How to Negotiate a Better Settlement Agreement: Tips and Strategies (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Right, settlement agreements and negotiating yourself a better deal. If you're watching this you've probably either got a settlement agreement document or you want one and if you've got one then you're wondering maybe you should get a better deal or if you don't have one obviously you've got a bit more of a barrier to get over which is getting one in the first place. You're probably leaving your job with a slightly unusual scenario going on, you've probably been badly treated in some way, shape or form and that's what these things are for, right? What are you going to do about it? Well, you need to get a solicitor to sign your settlement agreement in order to make it legally binding, everyone knows that. There is a fee in the document itself, normally a few hundred pounds, three, four, five hundred pounds plus VAT which your solicitor will charge your employer directly for their fee for reviewing and signing it. Don't be fooled into thinking that that's going to be enough to cover off that solicitor actually negotiating on your behalf. You might get a solicitor saying to you, yeah, for that fee we'll actually contact them, we'll pick up the phone or we'll drop them an email and ask for a better deal but you won't really get a full negotiation out of that because it's not really worth their time. So what you want to do is really get yourself instructed a solicitor on a no win no fee or on a percentage basis so that any amount that they get you over and above what you've already got then they're going to charge you a percentage of that. That will incentivise your solicitor nicely or you can do it yourself, it's a bit more difficult obviously if you've not done it before but the principles are still the same. So you need to get yourself in a situation where you're talking directly with HR, with their lawyers, you need to set out your strong points, preferably in writing and without prejudice letter or email. You can read a bit more about without prejudice letters and emails on the site here and read a bit more about evidence because you want to present your case in the strongest possible way so evidence is going to help you there. And then there's a couple of tips as well to look out for is that firstly it's a classic tactic for employers to give you an offer and put a deadline on it and say right, if you don't accept this offer within, often it's a very short period of time, like a couple of days or it could be a week, then we will withdraw that offer and you won't get any kind of deal at all. Don't be put off by that. Normally that is just a bluff and when I say normally I mean 99% of the time. They've done the maths normally, they've worked out in a scientific way what the value is of part in company with you and they're happy to pay that amount. So in order to get rid of you they've done that math so why would they then reduce that down to zero, especially if you're working for a big company, that almost always never happens. The only time that you might ever see that is if you're working for a one man band and the boss is a bit erratic or a bit unpredictable but they've done the maths and they're just putting the pressure on you, telling you about that deadline in order to make you accept the deal. So I would take control of that situation, let the deadline run out or go back with a counter offer just before the deadline but certainly aim a bit higher than you actually want to settle for and then don't forget about the things to add in there like tax efficiency, a reference, possibly a confidentiality clause and maybe think about what you can offer them like a handover or finishing off some projects or perhaps even a gagging clause depending on whether it's a whistleblowing case for example. So definitely read a bit more about negotiating settlement agreements on the site here. That's all that we do, we don't actually do anything else so the whole site is dedicated to that subject so have a read and see what you think. Cheers, bye.