Cooling Off Periods and Retraction of Oral Resignations – Guideline Ruling

Large employers often have ‘cooling off’ policies in place which address the common situation of employees orally announcing their resignation in a stressful moment and subsequently having second thoughts. As an Employment Tribunal (ET) ruling showed, however, such polices, once adopted, must be…

Feb 07, 2023

The case concerned a supermarket worker who was under strain at home due to her onerous caring responsibilities for sick and elderly relatives. During an understaffed night shift, she became so stressed that she thought she was having a heart attack. She told a manager that she was resigning and would not be back.

In line with her employer’s policy, she was sent a cooling off letter the following day that gave her seven days in which to change her mind before her resignation would become effective. She and her trade union representative had a number of conversations with managers thereafter but she was eventually informed that her resignation had been processed, bringing her employment to an end.

Ruling on her unfair dismissal claim, the ET found that the employer was entitled to treat her oral resignation as resulting from a rational and conscious decision on her part. The cooling off letter, however, wrongly specified a deadline that afforded her only six, rather than seven, days to retract her resignation.

In upholding her complaint, the ET found that she had a contractual right to change her mind at any time during the seven-day cooling off period. She had done so in a telephone call to her line manager on the final day before the deadline expired. By his words, the manager indicated his understanding that her resignation was being retracted. Her employer was ordered to pay her a basic award of £7,064 and a compensatory award of £6,039.

Dismissal for Misconduct Without a Reasonable Investigation is Rarely Fair

Dismissing an employee for misconduct is very unlikely to be viewed as fair if there has been no proper investigation and no consideration of either mitigation or the possibility of a lesser sanction. An Employment Tribunal (ET) made that point in the case of a veteran music teacher who was sacked for refusing to attend a staff meeting. The teacher, who had worked at the relevant school for 24 years, was told by her boss that attendance at the meeting was not optional. When she informed him…

Working Time – Shop Worker’s Automatic Unfair Dismissal Claim Upheld

If you have been sacked for asserting your statutory rights, an employment lawyer will see to it that you are justly compensated. The point was powerfully made by the case of a retail sales assistant who complained that, by instructing her to work on 14 consecutive days, her employer was treating her like a slave. The woman was very upset when her employer asked her to work continuously for a fortnight whilst her manager was on holiday. No satisfactory solution was found and the employer…

Online Seller of Toxic ‘Food Supplement’ Responsible for Student’s Death

Selling dangerous chemicals to potentially vulnerable shoppers online, under the guise of alleged health or other benefits, is a common source of profit for amoral traders. As a Court of Appeal ruling showed, however, judges are tackling the issue and coming down hard on those responsible for such abuses. The case concerned a 21-year-old student who had a history of mental health issues and eating disorders. She suffered a fatal cardiac arrest after taking eight capsules of a chemical that she…