Is it possible to quit without working for two weeks?

The reasons for dismissal can be very different. It is believed that if such a decision is made, the employee must work for another two weeks after writing the application. But this is not entirely true: in fact, there is no obligation to work off, enshrined in the Labor Code of the Russian Federation. There is an obligation for employees to notify management of their desire to resign two weeks before leaving their position. There are other subtleties regarding two-week work, as well as completely legal ways to get rid of this need. So, let's start in order.

Question: Can I quit without working for 2 weeks? I don’t have an employment contract in hand, but I work for 6 months and receive a salary. View answer

Why is training needed?

First of all, “working off” is the wrong word to refer to another 2 weeks of working time after writing a letter of resignation. In fact, the employee does not work off anything, but simply notifies the employer in a timely manner about the termination of cooperation.

Can an employee resign of his own free will without working off ?

The requirement of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation that an employee must notify his superiors about his planned departure from work is quite understandable: within two weeks, the management of the enterprise has the opportunity to find a replacement for the quitter, and the employee manages to complete his work affairs and transfer unfinished projects to his successor.

Question: Can an employer delay the dismissal of a retired employee without working until the end of the inventory when changing the financially responsible person? View answer

legal information

In the Russian Federation, all labor relations are regulated by the Labor Code and certain provisions of the Federal Law:

if the issue of dismissal of a pensioner arises, then the main instrument in this case will be Article 80 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation. This paragraph sets out clear requirements for which group of citizens can resign at their own request without mandatory two-week service;
if controversial situations arise, for example, when a pensioner resigns due to reaching retirement age, and the employer refuses to dismiss him on the day of filing the relevant application or indicates mandatory service. The provisions on working hours are specified in paragraph 3 of Article 80 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation.

ATTENTION !!! The clause clearly states the requirement that if an employee resigns due to reaching retirement age, he must be paid in one day if an application is submitted to management. If a pensioner resigns after having passed the retirement age threshold, then compulsory service in this case is legal, but its period is 3 days. It is worth noting that the employer can cancel this provision if an appropriate agreement is reached between him and the employee.

Employee obligations

As the law states, every employee is required to notify his supervisor of his intention to leave his position at least 14 calendar days or two weeks in advance.

The countdown begins from the date of submission of the application to the boss and his acquaintance with him. But it is worth remembering that not all employees must warn management about their desire to leave their job: those who are on a probationary period , as well as employees on seasonal or temporary contracts not exceeding two months, are not required to comply with this regulation. They only need to submit an application three days before actually leaving work.

Question: Is it legal to dismiss an employee of his own free will after two weeks, and not from the date of filing the application, as the employee indicated, despite the fact that he does not have the right to dismissal without service? View answer

For your information! For those who, by law, have the right to notify their superiors three days before dismissal, in order to speed up this process, it is most reasonable to choose a period with a large number of weekends or non-working holidays when leaving work. This is very convenient: I wrote an application before holidays or weekends and after them I am already free.

Features of dismissal of a pensioner from work

Labor legislation states that a citizen who has reached retirement age has the right to work for as long as he wishes. The legislator protects the rights of all categories of workers. This is especially true in situations where a citizen terminates relations with a company due to health conditions.

This basis is provided for senior citizens. Due to his age, he cannot be fully healthy. The important thing is that a person has the opportunity to take a well-deserved rest only once, that is, upon re-employment, he will not be able to resign on this basis.

Do pensioners work 2 weeks upon dismissal?

If a person reaches retirement age, this cannot be considered as a basis for terminating employment relations with him. This rule is established in labor legislation. For this reason, a pensioner is considered in the organization as an ordinary employee who has a general scope of powers and obligations.

The exception is the civil service . In this case, certain categories may be subject to restrictions based on reaching a certain age. Labor legislation stipulates situations when a citizen will have to write an application for termination of a relationship upon reaching a certain age. In many situations, the reason for dismissal will be the same - retirement.

If a person specifies in the application another basis for terminating the relationship, then the director of the company has the right to demand work off. Sometimes HR department employees require the provision of a pension certificate to confirm this basis.

When to work out and when not to

The provisions of Article 80 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation indicate that working off does not apply in some situations.

This applies to cases where the termination of the relationship is related to:

registration of retirement;
training a citizen in an educational institution;
other reasons prescribed in the Labor Code of the Russian Federation.

This means that a working pensioner who is about to retire has the right to dismissal without prior notice. In addition, the issue under consideration is affected by some formalities related to the termination of the agreement. The main thing is that the reason for dismissal is associated with retirement.

The application must indicate a link to the provisions of Article 80 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation , which states that upon retirement, a person has the right not to work for 2 weeks. Subsequently, employees of the personnel department record in the book the reason for termination of the contract. It is also worth paying attention to the fact that a pensioner has the opportunity not to work off if a favorable relationship has developed between him and the employer and the director has approved the dismissal without working off.

