Notice periods: one basic rule, one ladder, three exceptions

A business dismisses an employee of eleven years to 15 April and budgets 1,800 € of remaining pay. The period is four months to the END of a calendar month, however: the dismissal takes effect only on 31 August. Four months' salary of difference, and the figure that settles it sits in a list of seven lines.

The basic period applies to both sides

Section 622(1) of the Civil Code opens with a single sentence covering the normal case. The employment may be terminated on four weeks' notice to the fifteenth or to the end of a calendar month.

Two statements are packed into it, and they are regularly merged into one. The first is the length of the period, four weeks. The second is the date on which it may expire: either the fifteenth or the end of the month.

A dismissal therefore does not simply take effect four weeks after it is received. It takes effect on the next permissible date that lies at least four weeks away. Additional days may therefore fall between the end of the period and the effect.

Four weeks are not the same as a month. Four weeks are 28 days; a month has 28 to 31 depending on the calendar. The basic period is therefore shorter than a monthly one in eleven months out of twelve.

Subsection 1 applies to both sides. So long as none of the following subsections bites, employer and employee give notice on the same period to the same dates — a symmetry that the rest of the section breaks in one direction only.

Time runs from receipt of the notice, not from its date and not from posting. It is received once it enters the recipient's sphere in such a way that he may be expected to take notice of it.

A letter dropped into a home letterbox late in the evening is therefore usually received only the following day. Where periods are tight, that shift decides whether the next permissible date is still reached or only the one after.

For the business that yields a plain precaution: do not leave the dismissal to the last possible day. A buffer of a few days costs nothing and prevents the effect from falling a month later than intended.

The form on which most dismissals fail

Before any period begins to run, the dismissal must be effective. Section 623 of the Civil Code imposes a condition for that which leaves no discretion and which small businesses regularly overlook.

Termination of employment by notice or by a termination agreement requires written form to be effective; electronic form is excluded. Two clauses, and the second rules out precisely what is nearest to hand today.

A dismissal by email, by messenger or as a scanned PDF is therefore not merely challengeable but void from the outset. Even a qualified electronic signature does not help: that is electronic form, and electronic form is what is excluded.

What is required is a personally signed paper document that reaches the recipient. The same holds for a termination agreement, which the statute expressly treats alike — an oral agreement does not end the employment.

The consequence is uncomfortably clear. The employment continues, remuneration included, although both sides believe it over. Only a dismissal in proper form starts the period, and time runs only from its receipt.

For the employer the period grows with length of service

Subsection 2 lengthens the period on one side only. For a dismissal by the employer it rises with the time the employment has lasted in the establishment or undertaking, in seven steps from one month to seven.

The steps begin at two years with one month and end at twenty years with seven months. In between lie five, eight, ten, twelve and fifteen years — the intervals are deliberately uneven and cannot be derived from a formula.

The decisive difference from the basic period stands at the end of each line. All seven steps expire at the end of a calendar month. The fifteenth as a date drops away once a step bites, and that is exactly where the opening calculation fails.

The table is read downwards to the last line whose threshold is met. Eleven years of service meet the ten-year step, not the twelve-year one: the period is four months.

What counts is the duration in the establishment or undertaking, not the time in the current role. An internal change of department or duties does not interrupt the count, and a transfer of undertaking normally does not either.

Because subsection 2 concerns only dismissal by the employer, an asymmetry arises. The employee stays on four weeks even after twenty years — he may leave faster than he can be dismissed.

Probation, and its upper limit

During an agreed probationary period, for at most six months, the employment may be terminated on two weeks' notice. Subsection 3 therefore contains two limits, not one.

The first is the word agreed. Without an agreement in the employment contract there is no probationary period and therefore no two-week notice. It does not arise merely because an employment is new.

The second is the upper limit of six months. A longer probation may be agreed, but the shortened notice applies to it only in the first six months. After that subsection 1 governs again.

