When an employer terminates an employee, the employer is obligated to provide reasonable notice or pay in lieu of notice. The same obligation to give notice applies to an employee when they tender their resignation. The intention is that the notice period will provide the employer with sufficient warning so that it can take measures to ensure that business will not be disrupted.
An employment agreement may specify the amount of notice that an employee is required to give when he or she leaves her employment. Where there is no employment agreement or where it is silent as to employee notice, it is necessary to determine what is “reasonable”.
The employee’s obligation to give notice is generally less than an employer’s obligation and may, in fact, be closer to the two week period that we are all familiar with. In a recent Ontario case, an employer attempted to assert that a notice period of twelve to eighteen months was appropriate for a senior partner in an engineering firm who had resigned to start his own firm after eight years with the company. The Judge disagreed, and determined that a notice period of five weeks was sufficient time to provide the employer with the opportunity to work through transition matters with the departing employee and to hire a replacement.