Resignation From employees when on work from home due to Coronavirus

Hi All,
We are an small IT company with 25 Employees currently .
Due to corona virus we have given everyone work from home to all employees. but one of our employee had just given resignation 2 days ago and 1 employee gave resignation after we started work from home. both are senior resources and have dependency of work . What can we do to extend their notice period?Is it allowed?
as we have two months notice period but next 15 days will work from home and handover and training junior candidates and finding replacement procedure may take time.

Sonali,
Since the notice period provided in the appointment letter/terms and conditions of service of these employees is two months, you can accept their resignation w.e.f. the date after two months from the date of submitting the resignation and can insist that once the situation improves within this period of two months, they will have to come to office and handover proper charge and train their juniors on their task.
- Shobhit Kumar Mittal
Industrial & Labour Law Advisor
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Hi Shobit ,
Thankyou for the response.
I am concerned how they will handover the work in 1 month or 40 days , being a senior resource lot of dependency is on them , As all three of them have resigned within one week .

Exit interview is done? what was the reason for their resignation.
Talk to your employees and make them understand about the current situation and ask if they can stay little longer to help company.
Also see if your policy has clause of extending notice period.

Dear Sonalee,
Why you are linking the resignations of the senior employees with the "Work From Home" (WFH) requirement? This requirement came up because of the requirement to stop of the spread of the virus. But then whether problem of Coronovirus would have erupted or not, the seniors would have given resignation anyway. You have written as if the seniors are leaving because of WFH requirement but it is doubtable.
Senior became that important to your company or rather your company depended on them because it appears that you did not develop proper mechanism to reduce your dependence on them. This is where importance of knowledge management comes in picture. If the Tacit Knowledge is timely extracted from the heads of the few persons and organised properly in the computers of IT systems this dependence does not arise.
After their resignation suddenly you realised that the exit of seniors will create a vacuum in your company. Nevertheless, this is akin to digging for the water after being thirsty.
If you retain the employee it will help your company in maintaining your continuity but then the dependence of your company on them will remain forever. Therefore, take this disruption as a lesson and start building the knowledge assets. Higher the level and quality of the knowledge assets, lesser the dependence on the people, whether they are seniors or otherwise.
For "Your Friend": - The seniors have given resignations recently therefore, it would be too early to conduct the exit interview. Secondly, while company may ask for the "extension" of the notice period, however it can only be a request and exiting employees cannot be forced to do that. Secondly, each company develop competence to arrange the replacement of the exiting employee within the notice period. Asking for the extension of the notice period will only expose the weakness of the company. It will defeat the purpose of the inclusion of the clause of notice period in the Appointment Letter.
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar

Dinesh,
What about training and handover ? Is it not the mandatory one before exit interview .. SME may face challenges in setting up processes. therefore the dependency challenge is there..
Knowledge transfer does not happen from senior Employees as they always have Ego and seniority issues what so ever process may be set by company .. its just that in big companies its unseen due to huge lineups of senior position..
Anyways thanks for the reply and information '

Sonalee, If I could suggest - 15 days our of 60 is manageable. Since both are senior employees, exit discussion is merely a conversation. But if you are lucky you may retain them.
1) Understand reason for resignation, talk to your employer and understand if they are willing to retain them.
2) Start looking for a replacement by using internal talent. The immediate next person in organization hierarchy.
3) Meantime request these resigned folks to share the KT plan before curfew is removed.
4) If you don't find any one internally, start looking in open market. I am pretty sure with current situation you can find some one easily. This time you should prefer immediately available resources.
I would highly recommend step 2 since it would increase employee morale, reduces business risk and saves time