Garden Leave

simonaspinall

Hi folks

As a rule of thumb, if you are contractually obliged to work your notice and you are preapred to do so, are employers also obliged to pay garden leave if they try and get you to leave and waive the idea of the notice period (I.e. they want you out of the building and don't want to pay you notice - they'd just rather terminate things immediately)?

If you say that you don't want to end your contract immediately and they don't want you on the premises as you have access to sensitive info, do they have to pay you?

Ta

stock

Tell them you have copies of said sensitive info and will be straight down the road to the competitors if they don't pay you.

Dancing Bear

you are contractually obliged to work your notice if you gave it in - you can walk if they made you redundant

garden leave is totally at the employer's discretion - to mitigate damage, but you have to remain 'available' to attend work - you can go abroad on jollies for a month!

term1te

Yes, both sides of the contract are bound by it. They either make you work your notice, send you home and still pay you, or buy you out of it with a suitable payoff, which needs to be negotiated between you. Unless of course they can find some way in which you breached the terms of your contract, in which case they may be able to get you out sooner.

Mccaria

It will depend on the terms of your contract, but as a generalisation contracts should be equitable i.e. if you have to give them 1 months notice then they have to give you 1 months notice, if you have to give 2 months, then they have to give 2 months etc.
Therefore assuming you are willing to sit it out, they will have to pay you through the notice period - you will need to be available to work for them if required and will not be able to attend any work duties for your new employer.

simonaspinall

Cheers folks

Headhuunter

I work in headhunting (hence the name) in the investment banking world. Whenever we place someone and they have to resign from their existing employer they are generally asked to leave the premises immeditalely as banks don't want ex employees to have access to their clients and data etc. They still have to pay them the notice period though. If the notice period is written into the contract then it's binding, they can't just not pay you for it, unless you agree. Equally you can't start your new job til it's over, hence "gardening" leave before you can start work again.