If an employer puts pressure (directly or indirectly) on an employee to resign or makes the situation at work intolerable for the employee, it may be a forced resignation or “constructive dismissal”.
A constructive dismissal – forced resignation is where:
- the employer has behaved in a way deliberately aimed at causing the employee to resign
- the employee is told to choose between resigning or being dismissed
- there has been a breach of duty by the employer (i.e. a breach of the employment agreement or of fair and reasonable treatment) such that the employee feels he or she cannot remain in the job.
However, not all conduct that upsets an employee will be enough to lead to a constructive dismissal. The conduct must be sufficiently serious to justify the employee leaving his or her job. Also, there must be a substantial risk that the employee would leave his or her job as a result of the employer’s conduct, and this risk must have been reasonably foreseeable to the employer.
If an employee feels that they are being pressured to resign then best practice is to raise this with their employer so that there is an opportunity to discuss the issue and try to resolve it. If the matter cannot be resolved and the employee feels that they had no choice but to resign, then the employee can challenge the forced resignation by raising a personal grievance.
Always call us first, once you resign it is harder for us to get you a settlement.
If your boss asks you to resign, ask him/her to put it in writing eg a text or email.
Have you already resigned?
If you can answer yes to the questions below, then you may have good grounds to claim you have been constructively dismissed.
- Did you really have no choice?
- Did you try everything you could to resolve the situation before resigning?
- Do you have good evidence of what you claim as the cause of your resignation?
- Some other examples
- If you are given the option to resign or be demoted
- If you feel you are working in an Unsafe Workplace
- Assault on an employee
- Abuse of an employee
We are a No Win No Fee organisation. This means that we will only charge a fee if we are successful in obtaining a financial settlement for you in addition to other terms of the settlement, e.g. written apology and reference, changed from being fired to having resigned. Contact us through our contact form. or call our helpline : 0800 NO WIN NO FEE
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