A reader writes:
I’m a senior individual contributor. I’m not management, I’ve never been management, but I’ve been in my field for 25+ years. Recently, the large company I work for gave officer titles to pretty much everyone in senior-level non-management roles. Let’s say I’m now a “corral director” as well as a senior llama reporting specialist.
Today, we all got an email that lists the new officer titles and a required notice period for each. Stall directors, the lowest title, are expected to give 30 days’ notice. Corral directors like me, 60 days, Ranch directors like my manager, 90 days, and so on. This notice ends with vague threats of legal action if these notice periods are not followed.
I’m just a reporting specialist with a lot of experience in the industry. No other company is going to wait 60 days to onboard me if they offer me a job. Is this at all enforceable? I get that if I decide to leave and give the usual two weeks’ notice, I probably won’t be eligible for rehire by this company, given this rule, but can they actually impose legal penalties on me for not giving them quadruple the standard notice? I’m in the U.S.
Ha, no, they cannot. But they’d clearly like you to believe they can.
The only way a company can enforce a notice period is with an employment contract. That’s not what you have, because this info was delivered in an email announcement rather than via a contract that you were asked to sign. They aren’t interested in giving you an actual contract, because that would also bind them to terms like giving you X amount of notice if they ever decided to let you, or paying you severance in lieu of that notice, and they don’t want to commit to that. They want to keep your employment at-will (meaning they can fire you or lay you off without notice) while making you think that you are bound to give you the exact notice they’re refusing to offer on their end.
They can implement other consequences for not giving them the amount of notice they’re requesting, like saying that you’d be ineligible for rehire. And if you’re in a state that doesn’t require unused vacation time to be paid out when you leave, they can make that payout dependent on providing a certain amount of notice. But they can’t bring legal action against you, because you haven’t entered into a contract agreeing to their terms. (And if they try to say that by accepting continued employment in your job, you’re agreeing to their terms, the law disagrees with them.)
At whatever point you resign, give a standard two-week notice (or whatever amount you decide to give). Don’t say, “I know you asked for 60 days.” Just give a normal amount of notice as if of course that’s a reasonable thing to do, because it is. If they say you were supposed to give 60 days, just reply, “The job I’m moving to was firm on the start date and this was the most I could negotiate.” Done, end of story.
And perhaps consider discreetly sharing this post, or this advice, with your colleagues.
