Our current contracts of employment state “following 3 months probation period, this appointment is subject to 1 months written notice of termination by either side. This will increase by one week at the end of the 5th and each subsequent year of continuous employment until a 12 week notice period has been reached.”

We do adhere to the statutory notice period when termination is by the employer (for redundancy purposes for instance) But where the termination is by the employee, we tend to only accept the contractual notice (even though by the letter of the contract we could insist on the longer period. We do this because it’s almost impossible to enforce – even if we asked for the longer period of notice and the employee left early, our only recourse in all fairness is to only pay them for the period they have worked.

I’d be interested to know what other employers do – do you insist on statutory notice applying to both sides – and does it work? Or do you only accept the contractual obligation?

Jayne Burke
Jayne Burke