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Nicola,

This situation needs to be carefully managed, within the industry I work in I come across bad references fairly often and we deal with them through the disciplinary procedure, I have a statement within my policy stating :-

References:-

We take up references for every new employee. Should we receive one, (whether within the employee’s probationary period or later) which contradicts information the employee has been provided, or which in our sole opinion is unsatisfactory, then the Company may terminate the employee’s employment immediately, observing the appropriate notice period.

If the above was applicable the employee should be invited to a disciplinary hearing as per the standard disciplinary process.

The employee can appeal against the decision to dismiss them; this should be detailed in the letter confirming their dismissal from the Company.

I would be very careful in advising the employee of this reference, as our reference reply states you need to seek our consent before you can pass it onto a third party and is given in the strictest confidence and without liability, so be careful with this.

Regards

Stephen

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Just a word of caution to employers - under the Data Protection Act employees have a right to request copies of any references provided about them using the normal subject access request route. 

Such a request would be made to the organisation that had received the reference and would have to be complied with (no matter what caveats may have been placed on the giving of the reference, e.g. concerning passing it on, liability, etc).  

If the reference makes comments which are libellous or are otherwise factually incorrect then the individual has the right to seek redress against the writer.

Dave

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This is a judgement call - employers are people and some do give poor references for the wrong reasons - I, worked for a manager for example, whose preference was to manage by opinion rather than facts who stated in a reference that I had 'consistently performed below targets' probably because I'd done a bad job of talking my game up, and I wore cheaper suits. (amazing how some people are fooled by a good suit and bragging!).   The team performance statistics put my work at second highest across indicators for my entire time at the company, and the manager had chosen not to check this before writing the reference.     Some are also given maliciously or as a result of understandable anger at the loss of a valuable employee.

So this is a judgement call based on your opinion of the previous employer, a likelihood that the reference is misleading, whether you feel that the candidate has matured and whether you think they are good for the job.

It can alsothe case that the candidate left the last job because they simply hated it.  If your organisation has a different atmosphere, the role is different, or even if it is closer to home, less stressful, higher paid, you might find that this is a good recruitment even if they were terrible in their last job.

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