“I recently had an employee resign but she still received unemployment. I thought a resignation prevented an employee from getting unemployment. Am I wrong?”
My HR Survival Tip
You’d be correct most of the time but there are certain circumstances when an employee might still qualify for unemployment, as you noticed.
One example is when “there is good cause for voluntarily leaving a job where the facts disclose real, substantial, and compelling reasons of such nature as would cause a reasonable person genuinely desirous of retaining employment to take similar action.” Consider two employees at the same company. Sam really wants to keep the job and Mary doesn’t care as much. They are both subjected to the same behavior but Mary feels “forced” to resign. If Sam didn’t also feel compelled to resign, Mary’s case could fall apart because Sam proves you can tough it out if you really want the job.
Another example is when “the conditions of employment are so onerous as to constitute a threat to the physical or mental well-being of an employee, or where the actions of a supervisor are particularly harsh and oppressive.” In this case, Joe’s health may be deteriorating due to the stress of interacting with his supervisor (rather than just the amount of his workload). Or, maybe Joe is actually afraid of his supervisor because he threatens Joe with bodily harm in a way that is obviously not meant as a joke or random comment.
As a rule, neither of these examples are one-time issues… it usually needs to be an on-going problem in the workplace.
My third and last example is when Peter feels he must move back to Indiana to care for his ailing parents because there is no one else who can take on this responsibility. This is really a takeoff of the first example… a compelling reason. Although I haven’t come across this situation for a while, I have in the past.
There’s not much you can do in Peter’s case but the situations in the other examples are within your control to change.
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