This rule can be applied regardless of what age a person is and how much experience he has. However, the law does not regulate this possibility. In addition, it is necessary to take into account if the citizen managed to come to an agreement with the management of the company and quit without working, while the documentation indicates the reason for dismissal as his own desire. Then the citizen will have the opportunity to use this reason another time if he decides to return to work.

Working off can be established in a situation where:

When writing the application, the citizen did not indicate that the reason for termination of the contract was related to retirement;
general grounds for dismissal are indicated.

In this case, the company management may refer to the provisions of labor legislation and indicate that work is required for a couple of weeks. Then a person loses the opportunity to refuse to bear this responsibility, since this is directly regulated by law.

It is important to note that a person can use the option of writing a second statement, which indicates the desired reason for dismissal. Then no work will be required. Until he does this, his responsibility is not relieved. It is worth considering that there should not be such an entry in the book, since this basis again does not give the right to exemption from service.

Thus, the possibility of terminating an employment relationship without working off is determined depending on what grounds for dismissal are indicated in the application. In addition, the moment to be taken into account is whether the employment relationship was previously terminated for this reason or not.

Ways to avoid two-week detention

There are a number of options that allow you to leave your job without prior notice to management.

A voluntary decision by management to release an employee from two weeks of work. If you have a good relationship with your boss, then you can approach him and try to come to an agreement. Quite often, managers accommodate their employees, especially if they have some important and valid reasons for urgently leaving work. It happens that the director signs a dismissal order the very next day after submitting the application. Therefore, you should not neglect this option, as practice shows - this is the simplest and most painless way of dismissal without working off. By the way, if, on the contrary, the relationship with the management is bad, this method can also work - not every director will want to keep an unpleasant person on the company’s staff for extra days.
Special circumstances. If the boss is not ready for negotiations and has no desire to put himself in the position of the employee, then there are still ways to leave the position without working out. There are categories of employees who, due to current circumstances, are in principle not obliged to warn management about their upcoming dismissal. These include:
employees upon reaching retirement age;
conscripts for military service;
employees whose rights have been repeatedly violated by the employer. However, evidence of this must be recorded in some documents. Excess of authority by superiors, violation of articles of the Labor Code, or some other unlawful actions - all this may be grounds for an employee to leave his position without prior notice to management.
Other reasons. For example, if an employee has serious health problems or special circumstances in the family and some aspects of his personal life, he may well leave work without notice. It could be:
an employee’s change of region of permanent residence, including due to a sharp deterioration in health;
pregnancy; (

Retirement - only once

What about employees who have already retired once, but continued to work after a break? Is the employer obliged to let the employee go in this situation on a day convenient for him? And how can a pensioner quit without working for two weeks if he has already used this opportunity once? No way, the norms of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation allow you to do this only once, although some courts have a different opinion.

The current legislation does not provide clear instructions on how to act in such cases for the parties to labor relations. The opinions of the courts differ from the established law enforcement practice. Some people believe that a person retires in old age only once. If he has already resigned on this basis once and the corresponding entry is made in his work book, then for subsequent dismissals the benefit is no longer valid. This conclusion was made, for example, in the decision of the Petrogradsky District Court of St. Petersburg No. 2-2974/2012 dated June 18, 2012.

At the same time, there are positions of the courts (for example, decision of the Moskovsky District Court of Tver No. 2-2024/2012 dated August 31, 2012), in which the judge sided with the workers. The rationale is simple: the “retired” status, although acquired once, remains with the person for the rest of his life. How can a pensioner resign of his own free will without working, if he has already retired once? Write again in the application that he is going to leave his job due to retirement. Here is an example of such a statement:

In this case, as the courts indicate, the employer will have to comply with Part 3 of Art. 80 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation and dismiss an employee of retirement age again without working out. Otherwise, the conflict will be resolved in the State Tax Inspectorate and in court.

Going on vacation: dismissal without notice

Another way to leave work without subsequent work is to go on vacation (including at your own expense).

This option is also possible if the vacation has not yet been used, because According to the Labor Code, upon dismissal, management is obliged to provide an employee with two options for vacation compensation: either pay vacation pay in monetary terms, or provide vacation for a period of two weeks of work. In any case, it is better to coordinate your choice with your manager in advance. However, even if an agreement fails, management does not have the legal right not to allow an employee to go on vacation, just as there is no right to refuse to fire him immediately after returning from vacation.

If you apply before retirement

Often, employees use the right to be exempt from working for pensioners by submitting a letter of resignation some time before retirement age - before their birthday.

In Russia, the retirement age for women is 55 years old, for men - at 60.

