a good reference was received, regardless of who it was from?
2) Is she being discriminated against due to her previous employer?
There is the legal route, although this will take a solicitor, and although it will ultimately get her some money, after causing that ruckus she wont get the good job and career she was hoping.
The less informal route would be for her to make contact with the MD to explain the situation that she had turned down another job on his HR's advice and on that she was offered a job here. Talking to him may allay some of his probably completely unfounded fears.
The other factor may be that the HR person is 'off sick' but has really left the company, been pushed out, or has gone on long term illness and the MD is taking over and overruling her decisions.
Thank you for this.. the reference was glowing as to be fair she was probably the hardest working member of staff I had.There is case law around a woman who after being offered and accepting a job, before she was due to start she found she was preganant and told the prospective employer who 'changed their mind'. It was ruled that employment started from acceptance of the contract in terms of dismissal.
How this has relevance to this is whether the offer of employment was conditional or not. You don't need to sign anything to make a contract binding, however if she was given the job subject to receiving a satisfactory reference then they can use this as their get-out.
However... even if this is the case she would have a very good argument if the reference was a glowing one. This brings up two questions:
1) Is the contract binding as a good reference was received, regardless of who it was from?
2) Is she being discriminated against due to her previous employer?
There is the legal route, although this will take a solicitor, and although it will ultimately get her some money, after causing that ruckus she wont get the good job and career she was hoping.
The less informal route would be for her to make contact with the MD to explain the situation that she had turned down another job on his HR's advice and on that she was offered a job here. Talking to him may allay some of his probably completely unfounded fears.
The other factor may be that the HR person is 'off sick' but has really left the company, been pushed out, or has gone on long term illness and the MD is taking over and overruling her decisions.
I still dont understand the reasons for not taking her on, as yes if the rival company was still going she could say "be a spy" but we went bust 4 3 1/2 months ago.
And it looks like there is something not right as they have taken on as I said alot of previous x staff when we were open and when we were closed so to suddenly turn her down on that basis does not stack up
JustinP1 said:
You are actually employed as soon as you are unconditionally offered the job.
There is case law around a woman who after being offered and accepting a job, before she was due to start she found she was preganant and told the prospective employer who 'changed their mind'. It was ruled that employment started from acceptance of the contract in terms of dismissal.
That's sex discrimination though, which doesn't have the time limits 'normal' employment rights do (basically 1 year).There is case law around a woman who after being offered and accepting a job, before she was due to start she found she was preganant and told the prospective employer who 'changed their mind'. It was ruled that employment started from acceptance of the contract in terms of dismissal.
The company I used to work for was about to undergo fairly big expansion and we had a number of offers out to people when, out of the blue, a takeover offer was made. All the offers were simply withdrawn.
Deva Link said:
JustinP1 said:
You are actually employed as soon as you are unconditionally offered the job.
There is case law around a woman who after being offered and accepting a job, before she was due to start she found she was preganant and told the prospective employer who 'changed their mind'. It was ruled that employment started from acceptance of the contract in terms of dismissal.
That's sex discrimination though, which doesn't have the time limits 'normal' employment rights do (basically 1 year).There is case law around a woman who after being offered and accepting a job, before she was due to start she found she was preganant and told the prospective employer who 'changed their mind'. It was ruled that employment started from acceptance of the contract in terms of dismissal.
The company I used to work for was about to undergo fairly big expansion and we had a number of offers out to people when, out of the blue, a takeover offer was made. All the offers were simply withdrawn.
This type of think though is very general and will depend exactly on what has been said or written in an offer as there are 'subject to' type workarounds.
JustinP1 said:
Deva Link said:
JustinP1 said:
You are actually employed as soon as you are unconditionally offered the job.
There is case law around a woman who after being offered and accepting a job, before she was due to start she found she was preganant and told the prospective employer who 'changed their mind'. It was ruled that employment started from acceptance of the contract in terms of dismissal.
That's sex discrimination though, which doesn't have the time limits 'normal' employment rights do (basically 1 year).There is case law around a woman who after being offered and accepting a job, before she was due to start she found she was preganant and told the prospective employer who 'changed their mind'. It was ruled that employment started from acceptance of the contract in terms of dismissal.
The company I used to work for was about to undergo fairly big expansion and we had a number of offers out to people when, out of the blue, a takeover offer was made. All the offers were simply withdrawn.
This type of think though is very general and will depend exactly on what has been said or written in an offer as there are 'subject to' type workarounds.
There was no written offer more a definate start. I Ref was spot on so no reason there to decline. I think what makes it worse in my eyes is that he actually told her not to go for the other job and that she would find it hard and to take his offer....
Not to mention that he actually rung her up out of the blue one morning at 9am to see if she could come in as a friend of hers (who also used to work for me and STILL works there) said she was looking for work and would be good at it
m3sye said:
JustinP1 said:
Deva Link said:
JustinP1 said:
You are actually employed as soon as you are unconditionally offered the job.
There is case law around a woman who after being offered and accepting a job, before she was due to start she found she was preganant and told the prospective employer who 'changed their mind'. It was ruled that employment started from acceptance of the contract in terms of dismissal.
That's sex discrimination though, which doesn't have the time limits 'normal' employment rights do (basically 1 year).There is case law around a woman who after being offered and accepting a job, before she was due to start she found she was preganant and told the prospective employer who 'changed their mind'. It was ruled that employment started from acceptance of the contract in terms of dismissal.
The company I used to work for was about to undergo fairly big expansion and we had a number of offers out to people when, out of the blue, a takeover offer was made. All the offers were simply withdrawn.
This type of think though is very general and will depend exactly on what has been said or written in an offer as there are 'subject to' type workarounds.
There was no written offer more a definate start. I Ref was spot on so no reason there to decline. I think what makes it worse in my eyes is that he actually told her not to go for the other job and that she would find it hard and to take his offer....
Not to mention that he actually rung her up out of the blue one morning at 9am to see if she could come in as a friend of hers (who also used to work for me and STILL works there) said she was looking for work and would be good at it
There are three ways of looking at it.
1) Fight, fight, fight. Get a solicitor and *maybe* she could get some kind of compensation for loss of earnings. However, this wont get her a job and will have to keep looking at the same time.
2) She could speak to the MD personally, explain the situation in the hope that ther *may* be a chance of working something out.
3) She could probably think to herself if her potential boss is willing to act like this, then this certainly not the type of place she should look to build a career and think that it is a lucky escape!
i am a 'glass is half full' kind of guy and think 3 is the best option. As she has been given a job she is obviously employable so she should have not much trouble finding something better elsewhere!
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