Communicating the end of the employment contract verbally is not enough

According to Section 7:688(1) of the Civil Code, an employer must inform his employee in writing about the end of his fixed-term employment contract. This must be done no later than one month before the employment contract ends. If the aforementioned is not done, the employer owes his employee compensation pursuant to Section 7:699 (3) of the Civil Code, equal to the amount of one month's salary if the employer does not comply in time.

It regularly happens that employer does inform an employee of the approaching end of his employment contract, but only does so verbally. Surely this is also sufficient; after all, employee knows that the end of his employment contract is approaching? No, the Supreme Court has ruled, in a recently published judgment (ECLI:NL:HR:2022:1374).

The issue before the Supreme Court dealt with an employer who informed an employee during an interview on 30 October 2019 that his employment contract would not be renewed after 1 December 2019. Employee subsequently claimed a notice payment because the notice was not in writing but only verbal.

The subdistrict court agreed with the employer and rejected the employee's request. The court of appeal and the Supreme Court rule otherwise. They hold that an employer's obligation to give notice is of mandatory law. The notice payment has an incentive to comply with the duty to give written notice, according to the Supreme Court. From this, it can be deduced that the notice compensation is always due if the written requirement has not been met, even if it has become clear to an employee in another way that the employment contract is ending.

The employer must thus inform the employee, always in writing, at least one month before the end of the employment contract, that the employment contract is ending. Oral notification is not sufficient!