Questions regarding contract

[SteveDyson]

I recently got a job offer for a Senior Developer role and was asked to review the draft contract.

Is the following clause (from the draft contract) normal and do i need to worry about anything? Is this normal for employer to say that duties can be changed in the future?

"The range of duties of the Employee shall include, but will not be limited to, those duties specified in the Employee’s job description as stated in the Appendix 01 and as may be conveyed to the Employee in due course. The designation, roles and responsibilities shall be subject to change in the passage of time as directed by the business environment at the discretion of the immediate superior"


I was told it would be a permanent role and just want to double check if word 'unspecified period' in the following clause means permanent?

"The appointment in this position as xxxx shall commence on xxxx and the employee shall be employed on a full time basis for an unspecified period of time."

[TooLateForAName]

very normal.

[98elise]

Pretty standard in a contract.

Its a really st clause though. My old company had effectively removed my normal role while I was on another project. On my return they simply slotted me into a role which was different in every way including it no longer being a management role.

It wasn't as if they were trying to get rid of me, they were making people redundant at the time, and I would have been happy to take it. They simply felt I could do the job, so just moved me into it!

I took it up with HR, and they simply pointed the the clause.

I recently had lunch with someone who still works for them, and thay have just done the same to him. He was moved from project management to a support role (again not as manager).

[SteveDyson]

It won't be good if someone moves from senior developer to support role. I think sometimes companies follow their standard contract format for every job and in some ways it is actually for specific roles in the company.

I might be wrong.

[WhereamI]

Clauses like that exist because sometimes running the business has to come first. Take, for example, a situation where illness rips through your support team so that one day they are all off ill. You have to cover support somehow so you move developers into the support role temporarily until the crisis is over. You can't afford to have people say - I'm not doing that, it's not in my contract, hence you end up with clauses like that.

[liner33]

Can be a useful method to get rid of someone though, ie keep giving one person all the crap jobs no-one else wants to do or transfer a problem employee into another department due to restructure and just because its in the contract doesn't mean you would not have a case of constructive dismissal.