Dismissal starts when staff actually see the email, Fair Work rules
A termination email sent to the wrong address left IPSOS facing a workplace claim it thought had already expired.
In a decision handed down on February 23, 2026, Fair Work Commission Commissioner Sloan ruled that global research firm IPSOS Pty Ltd had inadvertently pushed back its own dismissal date by sending a termination notice to a former employee's outdated email address.
The case turned on a deceptively simple question: when does a dismissal actually take effect? The answer has real consequences for every employer managing a staff exit.
IPSOS sent Ms Lim her termination notice on October 17, 2025, and treated that as the date her employment ended. Under the Fair Work Act 2009, dismissed employees have 21 days to lodge a general protections application – a workplace rights claim with no cap on compensation. That deadline, by IPSOS's reckoning, fell on November 7, 2025. Ms Lim filed on November 10, 2025 – three days late, the company argued.
There was one problem. The termination email had gone to Ms Lim's old address – one she no longer regularly checked. Correspondence between the two parties in the weeks before the dismissal had been flowing to and from her new address. Ms Lim said she did not see the termination notice until November 9, 2025.
Commissioner Sloan believed her. "Having regard to the parties' evidence and submissions, I accept Ms Lim's evidence and find that she first saw the Termination Email on 9 November 2025," the Commissioner wrote. IPSOS had not directly challenged that evidence or sought a hearing to cross-examine Ms Lim. Instead, it asked the Commissioner to infer she must have seen the email the day it was sent – an argument the Commissioner found was backed by minimal evidence.
The ruling rested on a well-established legal principle: a dismissal does not take effect until the employee actually knows about it. Drawing on a 2016 Full Bench ruling, Commissioner Sloan reaffirmed that "the legislation should not be read so that the 21-day period to lodge an application could begin to run before the employee becomes aware that they have been dismissed, or at least had a reasonable opportunity to become so aware."
Because IPSOS sent the notice to the wrong address, Ms Lim had no reasonable opportunity to know she had been dismissed until November 9, 2025. Her November 10 application was entirely within time.
There is another dimension worth noting. IPSOS was not the only party named in the claim. Dominic Pedlar and Zainab Javaid were listed as individual respondents alongside the company – a reminder that in general protections disputes, personal exposure for individuals is very much on the table.
The case is a clear signal to people and culture teams: the moment of dismissal is not when the employer hits send. It is when the employee actually receives the news, or at least had a fair chance to. Sending a termination notice to an address the employee no longer uses does not start the clock. It just delays it, quietly, until an employer least expects it.
The matter will now proceed to conference.
