How to Handle Employee Resignations
When an employee resigns the employee will usually give full contractual notice of their resignation. However, an employee sometimes resigns in the heat of the moment. Regardless of the situation, you need to handle the situation properly.
What is Resignation?
Resignation is when an employee informs their employer that they’re quitting. The employment relationships can end in various ways, including:
- An employee gives you their notice of resignation by speaking with you or handing in a letter of resignation
- If your business ends the contract of employment
- When an employee reaches justifiable retirement age.
Once an employee has notified you of their intention to resign, they must complete a notice period. The length of this notice period can be found in the employee’s contract of employment.
During this period you can begin to search to find a replacement for the role.
Notice Periods in Ireland
Notice periods in Ireland vary by each employee’s employment contract. The employee’s length of service is also taken into account. However, there are two common types of notice to keep in mind:
Contractual notice: You can decide the amount of contractual notice an employee must give. For example, two months’ notice may be required for an employee who has worked with your business for two years.
Statutory notice: This is the length of notice an employee is legally required to give. This will depend on their length of service.
If an employee has worked with your business for at least 13 weeks, they must give you at least one week’s notice.
What to do when an employee resigns?
When an employee decides to resign, it is natural that you may try to convince them to stay. If instead, you accept the resignation, there are some key steps to follow:
Get the resignation in writing
Written confirmation of the resignation must include the employee’s name, the date, and a signature.
Respond to the resignation
Acknowledge your acceptance of the resignation. This can be a written or verbal response.
Prepare a handover pack
A handover pack can come in handy for when the departing employee’s replacement starts
Conduct an exit interview
An exit interview will give you the opportunity to understand the employee’s reasons for resignation. This is also a good chance to listen to feedback for further improvements.
Retrieve business property
Make sure to retrieve any business property from the departing employees. These items can include computers, devices, uniforms, etc.
Lastly, remember to end the professional relationship on a positive note. You never know but the departing employee may wish to return to the company in the future.
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Gender Pay Gap Reporting in Ireland
The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration, and Youth has finally published some details on how employers will have to calculate their gender pay gap statistics.
What will employers have to do?
Employers will have to report:
Mean and median pay gaps
Mean and median bonus gaps
The proportion of men and women that receive bonuses
The proportion of men and women that received benefits in kind
The proportion of men and women in each of four equally sized quartiles.
Employers must calculate these statistics for their employees using a snapshot date of their choice in June 2022 and using data from the preceding 12 months.
What is the gender pay gap reporting guidance?
If you are familiar with UK gender pay gap reporting, the Irish legislators have been heavily inspired by the UK regulations.
- Bonuses will include “payments in the form of money, vouchers, securities options, or interests in securities, or, which relate to profit sharing, productivity, performance, incentive or commission”
- Hours are defined very similarly. Employers must use the contracted hours (i.e., for salaried employees), a figure derived from a 12-week average for those with variable hours or some other figure that the employer selects. However, employers can also explicitly use the total number of actual hours worked (i.e., for waged employees where this is recorded).
- Employers must prorate bonuses. Any bonuses paid must be prorated so that the amount included is proportional to the pay period. In the UK, this means taking one-twelfth of an annual bonus payment
These regulations will only apply to employers with 250 or more employees in the first two years after their introduction. In the third year, the requirements will also apply to employers with 150 or more employees. Thereafter, the requirements will apply to employers with 50 or more employees. The regulations will not apply to employers with fewer than 50 employees.
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Hiring Employees in Ireland
There are a number of steps you need to take when hiring employees in Ireland. This blog will help you get what you need to start hiring.
Background Checks
Under the Criminal Justice Act 2016, an adult will not have to disclose his or her conviction in respect of a range of minor offenses after seven years.
Data obtained by employers must be processed and held in compliance with data protection legislation. If a third party is conducting the background checks, the employer remains a data controller under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, and the third party acts as a processor as it would be processing the personal data of candidates on behalf of the employer.
The employer must ensure that the third party conducts all processing in compliance with the GDPR.
Medical Examinations
Individual offers of employment can be made conditional upon satisfactory health checks, but a prospective employer may be liable under a discrimination claim if the offer is not confirmed based on the information disclosed by the health check.
Drug and Alcohol Testing
- Employers are required to ensure the safety, health, and welfare at work of all employees. This includes ensuring the prevention of improper conduct or behaviour that is likely to put employees at risk. An employer may require an applicant to submit to a drug or alcohol test to the extent that this is required to ensure that the applicant may safely carry out the proposed role. These tests must be necessary and proportionate.
Contract of Employment
Employers are required to provide employees with key terms and conditions of employment within five days of commencing employment, commonly referred to as ‘The 5 Core Terms’. These include:
- The full name of the employer and employee
- Address of the employer
- The expected duration of the contract (temporary or fixed-term)
- The rate or method of calculating pay
- The employers’ expectations of working hours.
Forming a contract can be very complicated. That’s where Bright Contracts steps in. Bright Contracts breaks it all down into a logical series of questions and inputs. All you have to do is provide the answers. The software provides handy tips and guidance where questions might be difficult to understand.
Probationary Period
Although there is no statutory maximum probationary period, an employer will typically provide a probationary period of six months subject to extension at the employer’s discretion. In practice, probationary periods should not be longer than 11 months to ensure that an employee does not accrue service to maintain a claim under the Unfair Dismissals Acts.
When hiring employees in Ireland it is important to conduct necessary background checks, medical checks, drug/alcohol tests, and issue a contract of employment within five days of commencing employment.
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The EU Work-Life Balance Directive Ireland
The Irish government has published details of the Work-Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill 2022. It will introduce a right to request flexible working for employees with children up to the age of 12 and those with caring responsibilities. It will also introduce a right for employees to take up to five days’ unpaid leave per year to provide medical care for family members or those in their households.
The proposed bill is necessary to implement the EU Work-life Balance Directive, which is due to be transposed by August 2022.
Key Changes
The right to request flexible working
- Employees who have a child up to the age of 12 and employees who are caring for a relative or someone they live with all have the right to request flexible working arrangements for caring purposes for a particular period.
- Employees will be required to make such requests in writing no longer than six weeks before they intend to commence the period of flexible working. The request must specify the nature of the changes requested, the date of commencement and the duration of the set period.
- If the request is granted, the employer and employee must sign an agreement outlining the changes to working arrangements, patterns or hours and stating the date of commencement and duration of the set period.
- At the end of the flexible working arrangement, the employee is entitled to return to the original working arrangements, hours, or patterns.
Leave for medical care purposes
- Any employee will be allowed to take up to five days unpaid leave per year, where for “serious medical reasons” the employee needs to provide personal care or support to a family member or the person who lives in the same household as the employee. The leave may not be taken in periods of less than one day.
- Employees must confirm to their employer in writing that they have taken or intend to take this leave, the date of commencement, duration and a statement of the facts entitling the employee to the leave.
- Employers will be able to request evidence from the employee of their relationship with the person being cared for, the nature of that care and medical certification of the serious medical issue in respect of the person requiring the care.
It is intended that the legislation will be passed and enacted by the August 2022 deadline.
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