Giving notice to an employer

If your notice period is strictly applied, it needs to be 28 days from when you tell them. So if you tell them tomorrow, you can only leave on Tuesday 12th August.

Depends what your role is however and how flexible they are. If it's a role they can replace easily they might not mind.

I would tell them you now definitely want to leave on 12th August instead in line with your 28 days notice period, but that really you would like to leave a week earlier if possible but that you understand if it's not possible. Hopefully they'll be flexible!

Thanks so much for your reply. It's helped a lot.

I did tell them I was officially handing in my notice on 3rd July. But also in that email I stated my last working day would be 29th August.
Could I not finish on 4th August?

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If your notice period is strictly applied, it needs to be 28 days from when you tell them

Thanks so much for your reply. It's helped a lot.

I did tell them I was officially handing in my notice on 3rd July. But also in that email I stated my last working day would be 29th August.
Could I not finish on 4th August?

That's categorically false, the statutory notice period if you have been employed for less than 2 years is one week.

However, statutory notice period can be overriden by contractual notice period. Her notice period might be one week, or 10 days, or two weeks, or three weeks.

Saying it's 28 days is irresponsibly ignorant, and you shouldn't go around misinforming people thinking your knowledge of her legal and contractual situation is greater than it clearly appears to be (or not be, as the case is)

Errr the OP themselves started their post with My employer requires me to give 28 days notice.

There are two things to keep in mind here.

The first is that in a technical sense you are legally obligated to work until your notice date. However, their only legal recourse if you leave earlier would be to take you to small claims court.

That would be far more than it's worth for them. The second consideration is what is a good reference from them worth? They might not sue you, but equally they might give you a bad reference if you leave early.

You should weigh up those two things. If you have a job already lined up that starts on the 4th, then it might be worth just leaving on the 4th, and saying to them you simply cannot serve out your notice period, and you are willing to forfeit the pay from that notice period.

But if the reason you want to finish early is that you have booked a holiday, or a similarly self-absorbed excuse, then you're just being a selfish crybaby and you should serve out your notice period

Tell us why you don't want to serve your notice period

Plenty of employers don't have a clue about what their contractual notice period actually states. 28 days is very high and I find it simply exceptionally unlikely that this is the case. 14 days is far more likely for a contract of that sort.

If she can post a pic of her contract showing it is that length, then fine. But until then, I'm very skeptical

My reason is that I'm doing this job as a placement year as part of my university degree. My contract was due to end on 31st July and it was extended until until 31st July 2015. I explained I have to go back to Uni so I handed in my notice to finish on 29th August.

I was under the impression that they would like me to take a week off August to complete my university work which has a deadline of 22nd August. They declined my request of annual leave.
This has put me in a difficult position as I now have a looming deadline, loads of Uni work to do and a full time job.
I know it sounds very complicated!

I was under the impression that they would like me to take a week off August to complete my university work which has a deadline of 22nd August. They declined my request of annual leave.
This has put me in a difficult position as I now have a looming deadline, loads of Uni work to do and a full time job.
I know it sounds very complicated!

Thanks so much for your reply. It's helped a lot.

I did tell them I was officially handing in my notice on 3rd July. But also in that email I stated my last working day would be 29th August.
Could I not finish on 4th August?

That's categorically false, the statutory notice period if you have been employed for less than 2 years is one week.

However, statutory notice period can be overriden by contractual notice period. Her notice period might be one week, or 10 days, or two weeks, or three weeks or 14.75682 days

Saying it's 28 days is irresponsibly ignorant, and you shouldn't go around misinforming people thinking your knowledge of her legal and contractual situation is greater than it clearly appears to be (or not be, as the case is)

It sounds perfectly reasonable to me, I'd encourage you to tell your manager tomorrow that you are giving notice to cease work on 4th August.They really can't force you to continue working
That is technically a breach of contract, but the only real damages I could foresee is that they don't pay you for the period after August 4th (which s perfectly fine because you wouldn't be working after August 4th).

If they could prove some genuine, fundamental damage it caused to their business (like you leaving early caused them to miss out on a £1 million contract, or something like that), then yes they could sue you for damages. But otherwise, I very much doubt they would pursue it and I doubt any judge would look favourably on a suit.

You are probably safe to leave before your notice period.

I think the issue is more his reference, given it's his year in industry, presumably, he's going to want a pretty good one out of them for grad jobs, and as a stude he's not going to be able to afford to sue them for negligent misstatement if they give one so bad it's false.