Resignation Ignored: Can a Company Ask an Employee to Leave Without Notice Pay After 4 Months?

Hi, an employee sent his resignation letter 4 months ago to his reporting officer, who never responded to his email, and no one else replied to the employee. The notice period is 3 months. Since the employee needed the relieving letter and his dues to be properly settled, he stayed on because he had to follow the proper resignation procedure. Now, after 4 months, can the company ask the resigned employee to leave immediately without giving him any notice pay?

Dear Melissa, A few things we need to understand here before solutions or options can be discussed:

1. After sending the resignation email, did the employee ever verbally discuss the resignation with his reporting officer?

2. If he did, what was the reporting officer's reaction/response?

3. If he did not, why not?

In the absence of clarity on the above questions, on purely technical grounds:

The employee should have stopped work at the end of the notice period and asked for his dues and relieving letter. This is because the reporting officer did not do anything to make the employee reconsider his decision to quit. I don't understand why he continued past his last day. Once he served his notice, it would be squarely the duty of the employer to oblige and clear all his dues and give him his relieving letter.

Since the employee has already resigned and is working past his last day of notice from a purely technical standpoint, the organization can ask him to stop coming from the next day on, considering that the notice was already served by the employee. As long as the organization pays him for the period worked past the last day of the notice.

Still, the exact option may vary from those I have given based on the answers to the questions I have asked in the beginning.

Regards, Savio

Dsouza is right to a large extent. The situation became dicey for both the employee and the employer after the expiry of the notice period. The employee continued after the expiry of the notice period, and the employer did not accept the resignation within the notice period. What the employee should have done, if he wanted to continue with the company, is that he should have sent a communication withdrawing the resignation. Since he did not do it, his intention to quit still stands. Therefore, if the employer now wants him to leave, it will be difficult to resist it.

However, there is another perception of the issue. When the employer did not accept the resignation within the notice period and even after the expiry thereof, it shows that he does want to continue the contract of service. On the employee's side, though the employee did not withdraw the resignation before the expiry of the notice period, his conduct by continuing beyond the notice period displays a fresh intention to continue the contract of service. Thus, the conduct of the employee and the employer post-notice period nullify the resignation, and therefore, the employer now cannot ask him to leave.

Regards,
B. Saikumar
HR & Labour Law advisor
Mumbai