The next step

Early release from notice letter

[Letter]

When does a written resignation take effect?

Written and verbal

When an employee decides to resign, they can either do it verbally or in writing. That said, where a resignation is given verbally, you should ask the employee to confirm it to you in writing.

Not only will this help avoid misunderstandings over the date of the employee’s resignation, they won’t be able to allege that you sacked them.

Letters and emails

A written resignation can be tendered via a hardcopy letter, an email or a text message, but email is generally the most favoured form of written communication.

Despite the fact that the delivery of emails is (hopefully) instant, they aren’t always read immediately by the recipient.

For example, the manager could be away on holiday, absent from work due to sickness absence or tied up with other work-related matters.

Manager absent

Let’s suppose that an employee has emailed their line manager first thing on a Monday morning with their resignation, giving one month’s notice, but that manager is away on a week’s holiday and they aren’t picking up any emails whilst away.

The employee, who knows that their line manager is away on holiday, has assumed that the clock on their one-month notice period has started ticking immediately.

Notice dispute

When the line manager returns a week later, they confirm receipt of the resignation and the employee’s final day - which is a week later than the employee had presumed. The employee is annoyed and challenges that date.

At what point did the employee’s resignation take effect - was it when they sent the email or when it was read by their line manager?

When it’s read

Where a resignation is tendered in writing, it takes effect at the point it’s read. Thus, if the line manager genuinely didn’t see the employee’s email for a week, the notice period clock won’t have started ticking until they read it.

Conversely, if the line manager picked up their emails whilst they were on holiday (which might be evidenced by a read receipt), or emails were being checked by another manager in their absence, the resignation will have been communicated and is effective from the point it was read. Tip. If the employee won’t accept this, it’s probably best to work to their timescales and agree an early release from notice - after all, you can’t force them to work the additional week if they don’t want to and they may not turn up anyway. Also, this could work to your advantage, e.g. in terms of salary payments and outstanding holiday pay. Always confirm the terms of an early release from notice in writing (see The next step ).

For an early release from notice letter, visit https://www.tips-and-advice.co.uk , Download Zone, year 24, issue 01.