To undertake any other duties commensurate with the role

Dinging

Hi All,

I am in dispute with my employer over my role and responsibilities and have started a 2nd grievance procedure. My initial grievance procedure was rejected for numerous reasons but one of them was that my job specification states that I am required "To undertake any other duties commensurate with the role". Does anyone know the scope of such a term and is it binding? In my situation they have made the person that I would have worked with redundant (sales) and now I have been told this is now my responsibility but I have no direct sales experience. I think this outside the scope my role.

Thanks,
Dinging.

_Brian

I think the person who was made redundant from sales has a case as it seems the role may still exist if you are doing it.

As for your position with that open ended clause you are open to being asked to work on other tasks related to your job, sales likely falls within that.

Yes you can refuse, but it’s risky as your refusing do do something that seems covered in your contract.

OMM 0000

I see two obvious issues here.

1. By going down the formal grievance route, you are damaging your long term relationship with this employer. I would have thought this sort of thing would be better handled over a coffee.

2. The company are being very odd by making you responsible for sales, considering you have no sales experience. And really, sales is one of those roles which only suits certain personalities.

If I were you, I would be straight with them that I'm **** at sales, and that I think they're making a mistake. I would then proceed to be **** at sales. They will then move the role to someone else.

Dinging

Thanks for the responses. Relationship is non existent so nothing to loose here and there is no way back. The introduction of the sales element was part of a performance improvement process that has been ongoing a number of months now. My grievance is that they are using this process to change my role knowing well that I will not be able to meet the targets. It's been over 2 years since the last sales person was made redundant so do think there is any come back from the last person that held the role.

Anyway I'm lodging grievance first thing tomorrow. My point is that the "other duties" clause does not cover a sales role as this is a specific role within the company, has its own job description and responsibilities that are not common with my role.

Time to dust down the CV also.

gallifreya

Without knowing the specifics of your job or your initial grievance I’d say the validity of your argument depends on your existing role, along with that roles stated responsibilities and whether the duties requested are reasonable. For contracts I’ve issued in the past, I used the catch all term ‘any other duties requested by the company consistent with your role as X’ so as not to leave an opening for employers to decide that ‘any other duties’ might include cleaning the toilets for example (unless the initial role involved cleaning). It seems to me, that ‘commensurate’ is the key term here.

Sales skills can be a subset requirement of many jobs. However, if a Systems Analyst was suddenly given a sales aspect to their role with sales targets, this would generally not be viewed as commensurate with their role/skills base and it would be unreasonable of the employer to demand it - whereas, a Marketing Assistant could have a natural sales crossover. Be objective - how reasonable is your employer being?

Then consider how far you want to go with this. You’ve indicated that you’re on a PIP already so be conscious that pushing this grievance may (rightly or wrongly) be damaging. Have they taken any duties away from you by any chance? It’s not clear to me how introducing an entirely new aspect to the role could improve performance but again I don’t know the specifics.