Okay so super weird situation. I've worked at this company for over 6 months now. Ever since I started, I have received nothing but praises for the work I have done.
The position itself required a lot of work with the senior stakeholders. I mainly worked with the C-Suite people. I was quite senior and basically worked with the CEO, COO, CPO, CMO and Global HR.
Ever since I started, all I have received was positive feedback on a constant basis. I always asked for feedback, for constructive criticism and for transparency as well.
My role was high-level and I worked a lot. The company was disorganised. I was never provided with expectations, direction, needs, training, and I basically had to develop these processes on my own. I learned on my own, I did training on my own, and I constantly delivered. I developed new programmes, new ways of working and all the while receiving compliments.
There was only 1 person that did not like me and attempted to undermine me at every moment they could. Once they approached the COO stating that they wanted me to be more proactive. I wanted to get more info, ensure they were happy, and develop a way to work together better so I scheduled a meeting to discuss this. I scheduled it in September and the meeting finally happened on Nov 3rd b/c they kept rescheduling. At the meeting they had no feedback, said everything was fine, had no suggestions or advice on how we could work together better. So I went and developed that and also provided them with a bunch of work and support they needed.
Anyway other than that…everything else was constant compliments. Now…because I worked closely with C-level I was also privy to tons of info. The CEO trusted me. I knew there was massive changes ahead. They said there would be massive budget cuts implemented. Certain events wouldnt happen. No more travel. Lots of hunkering down. But basically they wanted to start the new year off extremely conservatively. In fact, the CEO asked me to help him come up with a way to tell the company about the budget cuts without scaring the employees so they don't start jumping ship, esp our engineers.
Which brings me to today. Every week I have a 1 on 1 with the COO. Last week we scheduled it for an hour because I had a list of things to discuss.
Suddenly this morning the meeting changes and it becomes a performance appraisal with HR there.
I get on and they tell me they are letting me go and will not extend my contract. I ask for a reason and they say “performance issues”. I ask for examples & get very general answers. I ask how it can be that for 6 months while working there I received nothing but positive feedback and then suddenly at the last minute they say I had performance issues. None of which were ever previously mentioned. They said the stakeholders werent happy with my work and how I was late on deliverables and how I pushed back a few meetings.
Here's the issue though: for 6 months they sang my praises, there was no feedback provided at any stage, any deliverables requested were provided to them within a 24-48 hour turn around however they never, ever sent me a request for anything that had a due date. When I have rescheduled meetings I would explain why. Often it was because other people couldn't make it
No feedback, no criticism, no goals, no coaching, no training, no questions, no complaints, nothing for 6 months.
Again I even built processes and programmes to have everyone on the same page. I also had a spreadsheet with everything i was working on that everyone had access to so they could see it: for both transparency reasons and so they could tell me if there was something that needed to be prioritised.
So yeah, it was extremely shocking to be told how wonderful I am, how great the work I am doing is and then suddenly at the last minute I am being “let go” for performance issues.
I believe this is due to budget cuts, I have a high salary and I just dont think they want to follow proper lay off procedure and pay me an actual salary. The company is based in the Nordics and I am based in the Uk.
So am I screwed? Is there anything I can truly do ?
I feel this is an unfair dismissal. Im always on time, I get the work done, I only took a 1 week vacation & was out sick twice. Once due to getting covid at their event which like 50% of the company got and then recently when I had an oral surgery which lead to an infection, which lead to sepsis and lots of pain. I explained the situation and that was one of the times I rescheduled a couple of meetings.
Anyway doesn't this sound sketchy ? 6 months of constant positive feedback, huge amounts of constant praise, no goals ever provided, no criticism, but also no intervention and no direction at all and them suddenly at the last minute they let me go and say “performance issues” with no real example.
Also, even though they let me go they want me to do a handover and want me to work until the 2nd of Dec. Ive never heard of someone working after they've been terminated. I already for paid and they're giving me a two week's worth of “severance pay” but not calling it that
Also I have 17 years of experience, 10 of it in this field and have never been let go for performance issues (only mass lay offs, company shit downs.
Is this an unfair dismissal? & doesn't it sound like a lay off without the proper procedure and proper severance? Or as if my position has been made redundant?