Unlike subsection 1, subsection 3 names no end date. The two-week period may therefore expire on any calendar day, not only on the fifteenth or at month end — a difference that shows up at once in the payroll.

Probation must be distinguished from protection against dismissal. That there is generally no general protection in the first six months follows from another statute and applies whether or not a probationary period was agreed.

When a shorter period may be agreed

Subsection 5 permits a period shorter than the basic one to be agreed individually, but only in two closely drawn cases. Both are narrow, and both are asserted more often in practice than they are tested.

The first concerns employees engaged for temporary assistance. The exception falls away where the employment is continued beyond a period of three months — it therefore ends of itself with the fourth month.

The second concerns small businesses. It applies where the employer as a rule employs no more than 20 employees, excluding those engaged for their vocational training, and where the agreed period does not fall below four weeks.

The second condition surprises on a first reading. The exception allows a period shorter than subsection 1 while at the same time requiring that four weeks not be undercut — in practice it therefore works mainly on the end dates, not on the length.

• trainees do not count towards the twenty-person limit
• part-timers up to 20 hours a week count as 0.5
• part-timers up to 30 hours a week count as 0.75
• what counts is the number the business employs as a rule, not the figure on one particular day

The fractions make the limit calculable and at the same time movable. A business with eighteen full-timers and five half-day staff reaches 20.5 and is therefore above the limit, although by headcount it looks well above it.

The phrase as a rule prevents games with cut-off dates. What counts is the usual headcount over a longer span, not the figure on the day of dismissal — a short burst of departures does not effectively lower it.

It also matters what this exception does not do. It concerns the notice period in section 622 alone. The thresholds of general protection against dismissal sit in another statute and are counted differently — the two figures are not the same.

Summary dismissal: the exceptional route, and its own deadline

Alongside all these periods stands a route that knows none. Under section 626 of the Civil Code the relationship may be terminated by either party for good cause without observing a notice period.

Good cause is narrowly defined. There must be facts on the basis of which, taking all circumstances into account and weighing the interests of both parties, continuation until the period expires cannot reasonably be expected of the party giving notice.

The standard is therefore not a catalogue of misconduct but a test of reasonableness in the individual case. It is measured against the ordinary period: the longer that period, the sooner continuation until its end becomes unreasonable.

And summary dismissal has a deadline of its own. It may be given only within two weeks, counted from the moment the person entitled to give notice learns of the facts that matter for it.

Those two weeks are a cut-off. Anyone investigating the facts at length loses the right to dismiss summarily and keeps only the ordinary route — haste here is not nervousness but a statutory condition.

On the other side's request, the party giving notice must state the ground in writing without undue delay. It need not appear in the notice itself; where the dismissed person asks for it, it must be supplied without culpable hesitation.

What a collective agreement may do, and a contract may not

Subsection 4 opens the whole section to collective agreements. Arrangements departing from subsections 1 to 3 may be agreed by collective agreement, and in both directions: shorter as well as longer.

The opening reaches even beyond collective coverage. Within the scope of such an agreement the departing provisions apply between parties not bound by it as well, where their application is agreed between them.

For the employment contract the opposite holds. Periods longer than the statutory ones remain permissible, shorter ones only in the two cases of subsection 5. Lengthening is free, shortening is the exception.

And subsection 6 draws a line that many contracts breach. For a dismissal by the employee no longer period may be agreed than for a dismissal by the employer.

A clause imposing three months on the employee while the business could dismiss on four weeks after a year is therefore void. Anyone wanting long ties lengthens the period for both sides — the statute provides no other way.

That becomes interesting with the ladder in subsection 2. Because the employer's period grows with the years, the ceiling for the employee's period grows with it. A contractually mirrored period therefore stays permissible so long as it grows too.

For practice that yields a short checklist. First the form, then the step, then the end date, and finally a look at the employment and collective agreement for a departing but permissible arrangement.

In that order no step drops away and none can be brought forward. A dismissal void for form needs no calculation of periods, and a correctly calculated period rescues no email.