Krdytkyu

I believe that the thinking behind having someone leave as soon as they put in their resignation is three-fold:

1. They don't want to risk having the employee do something damaging on their way out (delete data, steal data, etc.)


2. They don't want the employee hurting morale by explaining to everyone why they are leaving (boss stinks, better opportunities elsewhere, etc.)


3. Given ramp-up times, likely counterproductive to put the employee on something new, so they can only do what they have been doing, thus they are (depending on the circumstances) less useful.

These aren't necessarily great reasons. There are obviously multiple downsides, including disincentivizing people to giving you early warning that they are going to leave, losing their knowledge and productivity, hurting employee morale by treating them harshly, paying unemployment to the employee, etc.

If an employee has relationships with a number of clients, the employer may not want to take the risk that the employee will take the clients with them when they leave or work against the employers best interests.

I agree completely with Jim Clay's answer. There is one thing I would like to add. Sometimes an employer may actually get angry at certain employees when they resign, and fire them in a fit of rage, specially if the employer feels he/she has looked after the employee well and given them all they have asked for.

You play a dangerous game by giving a very advanced notice of leaving. If a person says they will leave in 6 months, the employer will try to find a replacement knowing that it will take a while but perhaps before 6 months. So they put out ads, then interview and hire. Since they can't pay both people, they fire the one leaving. A lot of younger workers feel like they have a obligation to their employer and want to do them favors but reality is they may not be favorable to you.

My thought, try to minimize your notice period as allowed by your contract or country. So in the USA, you give a 2 weeks notice to leave on good terms. If your contract is longer than 2 weeks notice, then prepare beforehand by saving up money to cover that notice period in case you get let go of earlier.

Firing an employee might also give them the ability to claim unemployment. That being said, the employer might "fire" (lay off) a resigning employee as a courtesy to the employee, to allow them to collect unemployment.

Typically, when I hear about this, it's generally the employer letting someone who has given their two weeks stay at home for that time so they don't cause damage. Avoiding damage is probably the biggest reason.

Depending on what area you're from it is likely illegal for a company to fire an employee without reasonable explanation otherwise they can risk being sued. This is not to say it doesn't happen, but often companies will try and deliberately find any valid reason to fire an employee who is leaving because of the following reasons.

• An employee who is set to leave over a mid-period of time, is likely to start a project then end up leaving half way through. Not only does this affect productivity as they'll be one person short, it also leaves a gap in the project that someone will have to pick up the pieces from.




• Depending on the job role, an employee may need training. So if they plan to replace the employee who is leaving as soon as they leave. They may want to start training with someone new as soon as possible whilst avoiding paying two people at once to essentially fill the same role. If a development style role, then likely the new employee will take some time to understand and be briefed on the project before continuing where the resigning employee left off.




• Client facing employees - If an employee is client facing you do not want someone who is resigning to be building relationships with external clients as it can look bad on your company reputation especially if the leaving employee mentions things such as bad experiences.




• The employee could be leaving with a negative reason such as not enjoying working at the company and disliking the policies that the company holds. You don't want this employee to start communicating with other colleagues and clients.

Other reasons may include finding a new candidate quicker than expected and therefore avoiding paying two people at once, fire the person who's already leaving. This way you save money and will have a spare worker to intake long-term projects without causing the inconvenience of someone leaving.

I want to play this a different way (especially since you don't state your location/country...

In some countries (eg. Denmark), when employees resign they have to give "current +1 month" notice, while the employer typically has (at least) 3 months notice.

So, if the relationship is good, and the employee has not actually quit outright, a boss might choose to work out a "mutual agreement" and thus provide the employee with a better exit.

I expect Americans to object to this scenario as "theoretical", but I've personally seen it happen more than once, with good workers who just could not grow any further in their current employments.

Not as bad as outright malice on the part of the employee but there is also a perception of "short timer's syndrome" where an employer may believe someone on their way out isn't going to put in the effort of someone who is sticking around.

If you have a good relationship with your manager, he might fire you so that you can get the benefit of the company's severance package, and possibly government unemployment payouts while you're waiting to start your new job. This generally doesn't come out of his budget, so he has little to lose from this minor scam against the company. If it happened frequently, upper management might catch on and start to monitor firings, but if it's just a one-off for good employees who leave on friendly terms they probably won't notice.

In addition to the reasons mentioned in other answers, personal spite can play into this, as sad as it is to say. In one job I had, I found out that my predecessor had been fired. The official reason I first heard was that the guy was not working when he was required to be.

Eventually a more complete story came out: Apparently my predecessor and the boss had been friends before he was hired. From what I understood, they had a falling out over things in the workplace. My predecessor submitted the standard two week notice. On his last day on the job he took a (very) long lunch. The boss, who was still upset over the falling out and resignation, changed the employee's departing status from "resigned" to "fired with cause", which could lead to problems for the former worker if he would try to collect unemployment benefits or when applying for future jobs.

Far more common than firing someone is passing you over for pay rises or promotions.

For example I know someone who gave a 6 month notice of their intent to leave. 1 month later in our regular annual pay reviews he got very low raise, much less than he would normally expect (it may even have been zero, it was a long time ago) and I remember him being annoyed. Even though he was leaving anyway it would still have been nice to have that pay rise for the time he was there, although management clearly figured there was no point spending money on a raise for people who are leaving anyway.