Resignation notice period.

Almost every article about notice in Australia opens with the same table: one week if you have been there under a year, two weeks up to three years, three weeks up to five years, four weeks after that, plus an extra week if you are over 45. That table is real, but when you are the one resigning it is the wrong table. It sits in section 117 of the Fair Work Act 2009 and it tells your employer how much notice it has to give you before it ends your job. It says nothing at all about how much notice you owe when you quit. Your resignation notice period comes from somewhere else entirely: your award, your enterprise agreement, or your employment contract. This guide shows you where to look, gives you the real numbers from the awards most Australians actually work under, explains what your employer can and cannot take out of your final pay if you leave early, and walks through how the days are counted.

The NES notice scale is your employer's obligation, not yours

This is the single most misunderstood point about resigning in Australia, and it trips up employees and managers equally. Section 117 of the Fair Work Act 2009 is headed "Requirement for notice of termination or payment in lieu". It opens with the words "An employer must not terminate an employee's employment unless the employer has given the employee written notice of the day of the termination". Every obligation in that section is pointed at the employer. The table of one to four weeks, and the extra week at subsection (3)(b) for employees over 45 with at least two years of service, is the minimum the employer must give before dismissing someone. It is explained in full in our guide to notice of termination.

There is no equivalent NES section that says an employee must give notice. What the Fair Work Act does instead is much narrower. Section 118 is a one-sentence provision headed "Modern awards and enterprise agreements may provide for notice of termination by employees", and it reads: "A modern award or enterprise agreement may include terms specifying the period of notice an employee must give in order to terminate his or her employment." That is a permission, not an entitlement. It hands the job of setting employee notice over to awards, agreements and contracts. If none of those documents says anything, the National Employment Standards do not fill the gap for you.

Where your notice period actually comes from

There are only three documents that can require you to give notice, and you should check them in this order:

1. Your modern award. Most award-covered employees have a clause headed "Notice of termination by an employee" that sets a sliding scale based on continuous service. Find yours through our awards directory.
2. Your enterprise agreement. If a registered agreement covers your job, it displaces the award and its notice clause applies instead.
3. Your employment contract. A contract can require more notice than the award, and commonly does for senior roles. It cannot give you less than the award or agreement minimum.

The good news is that most modern awards use the same model term, so the numbers are easy to remember. The Fair Work Commission built the employee notice clause to mirror the employer scale in section 117, with one deliberate difference: employees never have to add the extra week for being over 45. The General Retail Industry Award spells this out in a note under its table, saying the notice an employee must give "is the same as that required of an employer except that the employee does not have to give additional notice based on the age of the employee".

Here is the model scale as it appears, word for word, in three of the biggest awards in the country:

That identical table is Table 8 under clause 41.1 of the Clerks Private Sector Award 2020, Table 13 under clause 37.1 of the General Retail Industry Award 2020, and Table 17 under clause 41.1 of the Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020. If you work in an office, a shop or a pub, those are almost certainly your numbers. Read more about how these instruments work in our guide to modern awards.

Not every award follows the model. The clearest outlier is teaching. Under clause 32.3(a) of the Educational Services (Teachers) Award 2020, the notice a teacher must give is "the same as that required of the employee's employer", and for a teacher employed in a school clause 32.1 sets that at 7 term weeks(or 7 weeks' salary instead of notice). Early childhood teachers under clause 32.2 sit at 4 weeks, or 4 preschool term weeks for a preschool employee. Seven term weeks is a very long way from the one to four week model scale, which is exactly why you should never assume.

If you are award and agreement free

Plenty of Australians are not covered by any award: many managers, professionals and higher-paid specialists fall outside award coverage entirely. If that is you, the Fair Work Ombudsman's position is blunt. An employee who is not covered by an award or agreement does not have to give notice to an employer before resigning. The only thing that can require notice from you is your employment contract, and a contract can never provide less than the legal minimum set out in awards and agreements.

The complication is what happens when the contract says nothing. If your contract has no notice clause, or you never signed a written contract at all, you might still need to give your employer reasonable notice. Reasonable notice is not a fixed number. It is an implied contractual term, and what counts as reasonable depends on things like your seniority, your length of service, how specialised your role is and how long it would realistically take to replace you. A junior administrator and a chief financial officer with fifteen years of service are not in the same position. Because there is no published table for it, this is one of the few areas where getting individual advice before you resign is genuinely worth it. The Fair Work Ombudsman does not resolve contract disputes and points people to its guidance on getting help with employment contracts.

