Notice Periods

They can't make you do anything. Just make your apologies and don't turn up to work. It depends if you need a reference - not that your previous employer is allowed to say anything prejudicial to your future employment prospects. And I think that a future employer might accept that you walked out of an unfair contract.

Over here it so we can find, employ and start a new senior manager (the only people it appplies to) before his predecessor leaves so they can handover properly.

not sure it's ever worked out like that though

So my perspective:

Different industries have different standards both for length and expectations to work/sit it out. In PR it's totally standard to work your full notice & have long notice periods; even continuing to work with clients. In recruitment, you're marched out immediately on gardening leave without even being allowed back into the office (at least, in my experience).


Notice periods are usually negotiable, especially long ones - as long as there's a mutually agreeable solution, but ultimately the decision lies with the employer on more or less everything.

If it's a front office sales/relationship type role you can expect gardening leave. This will likely improve your chances of negotiating a shorter notice, so they don't have to pay you for sitting on your arse for 6 months.

If you're not, then it's going to be a tougher negotiation.

I wouldn't recommend slowbike's view. Burning bridges is never a good idea, an that's what that would do. The more civil you are, the more civil they will likely be.

I would have thought 'about' to hand in notice and actually handing in notice are 2 different things.

Punishing someone 'about' to hand in their notice would be possibly constructive dismissal, no?

6 months 'making the tea' on your full salary over the summer? Sounds awful.

As with most things it comes down to what is reasonable and if presented in court this is the situation that my senior manages presented to me when some of their staff wanted to leave earlier than they were entitled to.

Firstly no contract of employment can stop you from earning a living, when taking that on board it is recognised that a company needs to protect its market position.

I have been to a number of industrial tribunals and the flavour that ran with all of them was the above.

By instigating a 6 month terms of notice and expecting them to do tasks that were below their normal duties is in the eyes of the courts unreasonable (IMHO) and by making them work longer notice periods could be deemed unreasonable by preventing that person earning a living, but there are two issues here: -

1. Is the company making the employee uncomfortable at their place of employment (even when working their notice period)and thus creating a Constructive Dismissal situation?

2. Is the company deliberately preventing that employee from being marketable to other companies because of unreasonable terms of employment, irrespective that the employee signed the contract in the first place!

It also all depends on the position and role of the employee, if a manual and lower level employee is asked to give 6 months notice then that would be regarded as unreasonable, however if a senior board director was asked to do so then there could be argued a case.

Generally the safest method for a senior employee is garden leave, but another issues arises if the employee is on performance/sales related pay as putting them on garden leave prevents that employee earning a salary to which they are accustomed to, thus the company could be in breach of contract, in which case it would be deemed reasonable to pay that employee an average of the previous months commission/bonus.

So there are many possibilities to consider, at the end of the day it comes down to what is reasonable and most tribunals tend to work on that precise.

HTH

FWIW I have met plenty of candidates with 12 months notice, and a few with 18 months.

Quite common to restrict working for a competitor, one of my contracts has 6 months for that case, but nothing if I move to a different field. On the 3 month notice I have done it both ways, got paid, didn't work and kept the car for 3 months, but also for one position gave voluntarily notice of 3 months and worked those 3 months. If you have nothing against your employer but have a better offer why burn bridges? I have seen bridge burners in big trouble after take overs and mergers, and saw one guy leave the same company at least twice that way.

I am not entirely clear on employment contracts, but in many other forms of contract signing and taking payment signals clear acceptance of the terms.