Hoping to get laid off

[bascom]

My company has had several rounds of layoffs and yet I am still around. All the most pleasant, helpful people were let go while the loudest jerks who shirk all the burdensome tasks remain. My job satisfaction has degraded significantly and I'm being assigned responsibilities that are very unappealing. The nature of my job has really changed since I was hired and I think it's only fair that I should be let go with the standard severance package rather than have to quit on my own accord. Am I within my rights to refuse the change in responsibilities and demand proper severance?

[Squid1]

I had roughly the same problem at LB in London - many nice, effective people were let go reducing the number left to a handful and requirements creep reared its ugly head. More to do with dissatisfaction with the job (and prospects) then the people I quit the week before bankruptcy. I would take a decent look at your contract and see if your current role is what you signed up for if not I'd suggest you have an informal chat with your manager...Refuse and demand are strong words I would adopt a more flexible attitude - Please don't take offense it is obviously difficult to convey tone in a short post.

With luck your manager is understanding or accepting although if you are a good worker I suspect your manager knows this which is why you haven't been let go yet. If they try and incentivise your package to keep you are you still prepared to walk away?

However given conditions right now I wouldn't quit unless this can be resolved amicably (you get let go with a good package) and you can find another job or can live of savings for a long while. This is a sad reality of the situation where people out of work who have saved are actually happier than those in potentially unstable or stressful jobs

[Football16]

My company has had several rounds of layoffs and yet I am still around. All the most pleasant, helpful people were let go while the loudest jerks who shirk all the burdensome tasks remain. My job satisfaction has degraded significantly and I'm being assigned responsibilities that are very unappealing. The nature of my job has really changed since I was hired and I think it's only fair that I should be let go with the standard severance package rather than have to quit on my own accord. Am I within my rights to refuse the change in responsibilities and demand proper severance?

Your story is classic stuff that I talk about in our public presentations. In fact, it is precisely what you describe that leads to good performers bailing on companies.

We also know that companies that layoff will experience higher turnover than others when the economy swings up again.

First off, I am not a lawyer and I am not fully up to speed on case law in Hong Kong.

What you are speaking about in tort is constructive dismissal. I found a website in HK that speaks to this issue a bit. It is late so just posting this for your information.

http://www.deaconslaw.com/eng/knowle...wledge_211.htm

A Career Times story:

The final straw in cases of constructive dismissal - Career Times, a Leading Jobs Provider in Hong Kong


You would be ill advised to do anything proactive on this from a legal point of view without consulting competent legal counsel which in my experience is sometimes an oxymoron if you make a poor choice.

What I know about Canadian case law is that it is extremely hard there for an employee to win unless they drop compensation. Changes in job duties could see the CEO being assigned washroom duties there as long as they don't cut the pay.

The problem with alleging constructive dismissal by an employee is twofold:

1. the only place that a determination can be made is in a court room (as far as I can see that is the same for HK as say Canada).

2. the cost to win a case is significant and the risks are huge. Companies are often more willing to pay their legal teams than the plaintiff.

[bascom]

Unfortunately my manager is the one who's been informally changing my responsibilities to suit his agenda. I've expressed my dissatisfaction - i was attracted to the role for particular reasons and those are now all gone.

[d1deez]

Yea I feel you. I work in IT and was considering to go back to school for an MBA until the financial crisis hit; waiting for tuition prices to come down. Anyways I'm one of those people way down on the food chain and I feel middle managers and even senior managers do not necessarily look out in the best interest of their employees, although they always say they do. At my company, their bonuses are most likely tied to cost cutting and that squeezes employees to exhaustion. When you complain, they use words like "delegate to others" and then pile more work on you. Just wanted to know, besides quitting, what strategy would give me the fighting chance? sorry for the rant.

[Football16]

Yea I feel you. I work in IT and was considering to go back to school for an MBA until the financial crisis hit; waiting for tuition prices to come down. Anyways I'm one of those people way down on the food chain and I feel middle managers and even senior managers do not necessarily look out in the best interest of their employees, although they always say they do. At my company, their bonuses are most likely tied to cost cutting and that squeezes employees to exhaustion. When you complain, they use words like "delegate to others" and then pile more work on you. Just wanted to know, besides quitting, what strategy would give me the fighting chance? sorry for the rant.

Both of you sound caught in the classic situations that too often characterize workplaces when times get tough.

Other than finding a new job which can be tough, the approach you can take will vary with the quality of the leadership you are facing in your organizations.

So much depends on the openness of the management team to hear the truth or as James O'Toole calls it the organization's freedom to "Speak the truth to Power".

What has worked for me both as senior manager and then executive and senior vice president in a large insurance company in Canada was establishing a regular work and priority review session with my bosses where the work was identified as to scope, priority and progress. It has to be in writing of course and delivered professionally. If there was risk of getting our people exhausted I'd say so. If you are not high enough up the food chain and in one of those organizations who don't assess managers in part on their ability to avoid these situations then all you can do is sit down with the boss and inform him/her of what is possible in the time available.

If they say, delegate - I have heard that one too before - then you can only suggest that the entire team needs to get their priorities clear and everyone running around the shop floor looking for someone to dump their work is no way to get work accomplished.

We are just finishing up our employee engagement survey which we will launch for companies and we will add these comments to our dummy report to show clients. Also I will be speaking along with David Ho of the Hong Kong Economic Times on April 7th and will use these statements. More later as I am in a rush to a meeting.