Is Giving Two-Weeks Notice A Good Idea?

It seems to be a standard practice for employees to provide “two-weeks notice” before quitting. That’s not necessarily a good idea. Let’s review the reasons why.

Consider this in the overall employment picture. Iowa’s an at-will employment state. That means that either the employer or the employee can terminate the employment relationship without warning or notice for any reason or for no reason at all. Employers rarely provide any notice of an employee’s firing. They just fire the employee and tell them to immediately leave or not come back. Employers certainly don’t normally tell employees that they’re fired but that the firing won’t be effective for two weeks. So why do employees feel compelled to provide the employer with a two-week termination notice that the employer would never give the employee?

I suppose that some employees believe that a two-week notice is a courtesy. Maybe they do so out of loyalty or a desire to maintain a good post-employment relationship. But, again, those are matters of courtesy or loyalty that the employer would never extend the employee in the event of a firing decision. And, as I discuss next, based on the contacts that our firm receives employers rarely care about courtesy or loyalty upon receiving an employee’s two-week notice.

Here’s the scenario that we often receive contacts about — An employee has a new job set to start in two weeks, no sooner. The employee gives the employer two-weeks notice of the intent to quit, thinking that the two weeks will be served out, wages will be earned, and then the new job and income from the new employer will begin. Except that employers often immediately accept the employee’s resignation and tell them that their services are no longer needed as of that moment. The two weeks of expected income just vanished, and maybe the new job holds firm on the start date two weeks later. It’s legal for an employer to immediately accept a resignation, terminate employment, and cease its wage obligations right there. There’s nothing enforceable about an employee’s desire to work two more weeks if the employer doesn’t want that. In that situation, the employee can seek unemployment benefits for that two-week period, but those benefits will never equal the wages that the employee would’ve received instead had they worked the final two weeks.

We’re also contacted about situations in which an employee gave a quit notice, the expected new job offer was retracted or the new job never materialized for some reason after the employee’s quit notification, and the current employer tells the employee that it’s accepted the employee’s resignation and there’ll be no reinstatement of employment. That’s legal too, for both the current employer and the prospective employer. Now the employee is completely unemployed and unemployment will only be available for the balance of the quit notice period, if any.

These two common situations could’ve been prevented had the employee not notified the employer of the employee’s intent to quit at some future date. Instead, for most employees it’s better to simply hedge their bets and provide no notice. Just contact the employer the day the new job starts and tell it you quit. Or don’t show up for work that day and don’t say anything at all. Iowa law doesn’t require any notice or decalaration when an employee quits. In my experience, many “no call/no shows” occur simply because the employee no longer wants to work for that employer, regardless of whether the employee has a new job. Employees may provide a quit notice for their own personal reasons, but that’s never legally mandated and is often a bad idea.

Finally, a caveat for employees operating under a formal, written employment contract. Such contracts usually govern the circumstances under which the employee can quit while the contract term’s in force. There’ll likely be contractual penalties for an employee’s quit other than as allowed by the contract. There may be no right to quit at all without paying money to the employer. Such contractual terms are enforceable against the employee and supercede the default at-will employment rule sumarized above.