Resignations are a fact of life. We don't join a company with a promise to keep slogging "till death do us part." Our company is fifteen years old, but there are exactly three officers who have spent more than five years with us -- everyone else has come and gone. You too will resign some day. Therefore let us follow some basic etiquette and rules to make this process smooth and professional.
The first thing to understand is that you are not committing a crime by resigning. The company has never, and will never, treat you any worse once it hears that you intend to resign. A lot of young employees feel uneasy tendering their resignations because they believe that this will "make their boss angry". I don't know whether there is any boss who reacts in this childish way, but no one in Merce Technologies does. We have had key employees telling us their resignation plans 6 to 12 months in advance. We have happily worked with them till their last working days. Even now, we have one or two employees who have verbally informed their reporting officers of their intention to resign, and they continue to work in their important roles.
The ultimate evidence of this is the friendly relationships we maintain with ex-employees.
The right way to resign is to inform your reporting officer when you begin thinking of resigning. In more than 50% of cases, we discover (when it is too late) that the engineer has resigned for a reason which we could have tackled easily within Merce without him having to leave. For instance, someone said he has to resign because he has to shift to Pune. We immediately asked him whether he wanted to work for us from home and visit our office once in two weeks. He agreed. He's working with us now. From Pune.
There are many such examples. People have worked with us from Baroda, Pune, Amravati, and elsewhere. Some have even worked part-time. People have been shifted from SSD T&M roles to product development and vice versa. You never know what adjustments can be made within Merce for mutual benefit.
There is one more reason to inform early. It helps us find a replacement and make a smooth transition. For anyone in an active and complex project, we need at least two months, often three, to make a smooth transition. If we don't get that time, the employee walks out satisfying all rules, but the company loses money and productivity.
Please remember that no amount of verbal intimation replaces a written note, so please inform verbally as early as possible, but remember to send the written note with effective last working date, etc.
You should not let our customer know that you intend to resign. This information should be communicated to our customer by your team lead or project manager, not by you. It is critical that our management makes preparations for replacements before we inform the customer, so that the customer sees continuity.
In the past, we have had some messy cases where our engineer has informed the client without informing us first. This is not a good idea.
The notice period for all employees will be two calendar months or 40 working days, whichever ends later. This supersedes all notice periods specified in offer letters. The 40 working days will be counted excluding all Saturdays, Sundays, holidays and any days of leave you may take.
For instance, if you are resigning on 15 Feb, then your last working day should be 14 April. This will be adequate for most employees. However, if you are taking leave during your notice period, then you will have to deliver 40 working days of work, excluding all Saturdays, Sundays. holidays and days of leave.
This issue of working days-based notice period has been introduced because we have seen that some employees tender their resignations and then begin taking long stretches of leave. We have had one case where the one-calendar-month notice period translated into less than 10 working days for the engineer, leading to severe disruption of work and inadequate handover.
The rule about 40 working days of leave does not have any connection to your leave balance. You may have a lot of leave in your leave balance, but you will still have to deliver 40 working days of work for a full notice period.
Notice period will be counted from the date on which you send your written resignation letter/email.
At the end of the employment period, calculations will be done for a final settlement of accounts. This requires that the employee fulfil the following pre-requisites:
If any of these is not done, final settlement will not be done.
If all these conditions are met, calculations will be done for a final disbursal of payment and the following will be issued:
In addition, it is an increasing trend that your new employer will do a background check on you, and will contact your old employers. We get such calls a few times a year, and our HR transfers the call to Kishan or Shuvam. We give excellent references to any employee who has had an acceptable tenure with us and has resigned after working through his notice period. We are usually blunt with cases of misdemeanour or insufficient notice period. Therefore, this is another deliverable from our side to all employees who have left after working through their notice period.
Your resignation is not the end of your relationship with Merce. You will be surprised how many of our engineers have joined back after a few months or years. We work happily with such engineers. Treat your resignation as a movement, not a burning of boats or slamming-shut of doors.
If you have any questions, please contact Shraddha, Shuvam, or HR.