In this case, the working pensioner is also exempt from the need to work the 14 days required by law upon dismissal. Since from the day of birth, when a woman turns 55 and a man 60, they automatically become the owners of benefits and are exempt from working.

Sick leave instead of working off

The Labor Code of the Russian Federation nowhere directly states that after writing a letter of resignation, an employee must work for two weeks. This is most likely due to the fact that the law protects the rights of hired personnel more than employers. In fact, the above fact is a loophole for those who do not want to work out under any circumstances. For example, many quitters use sick leave as a way to leave a position without prior notice to their superiors.

Everything is done very simply: the employee writes a letter of resignation, and then goes to the clinic and registers sick leave there.

Thus, the certificate issued by the doctors will indicate the time frame within which the employee is released from work. And since most often two weeks are given as sick leave to people with minor health problems, then after the allotted period you can safely go to the personnel department for a work book and to the accounting department for pay slips.

The procedure for dismissing a pensioner at his own request

Dismissal of a working pensioner at his own request is a procedure regulated by Art. 80 of the Labor Code of Russia. The procedural document describes all the details regarding this process.

Dismissal procedure

A Russian of an older age group who wishes to terminate an employment contract for personal reasons must go through the following series of steps:

Submitting a dismissal form. The document must be prepared in paper, written form. You should put a signature on the certificate, and also obtain a similar signature from the administration of the enterprise.
The personnel service or other structural unit of the organization, based on the submitted application, issues a state order T-8.
Next, you need to take care of putting a mark in the employment contract indicating the termination of interaction with a particular company. At this moment, the responsible person from the organization corrects the work book, adding the necessary evidence to it. Filling out the TC and personal card is drawn up according to the state model T-2.
During the last day of holding a position, a person in the older age group receives a calculation that includes not only wages for the due period, but also an amount that compensates for the costs of unused vacation days.

On the last working day, the pensioner must also pick up a set of documents - a work book, a salary certificate, a certificate of transfer of contributions to the Pension Fund and a copy of the dismissal certificate.

Notice periods for employers

According to the standards described in Art. 80 of the Labor Code of Russia, an employee who wishes to resign from a position of his own free will must inform the company management about this at least 14 days in advance. In general, this format does not apply to pensioners - they can notify the employer three days before the start of related procedures.

Also, shortened notice periods for dismissal apply:

when leaving a position during the probationary period;
when drawing up an employment contract for a period of less than two months;
in case of employment for work that is seasonal in nature.

Pensioners have preferential rights and may not participate in the work. However, the company administration should be notified of dismissal as early as possible.

Statement

Dismissal of a pensioner at his own request without service is a procedure carried out by submitting an appropriate application. According to the Labor Code of Russia, a clear example of such a certificate is not used in the country. However, the procedural act specifies information that must be present in the paper in question.

The list of information required to be included in the resignation letter includes:

last name, first name, patronymic and work position of the recipient;
last name, first name, patronymic and position of the applicant;
reason for leaving the workplace - entered at will;
expected date of the last working day;
applicant's signature;
the date within which the document was drawn up.

A letter of resignation at your own request should be drawn up in two copies. One of the documents is addressed to the management of the organization, while the second document, signed by the responsible person representing the company, remains in the hands of the former employee.

Sample

Despite the fact that the Labor Code does not provide for the exact form of a dismissal form, it is easier to draw up such a document using the example presented. You can download a paper with an application for dismissal of a pensioner at your own request using the button below.

Dismissal due to employer violations

If the terms of the employment contract are violated by the employer, 2 weeks notice is not required; you can stop working immediately. However, you should not look for violations to avoid a two-week conscription - there are other legally acceptable ways. In addition, for such dismissal to be lawful, the fact of violation of the terms of the employment contract must be recorded and proven.

To do this, an unfairly offended employee must take a number of procedural actions: file a complaint with the relevant authorities (trade union, labor dispute commission, etc.) and wait for the results of the inspection. The results will not necessarily be in favor of the employee: often the employer’s violations are controversial and unprovable. In this case, the employee’s only option is to go to court.

Dismissal through court

Sometimes it happens that the management of an organization does not want to let an employee go without work, even if the latter has all the necessary legal grounds, documents and certificates for this.

In this case, to restore justice, the employee has the right to go to court. However, this is not always appropriate, since court proceedings usually last several months and take too much effort and time from the parties. It is much easier for the parties to try to agree on dismissal without working on a voluntary basis. This, among other things, will help maintain good relations between them.

To summarize, we can say that dismissal without service is quite possible. There are legal methods for this that require documentary confirmation from the resigning party, as well as some legal loopholes. With the right approach, any employee can find a way to leave work without prior warning to their employer.

