In employment and occupation circles, employee termination refers to a departure from a job by an employee. Termination maybe at the employee’s will when he/she resigns or it may be forced as is with dismissals and layoffs. These are the two types of employee termination. In most cases, termination is viewed to be against the employee’s will.

Nonconsensual employee termination

Also called dismissal, nonconsensual employee termination occurs when the employer terminates his association with the employee against the latter’s will. A dismissal is usually viewed as the fault of the employee, and employers extend various reasons for terminating employee’s contracts. Such include attendance issues, problematic conduct, poor work performance and attitude, insubordination and intoxication during working hours. An employer may also seek to lay-off an employee due to a downturn in the economy or when the company is downsizing.

No matter the cause, nonconsensual employee terminations carry a certain stigma with them and persons with multiple counts of dismissal from different employers may find it hard to land a job. As such, some job seekers may look to omit from their resume, jobs that they were dismissed from, especially if it was because of a serious misconduct.

Different cultures have different informal names for dismissal such as:

  • getting fired
  • sacked
  • let-go
  • axed
  • ran-off
  • given walking papers
  • getting the boot
  • Getting the sack.

Other terms include given the pink slip, getting canned or boned.

Employment termination by mutual agreement

This is a form of employment termination where the employee and the employer have a mutual agreement to end their association. The phrase “by mutual agreement” is however looked upon with suspicion as in many cases the employer initially wanted the employee gone but the employee offered the mutual agreement deal to soften the dismissal. When a mutual agreement termination occurs, the stigma of firing is avoided. This is a form of forced resignation.

An employee may also tender a resignation upon which the management agrees to let the employee go. This may be due to unfavorable working conditions or the employee finding a better job somewhere else.

Other forms of employment termination by mutual agreement include the end of an employment contract or retirement. With the former case, an employer and employee sign off on a contract that stipulates a certain time frame for a specific job. If upon the end of the specified time frame the contract is not renewed, the employment is regarded terminated. With retirements, certain occupations have a specified age where employees are forced to depart work. Other cases of retirements may be due to health conditions.