July 2024 Q&A Roundup

Q         Must we keep an employee if they provide two weeks’ notice, or are we able to end their employment early?

Like many payroll questions, this may depend a bit on your state law. In general, with employment at will you aren’t required to continue to offer hours during any notice period. You can generally say, We appreciate you have provided notice, but we are waiving notice and consider you done today.

Depending on your state, they may qualify for unemployment compensation for the remainder of the notice period. If you offer certain benefits if they give and complete a notice period—such as payment of accrued but unused paid time off (PTO)—then you would need to pay that out since you, as the employer, ended the notice period early.

Another area that could create issues is if you end the notice period early and they don’t qualify for a bonus or something similar. Some bonus policies are written to take this into consideration stating that not only must you be employed at the time of the bonus but cannot have given notice or be in any notice period.

So yes, you can say goodbye, but there may be some financial caveats depending on the circumstances.

Q         If an employee takes Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave to bond with his new child, would he be able to take additional bonding time later the same year if he still had FMLA time available?