Everything HR needs to know about determining severance packages

Terminating an employee creates an array of risk for an employer, even if they're completely within their rights to let the worker go

Everything HR needs to know about determining severance packages

Letting go of an underperforming or disruptive employee is never as easy as it sounds. In fact, terminating an employee creates an array of risk for an employer, even if they’re completely within their rights to give the worker the boot.

Determining the adequate severance package and notice period is often one of the trickiest hurdles. Employment law dictates statutory minimum entitlements, but those frameworks can be difficult to apply to the complexity of each individual case.

The laws that govern employment relationships may lay out the minimum amount of termination pay and severance pay to which an employee is entitled when they are terminated without cause, but they are just that: minimums.

Employees terminated without cause may also be entitled to reasonable notice at common law and employers who fail to provide that face the prospect of being taken to court for wrongful dismissal by an employee looking to recoup the reasonable notice payout to which they may be entitled.

It’s a murky world for employers, who, in most cases, don’t have any personal vendettas against individual staff members – they simply want to do what’s best for their organization. Sometimes things don’t work out in an employment relationship, but the employer can’t just give an employee their marching orders and then move on. An employer who does that faces the very real prospect of legal action.

This industry whitepaper addresses the key issues that modern companies face when determining severance packages.

When is an employee entitled to reasonable notice? Who determines what is a reasonable notice period, and what factors influence reasonable notice? These are just some of the questions the whitepaper will provide answers for.

This whitepaper also provides a framework for reducing potential litigation risks and covers both the existing and emerging factors that can affect the length of reasonable notice.

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