Ask Us: Resignation without notice
An employee has resigned and walked out without working their notice. This is a huge inconvenience for the business – what can I do?
There’s a few issues here. If the employee has walked out in the heat of the moment, you will want to be sure that there’s no issues you as an employer should be addressing (to minimise the risk of a potential constructive dismissal claim), so get in touch with them and ask them to reconsider their decision and to come in and talk to you so you can establish the facts.
In any event you want to receive a written letter of resignation from them, so it is very clear that they resigned (and therefore they were not dismissed and due any pay in lieu of notice). So if you have not had written notification, request it. If your request is ignored, you could write out to the employee and state that you deem they have indeed resigned due to their lack of response. You should however be aware that depending on the circumstances, this could be construed as a dismissal.
If the employee has simply stopped turning up for work, refer to our advice for managing AWOL employees.
Once a written resignation has been received, write a reply to the employee to confirm receipt of this and the date employment ended/ends. Set out what will happen regarding final monies including days worked in the pay period and any accrued holidays which need to be paid up along with when they can expect to receive their P45. If the employee has stated they are leaving before the end of their notice period you can agree to waive their notice period, and this should also be confirmed to them in writing.
As for what can you do because of the inconvenience; if the employee’s contract of employment has a specific reasonable clause for recourse for giving insufficient notice, then you could deduct the value stated in the contract to help you cover your costs – for example the additional costs of hiring a temp. If such a clause is not in your contracts, you could consider including it for any new employee – but it does say something about the organisation culture and could make a new employee think twice about accepting a role with you.
As the employee is contractually bound to give you notice, they are in breach of contract, so if you are able to demonstrate your losses due to the breach, you could take legal action to recover those costs. In practice, this tends to be more costly than the value of the losses so is rarely pursued.
If you subsequently receive a reference request from a new employer, you may advise that the employee left without notice. Whatever you respond, it should be truthful and the degree of information divulged consistent with how you manage requests for other former employees.
Finally, I would advise that if this is not a one-off occurrence, that there may be some underlying issues with employee satisfaction, line manager leadership and communication. If a manager is able to better engage with their staff, they can nip issues in the bud before they escalate to so much frustration that an employee leaves without notice. Consider some manager training to enable your managers to be knowledgeable and confident in leading their teams. This will help improve productivity all-round, prevent staff leaving and manage your risk of disgruntled employee complaints and claims.