Peculiarities of removal from work of elderly employees and their completion

The legislation clarifies that reaching a so-called labor pension is not a basis for removal from work, as indicated by Article 3 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation. However, this can happen on the worker’s own initiative. In this case, there is no need to warn about this in advance; you can resign from your post on the day the application is written.

Please note : you can leave without working due to access to state support for old age only once.

This means that if a pensioner subsequently gets a job in another position, when leaving it he must indicate other reasons, for example, “of his own free will.” In this case, the head of the enterprise will have the right to assign an additional 14 working days.

In case of staff reduction or liquidation of a company, the dismissal of a working pensioner is carried out on a general basis. Also, an employee who has reached old age may be removed from his post on the initiative of management if violations of labor regulations are observed and the grounds listed in Article 81 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation exist.

This is important to know: Notice of dismissal due to liquidation

The procedure for terminating industrial relations with an employee of retirement age and working off 14 days

Resignation from a position, if an employee receives a state benefit for the development of seniority, is carried out according to the same principles and standards as for other employees.

The only difference is that a pensioner may not work for 14 days.

The rules for termination of industrial relations suggest that it can occur:

In each case, a statement is drawn up indicating all the required information. Next, the employer prepares personnel documents and pays the salary.

There is also no difference between the removal from a position in the event of a reduction in staff and the dismissal of a working pensioner at his own request: service in both cases is not required.

The difference between the working hours of a working pensioner and those retiring

Many believe that advanced age is the basis for receiving benefits and concessions from the employer. This is wrong. A working pensioner can also be laid off with the payment of the benefits required in this case. Some of the directors see such citizens as experienced workers, with whom they try not to part ways. For others, these are the employees who are laid off in the first place. In this case, the choice depends on the head of the company himself.

If we talk about the terms of service, then when specifying the reason “retirement”, it is not required. If an employee asks in an application to be removed from work on his own initiative as a working pensioner, then he will need to work for three days. If there is no reference to this kind of circumstance, then the termination of the employment relationship is carried out in accordance with the general procedure.

Important! Even if there is a possibility of leaving your position “one day”, it is better to notify about your intentions in advance in order to receive the payment on time and avoid misunderstandings with the chief accountant of the organization.

Calculation of a retiring pensioner without working off

The procedure for dismissing pensioners at their own request without working out presupposes compliance with all other rules for conducting such procedures. This means that upon termination of production activities due to access to state old-age benefits, the employee receives a payment.

The calculation consists of the following parts:

wages for the number of days worked in the billing month;
compensation for “non-day off” vacation (if the worker has one);
additional benefits - at the discretion of the employer.

In case of staff reduction, benefits for the first three months after it are added to these payments, and in the regions of the Far North - for the first 6 months. Such compensation can be reduced only if the employee was involved in seasonal work or refused to be transferred to another enterprise.

Expert opinion

Novikov Oleg Tarasovich

Legal consultant with 7 years of experience. Specializes in criminal law. Member of the Bar Association.

Thus, the need to work off a pensioner for a period of two weeks depends on whether such an employee is retiring for the first time or again, since in fact he is already a working pensioner.

What if you change your mind about quitting?

The application has been written, two weeks have not yet passed, but the employee’s plans to leave the employer have changed? That happens. What to do in this case, if the employer has nothing against continuing the working relationship?

The law allows the resignation letter to be withdrawn any day before the date specified in it. Two weeks before “hour X” is not a special “buffer zone”, but ordinary working days, during which the employee enjoys all the rights of an officially employed person. There are some important nuances to consider.

If you intended to take leave before leaving work and change your mind, it is advisable to withdraw your application before the start of your leave.
If the boss says that he has already invited a new employee to take your place, demand a written agreement - mere words are not grounds for refusing to withdraw your resignation letter.
If the resignation letter was written forcedly and under pressure, it can also be withdrawn. If management refuses to return the application, and this most often happens, ask for a written refusal explaining the reasons.
In all cases where the employer interferes with the employee’s legal right to withdraw his application within the prescribed period, he can go to court. Judicial precedents indicate that in such cases, judges most often side with the hired personnel.

If two weeks have passed, you have not withdrawn your application, and your boss is also not against you staying, you can simply continue working as usual - no additional steps are required to complete the application. Since there was no order or issuance of a work book, the dismissal did not officially take place, the application simply becomes invalid.

How to make an application

The following points must be indicated in the application for voluntary dismissal without service:

in the header of the document you must indicate the name of the organization and the full name of the head of the enterprise;
then the title is written and below is the full name of the working pensioner and his position at the enterprise;
then a letter of resignation is written;
At the end of the document you must indicate the date and personal signature.

This is what a sample application looks like. It is necessary to ask an employee of the HR department (personnel management) to stamp the incoming message on the document. This is necessary if controversial issues arise.