Both employees and managers at SDU must be aware that there are fixed procedures for initiating and implementing unsolicited dismissals. Therefore, SDU managers must contact SDU HR as early as possible in the process in all such situations.
For salaried employees:
If a probationary period has been agreed, the employee is entitled to resign without notice, unless otherwise agreed.When a probationary period has expired, or if a probationary period has not been agreed, the employee may resign by giving one month’s notice to expire at the end of a month in accordance with the Danish Salaried Employees Act (Funktionærloven).
With regard to staff employed as public servants appointed by Royal decree, notice of resignation must be addressed to the King.
The employee must send his or her notice of resignation in writing to the immediate manager/head of department. SDU HR, Staff must receive a copy and confirm the resignation in writing and stop the salary payout.
A dismissal implies that the University decides to terminate the employment subject to the employee’s individual term of notice. Before a decision on dismissal is made, the employee will be consulted and informed of the reason for the dismissal.
Whatever the reason, a dismissal must be for good cause and be justified by the conduct of the employee or the circumstances of the University.
Procedures and rules differ depending on whether the employee is employed under a collective agreement or as a public servant or according to similar terms as public servants.
Dismissal due to the circumstances of the University could, for example, be redundancies as a result of cutbacks, restructuring and streamlining.
The characteristics of those cases are that the employee is neither to blame nor responsible for the situation that necessitates redundancies. In these cases, the University will try to reduce the number of redundancies through remedial measures and, if possible, redeployment.
In case of dismissal due to circumstances at the University, the management is obliged to notify the liaison committee to ensure that the employees’ views and suggestions may be included in the basis for the management’s final decision. In case of dismissals due to structural or financial conditions, discussions will take place in the local liaison committees, but the senior management team must inform the joint union representatives if more than five employees will be affected.
In addition, it may be necessary to dismiss employees for individually justified reasons.
This may, for example, be the case if the employee is no longer able to perform his or her duties due to illness, or if the employee is not able or does not want to perform the tasks of the position at such level and in such way as the management may reasonably expect.
The individual reasons may be many. In addition to qualitative and/or quantitative shortcomings in the performance of duties, there may be problems in terms of cooperation or any form of breach of the employment contract on the part of the employee.
Before an employee is dismissed for individual reasons, the manager will normally seek to solve the problems in cooperation with the employee.
If an employee commits material breach of his or her employment contract, the University may dismiss the employee summarily, which means that the employment will be terminated with immediate effect.
In case of dismissal of an employee, the University will inform the union representative of the names of the employees whom the University intends to dismiss. The union representative will be notified at the same time as the employees in question or immediately thereafter. At the same time, the employee is encouraged to involve the relevant union representative or another observer in the process.
If an employee dies, the employment contract will expire from the date of death, and the salary earned will be paid to the estate. For salaried employees, salary for the full month in which the employee died will be paid.
If an employee with whom a voluntary redundancy package had been agreed dies, this agreement will lapse. The estate/dependants will not be subrogated to such an agreement. The University’s HR department will notify either the employee’s pension scheme with group life insurance or the group life insurance company Forenede Gruppeliv (FG) of the death and submit documentation for the most recent month’s salary. The dependants should also be informed of which pension scheme the employee was covered by.
The terms and conditions for the FG group life scheme are set out in the circular on group life schemes for public servants etc. and certain employees covered by a collective agreement in the State and the Evangelical Lutheran Church etc. (Cirkulære om gruppelivsordninger for tjenestemænd m.fl. og visse overenskomstansatte i staten og folkekirken mv.) as well as on FG’s website.
On dismissal, including expiry of fixed-term employment, leading to unemployment, the University must pay unemployment benefits for the first and second day of unemployment to employees who are members of an unemployment fund at the time when the employment ends.
The University’s obligation to pay unemployment benefits for the first and second day of unemployment (G-days) applies if a member of an unemployment fund has been employed by the University on the equivalent of full-time terms under the collective agreement for a total of two weeks (i.e. 74 hours) within the past four weeks. If this period includes days of absence, e.g. absence due to illness, annual leave, public holidays that fall on a working day etc, the period will be extended and start earlier corresponding to the number of days of absence.
If the member was employed full-time on the last day of employment, the member’s G-days are the first two ordinary days of unemployment after the last day of employment. If the member was employed part-time, the last day of employment is the first day of unemployment.
If the member is unemployed for four hours or less per day on the first and second day of unemployment, the unemployment benefits will be half of the amount per day.
The employer is not liable to pay unemployment benefits for the first and second day of unemployment (G-days) if, for example:
- the employee starts new employment on the following working day,
- the employee takes annual leave immediately after the employment ends,
- the employee resigns on his or her own initiative,
- the dismissal is primarily attributable to the dismissed,
- the employee receives sickness benefits,
- the employee rejects a written offer of continued employment on pay and employment terms according to the collective agreement with the same employer before the end of the employment.