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UK Executive 'Forced Out of Job' For Posting CV Online
First time accepted submitter sweetpea86 writes "An executive who uploaded his CV to LinkedIn was forced to quit his job because he ticked a box stating he was interested in 'career opportunities'. John Flexman is demanding hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation from his former employer, gas exploration firm BG Group, where he earned £68,000 pounds a year as a Graduate and Development Manager. He is thought to be the first person in the UK to bring a case for constructive dismissal. The case highlights a grey area around employees' use of social networks such as LinkedIn. According to Kate Hodgkiss, Partner at law firm DLA Piper, employers have every right to seek to protect confidential company information by restricting LinkedIn and other profiles, but cannot prevent employees from looking for a new job. The news echoes a report in December that a Californian Twitter user was being sued for $340,000 by his former employer for taking his online followers with him when he switched jobs. PhoneDog launched legal proceedings against Noah Kravitz, seeking damages of $2.50 a month per follower for eight months."
If employers can post openings for your position on job sites, you can certainly check a box indicating general interest in careers-at-large.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
I have a small network of friends and associates on LinkedIn, they know I am happy where I am at, but I always listen to new opportunities that's how I got where I am. Ususally I will pass on the info to someone else I know that's looking.
However if you never listen to opportunities, people never think of you as someone to talk to about them.
When the time comes that you need a job, your network has withered and you're stuck looking at official postings, half of which are already wired for a certain candidate but have to be announced for legal reasons.
1. Getting contacted by an executive at another company for a joint venture.
2. Getting a new degree.
3. Getting contacted by an investor.
This is as ridiculous as firing someone for racism because they put "enjoys participating Civil War reenactments" on their Facebook page.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/nov/09/uk-borders-constructive-dismissal-lawyers
Quite a prominent one as well.
To play devil's advocate, the employer could claim that the very fact that an important executive was looking to leave could give the impression to outsiders that something bad was going on in the company and that could result in a loss to their business. Perhaps his interest in leaving this company turned away some of the customers or investors or lowered other employees' morale.
Remember when Steve Jobs was doing nothing more than going on a medical leave, it adversely affected Apple's stock price. Of course the company is this case would have to PROVE that suffered or stood to suffer a loss.
Except the BG Group's stock price has actually continued an upward trend since before Mr. Flexman was "forced to quit", and has actually risen by $100 / share in the past 5 days.
Yahoo Finance - BG Group
Seems as though they would have a hard time proving that Mr. Flexman leaving has negatively impacted them. Sure there are additional considerations, including the obvious Streisand effect that could have led to this change, but it is obvious that they did not see a mass exodus or a decrease on brand confidence with their investors.
Thirty four characters live here.
I, like many people, treat the "you could get fired if your boss thinks you're looking for another job" as kind of axiomatic, but what's the employer motivation for this?
I'll exclude poor performance, where the employee basically comes in and does nothing but use the company PC to create resumes and cover letters, faxes them with the company fax machine and then goes home, his current job's work undone, mainly because that's being fired for poor performance, the cause of the poor performance is immaterial.
"Because I have to hire a new employee" -- OK, you just *fired* your current employee, you're going to hire someone else anyway, and with zero cooperation from the existing employee who is now job hunting AND doing it while enjoying unemployment benefits because "looking for a job" isn't termination for cause.
"I don't want them to take my secrets/customers" -- the good ones already have your secrets, customer lists, etc. Firing them now gives them moral justification to utilize these in their new job.
I'm lost on where it benefits the employer other than vague claims of weak performance (working well enough not to be reprimanded but not at peak output) or nearly unmeasurable claims of impacting morale.
About the only rationale that seems to make any sense is pure spite -- the employer is pissed that a good employee (high output at sub-market wages) has to be replaced with one with unknown or only average output at market prices, and firing the employee is a good way to sow chaos in their life and possibly make their new job search more complicated.
In a company like BG on £68k/annum he's not an important executive. Having worked for them for several years (but not since 2002) I know from the pay/job title that he's upper middle management. Also when it comes to customers then BG isn't a typical corporation. They have a monopoly on the UK's gas/electric infrastructure although they do also work with other firms in projects for things like natural gas exploration. I'd be amazed if this isn't about managment cliques, he wasn't popular with one, they went digging for dirt, they found his profile, and they've tried to use that to shaft him. With any luck it's about to backfire quite spectacularly.
FTFA: "BG Group ... accused him of including confidential information in his CV, such as details about how he had reduced the firm's rate of staff attrition."
His dedication to this goal only went so far, apparently.
I don't know that much about UK Employment Law, but I'm on the receiving end of US Employment Law.
This is an area where there is substantial difference. The UK's rules are very much not "at will"; a dismissal that doesn't follow exactly the stated procedures for the company (which are constrained by law and have to be set out in writing ahead of time) will open up the way to an unfair dismissal claim (which is typically processed by tribunal in the UK, rather than normal courts). Would the claim be successful in this case? I've no idea at all, but UK companies don't dismiss without being very careful about it (unless the company's in Administration, the approximate equivalent of Chapter 11).
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"