Casual employees do not have to give notice

If you are a genuine casual, you owe your employer no notice when you stop working there. This flows from the way the Act is built: Division 11 of Part 2-2, which contains the notice rules, simply does not apply to casual employees under section 123(1)(c). Casuals are also excluded alongside employees engaged for a specified period of time, for a specified task or for the duration of a specified season, employees dismissed for serious misconduct, and certain trainees. Most award notice clauses adopt those same exclusions by cross-referencing sections 123(1) and 123(3) of the Act.

The Fair Work Ombudsman still calls it best practice to tell your employer when your last shift will be, and there is a practical reason to do so beyond politeness. Casual work in Australia is often a stepping stone to a permanent role with the same employer, and references matter. But there is no legal lever your employer can pull. The Ombudsman's own worked example covers a casual waiter over 18 who simply stopped turning up: because he did not have to give notice, the award did not allow his manager to deduct anything from his final pay. If you are not sure which side of the line you sit on, our guide to casual versus permanent employment walks through the test.

Counting your service and counting the days

Two separate counts decide your last day. First you work out which band of the scale you are in, then you count the notice period itself.

The band depends on your continuous service with that employer at the end of the day you give notice. Continuous service is the length of time you have been employed by the business. For the purposes of award notice, the Fair Work Ombudsman states that continuous service includes authorised unpaid leave, such as unpaid parental leave, and does not include any periods of unauthorised leave or absences. So a year spent on approved unpaid parental leave does not knock you back a band, but months of unexplained absence can. Note also that section 117(4) excludes periods worked as a casual from continuous service, so if you did eighteen months of casual shifts before converting to part-time, the clock for notice purposes generally starts at the conversion.

The notice period itself is counted in calendar days, not working days. It starts the day after you give notice and ends on your last day of employment. It is best practice to put your resignation in writing and to state which day will be your last, so there is nothing to argue about later. Verbal notice is still valid, but it is a lot harder to prove.

Note what would happen if Priya had given only one week. She would be two weeks short of her award requirement, and her employer could deduct up to oneweek's award wages from her final pay, not two. The cap is one week regardless of how short you fall. That is the subject of the next section.

What happens if you do not give enough notice

Leaving without working your full notice is a breach of your award or contract, but the consequence is narrower than most people fear. Most modern awards contain a deduction clause that lets your employer withhold an amount from your final pay, and it is tightly limited. Under the standard model term, your employer can deduct up to one week's wages only if all of the following are true:

• you are 18 years old or over;
• you have not given the amount of notice your award requires;
• your employer has not agreed to a shorter notice period; and
• the deduction is not unreasonable in the circumstances.

The most important limit is what the money can come out of. The clause says the employer may deduct "from wages due to the employee under this award". That means ordinary hours worked, including penalties and allowances, overtime worked, and any time off instead of overtime owed on termination. It does not extend to your other entitlements. Your employer cannot take it out of your accrued annual leave payout, your long service leave, other NES payments, or any over-award portion of your pay. If you are paid $40 an hour but the award minimum for your classification is $27, the deduction is calculated at the award rate, not your actual rate.

Awards vary here too. The Educational Services (Teachers) Award allows up to 2 weeks' wages rather than one, reflecting its much longer notice requirement. A handful of awards have no age restriction, a different cap, or no deduction power at all. If you are under 18, no amount can be deducted from your wages unless your parent or guardian agrees in writing first. Always read your own award clause rather than assuming the model term applies. Award-free employees are in a different position again: there is no award clause to authorise a deduction, so an employer who believes it suffered a loss would generally have to pursue that as a contract claim rather than by helping itself to your final pay. See termination pay for how the rest of the final payment is put together.

Taking leave during your notice period

Your employment continues completely unchanged during the notice period. You accrue leave, you are paid as usual, and your normal conditions apply. That also means the ordinary leave rules apply, with one important asymmetry:

• Annual leave. You can take paid annual leave during your notice period if your employer agrees. You cannot simply declare that your four weeks of accrued leave will be your four weeks of notice. Many employers say yes, but it is a request, not a right.
• Sick and carer's leave. You can take paid sick or carer's leave during notice provided you give notice of the leave as soon as possible and provide evidence, such as a medical certificate, if your employer asks for it. Falling ill during your notice period does not cost you the entitlement.
• Public holidays. A public holiday that falls inside your notice period counts as part of the notice. It does not extend your finish date.

You can also resign while you are already on leave, or just before taking leave. If you do, you still have to give whatever notice your award, agreement or contract requires.

