When an employee recently resigned from our company, giving two weeks’ notice, his manager told him to pack up and leave immediately and he wouldn’t be paid beyond that day. Effectively, he fired the employee as of that day. This didn’t sit right with me, but is it illegal?
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This is one of those situations in which you don’t even have to ask if it’s legal—although conceivably it might be in some circumstances, it is unwise at any time.
First of all, by such an action, you take a voluntary resignation with little likelihood of a lawsuit and turn it into a termination, which creates a high likelihood of a lawsuit. That employee is burning mad and justifiably so—at least that’s what a jury will think.
Second, this practice isn’t going to sit well with other employees. From now on, employees won’t give notice, fearing that they will be fired on the spot. And there will be some employees that you will very much want to stay the two weeks—to train a replacement, finish a key project, or help hand off customers to new representatives.
On the other hand, there certainly are situations in which you want the employee to leave right away—for business reasons, not for spite. This would occur, for example, if the person has access to proprietary information or you believe that he or she might do some harm to systems or with customers. In this kind of situation, you can still ask the employee to stop work as of that day but make a two-week payment instead of notice. — CELA Editors