This story is about a Malaysian woman who did everything by the book, but her company’s response was to let her go and hand her a document she was told to sign before she left the building.
I want to be clear upfront here. I am not a lawyer, and everything I am sharing is based on my own experience. But when I was going through this, I desperately wanted to read something from someone who had actually been there. So here it is.
I was 25 when I filed a harassment complaint against a senior colleague at the company I had been working at for two years. Three weeks later, I was called into HR, told my position was being made redundant, and handed a document and was told I had twenty minutes to sign.
The document was a Non-Disclosure Agreement.
The colleague was significantly more senior than me and the behaviour had been going on for months. He would make comments about my appearance, message me outside of working hours about things that had nothing to do with work, and one incident that made me feel unsafe enough to finally put something in writing.
Before I filed the complaint, I documented everything. Screenshots, timestamps, a written account of each incident with dates.
My manager had been aware of some of it and had done nothing, which I documented too.
HR told me the complaint would be investigated, and I should continue working as normal. For three weeks, nothing changed that I could see. Then on a Tuesday morning I was called into a room with HR and someone from the legal team I had never met before.
They told me my role was being made redundant due to restructuring, that this had nothing to do with my complaint, that the investigation had concluded, and that the matter was closed. When I asked what the outcome was, they said they were unable to share that information.
Then they slid the NDA across the table.
In exchange for three months’ severance, I was agreeing not to discuss, disclose, or make any claims related to my employment, my complaint, or the circumstances of my departure. There was also a clause stating I had no outstanding complaints or grievances against the company. That was the part that made my stomach drop, because I very much did have an outstanding complaint, the one they had just told me was closed without telling me how.
I asked if I could take it away to have it reviewed. They said the offer was only valid if signed today. I thought about my rent and about having no job and no savings so, I signed it.
When I got home, I called my father, who told me to write down everything while it was fresh. Then I started researching, and what I found changed how I understood what I had just signed.
NDAs in Malaysia, while legally binding, have limits. They cannot prevent you from reporting criminal conduct to the police, cannot stop you from filing a complaint with the Department of Labour or the Industrial Court, and cannot override your statutory rights under the Employment Act.
What they can do is make everything more complicated, more expensive, and more exhausting – which is, I suspect, the point.
I also found out that redundancy used to remove an employee who has just filed a harassment complaint is the kind of thing the Industrial Court has dealt with before, and that the timing of mine – three weeks after the complaint, with no prior warning my role was at risk – was exactly the kind of pattern courts look at.
One thing worth knowing if you are in a similar situation, you have 60 days from the date of your dismissal to file a representation with the Industrial Court for unfair dismissal. After that window closes, the court loses jurisdiction over your case entirely. I contacted the Department of Labour, was told the process would take time and the outcome was not guaranteed and was told that signing the NDA complicated things further.
I decided to file anyway.
The process is still ongoing so I cannot share the outcome. What I can share is what I know now that I wish I had known then. Document everything from the very first incident, before you file any formal complaint, because once you file, the dynamic shifts and evidence becomes harder to gather.
When they hand you something to sign in an exit meeting, you are allowed to ask for time. A company’s HR department manages risk for the employer, even when the people in it are perfectly pleasant.
The Industrial Court is accessible without a lawyer, and legal aid options in Malaysia are worth exploring before assuming you cannot afford help. And NDAs are designed to feel more absolute than they are so read carefully, because there are often limits the document does not advertise.
I found a new job six months later at a smaller company where I know the founders and feel, for the first time in my career, genuinely safe. My former colleague, as far as I know, is still there at my old workplace. I think about whoever came after me in that office, and whether the complaint I filed changed anything at all or was simply managed and forgotten the moment I signed on the dotted line.
I may never know. What I do know is that staying silent allows the system to keep doing this to the next person.
Speaking up was the only thing I could control.
If you believe you have been unfairly dismissed or pressured to sign documents following a workplace complaint, you can contact the Department of Labour Malaysia or seek advice from the Bar Council Malaysia’s Legal Aid Centre.
Submit your story to ym.efillaerni@olleh and you may be featured on In Real Life Malaysia.
Read also: ‘I gave up my family to pursue my dreams’ Shares 34 YO M’sian woman – In Real Life
https://inreallife.my/i-gave-up-my-family-to-pursue-my-dreams-shares-34-yo-msian-woman/
‘I gave up my family to pursue my dreams’ Shares 34 YO M’sian woman
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