Your employer cannot reject your resignation, but it can end it early

An employer cannot choose to accept or reject a resignation. Once you have given valid notice, the clock is running. Best practice is for your employer to acknowledge it in writing, and it is reasonable to ask for that acknowledgement so you have a record of your finish date.

What your employer can do is decide it does not want you to work out the notice. Where you have given the required notice (or more), there are two clean ways this happens:

• You agree to stop earlier. You and your employer can agree on an earlier last day. You still have to receive at least your minimum notice period, so if your employer does not want you on site it can pay that period out. In the Fair Work Ombudsman's own example, an employee who gave 4 weeks when her award required 2 worked one week, then agreed to stop immediately: she was paid for the week she worked plus 2 weeks' pay.
• Your employer terminates during the notice period. The employer can end the employment before your notice expires, but it must then provide the full period of notice required by the applicable instrument, or a payment in lieu of notice. Careless handling of this can expose the employer to unfair dismissal, general protections, unlawful termination or breach of contract claims, because the employment ended at the employer's initiative rather than yours.

Some awards give the employer an express right to do this. Clause 41.1(g) of the Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020, for instance, lets the employer elect to make a payment instead of the employee working all or part of the notice period, with the payment equivalent to what the employer would have had to pay under section 117 if it had terminated the employment.

Frequently asked questions

How much notice do I have to give when I resign in Australia?

Whatever your award, enterprise agreement or contract says, and nothing more. Under the model term used by most modern awards it is 1 week if you have not more than 1 year of continuous service, 2 weeks for more than 1 but not more than 3 years, 3 weeks for more than 3 but not more than 5 years, and 4 weeks once you pass 5 years. Check your own instrument first, because a minority of awards and many individual contracts require more.

Is four weeks' notice the standard in Australia?

No. Four weeks is the top of the award scale and only applies once you have more than 5 years of continuous service with that employer. Someone with two years of service under the Clerks Private Sector Award owes 2 weeks, not 4. The four-week figure is repeated so often because it is also the maximum employer notice under section 117 before the over-45 loading is added.

Do I have to give an extra week of notice because I am over 45?

No. That extra week exists only in section 117(3)(b) and applies only to notice an employer gives an employee. Award notice clauses for employees deliberately leave it out. The General Retail Industry Award says so in a note directly under its table.

Can my employer refuse to accept my resignation?

No. An employer cannot choose to accept or reject a resignation. Once you give valid notice your employment will end at the end of the notice period unless you both agree to change the date, or your employer ends the employment earlier and pays out the notice.

Can my employer take money out of my final pay if I leave without notice?

Possibly, but only a limited amount. Under the standard award clause your employer can deduct up to one week's wages if you are 18 or over, you did not give the required notice, your employer had not agreed to a shorter period, and the deduction is not unreasonable. It can only come out of wages owed under the award. It cannot come out of your annual leave payout, long service leave, other NES entitlements or any over-award component of your pay.

Can I use my annual leave as my notice period?

Only with your employer's agreement. You can take paid annual leave during a notice period if the employer agrees to the leave, so you cannot unilaterally substitute accrued leave for time actually worked. If your employer says no, the leave you have not taken is paid out in your final pay instead.

Do casuals have to give notice?

No. Casual employees do not have to give notice when they resign, because Division 11 of Part 2-2 of the Fair Work Act does not apply to casual employees. Telling your employer your last shift is still best practice, and if you are unsure whether you are truly casual, read our casual versus permanent guide.

What if my contract requires more notice than my award?

The contract can require more, and if it does, that longer period is what you have agreed to. What a contract cannot do is provide less than the minimum set by an applicable award or registered agreement. If your contract and your award disagree, the more generous outcome for the minimum standard prevails, which in practice means the award floor applies and the contract can build on top of it.

Where can I look up the rest of my end-of-employment entitlements?

Start with final pay and termination pay, which cover what has to be paid and when. If you were made redundant rather than resigning, the numbers are completely different: see redundancy and our guide to the Fair Work Act. Unfamiliar terms are defined in the glossary, and there are more questions answered in our general FAQ. You can browse everything from the guides index or the sitemap.

Author & reviewer

Sarah Reid, CAHRI

Certified Australian HR Practitioner · Cert IV Payroll · 12 years Fair Work compliance

Sarah has spent over a decade advising Australian SMBs on Fair Work, NES compliance, and payroll. Based in Sydney, she has worked across hospitality, retail and professional services.

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