Withdrawing the support you need to do your job can be a breach of contract.
“The employer's failure to provide the support the role reasonably needed was a repudiatory breachA breach of contract so serious that it entitles the other party to treat the contract as ended. In employment law, if your employer commits a repudiatory breach you must resign promptly or you risk b..., letting the manager resign and claim constructive dismissalWhen your employer's behaviour is so serious that you feel you have no choice but to resign, the law may treat that resignation as a dismissal. The most common basis is a fundamental breach of the imp....”
You are entitled to the reasonable support your job needs to be done. Strip that away and then hold you responsible for the results, and your employer may be in breach of your contract.
- Keep copies of every request you make for resource, support or clarification, and whatever reply you get back.
- Push back in writing whenever you are blamed for a shortfall that came from a lack of resource rather than your own work, so the mismatch is on record.
- Get advice before you resign. Whether a gap in support crosses into a breach of contract turns on the detail, and a solicitor can weigh your records against that test.
Should I resign? A quick check
A quick three-question check to work out whether your situation is about resigning, an unfair dismissal, or reduced compensation, and which guide to read next.
Open tool →The situation
A manager was never given the resources or backing she needed to do her job properly. When things went wrong, in large part because of that gap, she was still held to account for the results. She resigned and claimed constructive dismissal.
What the tribunal found
The Employment Appeal Tribunal found in her favour. In every employment contract sits an unspoken promise: your employer will give you the reasonable support you need to actually do the job you have been handed. An employer cannot hand you a role and then hold back the staffing, information, authority or resources that role requires. Do that, and it can amount to a breach of contractWhen one party to an employment contract fails to comply with one of its terms without a lawful reason. Your employer breaching a significant term of your contract can entitle you to resign and claim ... serious enough for you to resign and claim constructive dismissal.
This sits as a narrower duty than the broad obligation of mutual trust and confidenceAn implied term in every employment contract that employer and employee will not, without reasonable cause, behave in a way that destroys or seriously damages the working relationship. A serious breac..., but the two run alongside each other. In plain terms, an employer is not allowed to set someone up to fail and then pin the failure on them.
Whitbread plc t/a Thresher v Gullyes | [1994] UKEAT 478_92_1905 | Employment Appeal Tribunal | 19 May 1994