When An Employee Resigns Without Notice, Is It Legal?

Contents

You can’t always hold onto your employees forever – but it can be a hassle to hire and handover to a new person.

That’s why employees are often required to give ‘notice’ to resign.

By making employees give notice of their resignation, the idea is that the employer has enough time to prepare for the change.

What happens if an employee resigns without notice? It is even legal?

First we need to ask…

…What is notice?

When an employee resigns, they may be required to tell the employer in advance that they are going to resign – i.e. give ‘notice’ to their employer.

This can be either verbal or in writing.

The amount of notice an employee needs to give is typically set out in their Employment Agreement.

The employee resignation notice period starts the day after the employee gives notice that they want to end the employment and ends on the last day of employment.

What to do when an employee resigns

When your employee gives you notice of resignation, you generally have 2 options.

You can make them work for the rest of the notice period; or
You can allow the employee to leave early and pay them in lieu of notice.

You may have your reasons for doing either – and that’s fine!

The thing to remember at the end of the day is that you need to pay your employee everything you owe them. That’s all their accrued entitlements, leave and, if you let them leave early, their pay for the notice period.

Make sure you get what you’re entitled to as well. Ask the employee to return any property or confidential information that they may have in their possession.

What happens if an employee resigns without notice?

Now we’re onto the tricky situation: Resignation without notice.

You can’t exactly force an employee to show up to work each day.

So what’s stopping an employee from resigning without any notice and not showing up to work anymore?

Well, aside from the legal stuff, a large factor would be to avoid annoying too many people.

Many employees want to maintain a good relationship with their employers even after they leave. That way they can get a good reference and maintain their personal network that could help with their future career.

In addition, there is a monetary benefit to sticking out the notice period.

If your employee fails to give the required notice, you may be able to withhold the equivalent amount from the employee’s final pay.

What happens if an employee gives too much notice?

It’s possible to have a super organised employee who gives you more notice than required.

As the employer, you don’t have to accept this extra notice.

You only need to let an employee work, or pay them in lieu, for the minimum notice period.

When your employee gives you extra notice, you should tell them whether you accept the full notice period or whether you only want them to work the minimum notice period.

What to take away…

Employee resignations are hard enough as it is. At least when your employee gives notice, you have time to get everything in order and prepare for the transition.

Most of the time, your employee should give you sufficient notice.

If your employee doesn’t give you notice, you may not have to pay them for the notice period.

Being on top of your employees’ notice periods can make things easier to manage.

If you need help figuring out what rules apply to your employees surrounding notice, feel free to get in touch with us at Sprintlaw and we’d be happy to help.

Minna Boyle

Minna is the legal operations manager at Sprintlaw. After receiving a law degree from Macquarie University and working at a top tier law firm, Minna now manages the legal operations at Sprintlaw and puts a focus on making legal knowledge more accessible to the public.

Tomoyuki Hachigo

Tomo is the co-founder of Sprintlaw and a commercial lawyer with a broad range of legal experience. Before starting Sprintlaw, he was an M&A lawyer at a top-tier law firm advising businesses of all sizes from large corporates to startups.