{"id":123060,"date":"2025-11-05T11:34:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T11:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/123060\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T11:34:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T11:34:12","slug":"be-sure-you-dont-leave-back-money-on-the-table-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/123060\/","title":{"rendered":"be sure you don\u2019t leave back money on the table \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

So you\u2019re quitting your job<\/a>? You may be jumping ship to better terms but just make sure you aren\u2019t leaving money on the table on your way out. Don\u2019t hand in your notice, and definitely don\u2019t leave the building, before getting a few things straight.<\/p>\n

Bonus<\/p>\n

Resigning from a job can feel like a divorce. You want to go, they want you to stay, both sides invested in the relationship but now it\u2019s about who gets what in the break-up. You raked in a tonne of sales this year, so they\u2019re definitely going to pay your bonus, right?<\/p>\n

Before breathing a word about quitting, dust down your contract and the employee handbook. If there\u2019s a hefty bonus at stake, giving notice at the wrong time can leave you out of pocket by thousands of euro.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost bonus schemes would say if you\u2019re gone, you\u2019re gone. You don\u2019t get anything pro-rata for the time you were there,\u201d says Anne Lyne, partner specialising in employment law at Hayes Solicitors. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut if you are still there on the payment date and the scheme doesn\u2019t disallow payment in the notice period, you could argue, \u2018well I\u2019m here and I\u2019m entitled to it\u2019,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

When it comes to planning your exit, read the small print. While a bonus might accrue until December 31st, don\u2019t assume it gets paid in January. Some companies delay payment as a retention strategy. A bonus may not get paid out until March. Pulling the plug at the wrong time may mean you\u2019re gone before payment hits. <\/p>\n

On the flip side, be careful too of delaying your exit for a bonus described as \u201cdiscretionary\u201d. There can be 10 pages in the employee handbook detailing how you and the company must perform for a bonus to be paid, but if the bonus is discretionary, there are no guarantees. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0The State\u2019s new auto-enrolment scheme: What does it mean for those with a private pension?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s a meaningful sum at stake, you might do well to keep schtum about quitting until that discretionary bonus is safely in your bank account. <\/p>\n

You\u2019re entitled to your bonus if it\u2019s linked to service, says Caroline Reidy, managing director of the HR Suite, an NFP company. <\/p>\n

\u201cSay you hit your targets, which are to December, and your bonus is scheduled for January and you hand in your notice in January, you are entitled to the bonus up to the end of December because you earned it in that you have hit your targets,\u201d says Reidy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you left in October, however, but the bonus accrued until the end of the year, usually it\u2019s not payable unless you are still in employment at the end of the year because it\u2019s based on the total year\u2019s target. Therefore you would not be entitled to it,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

If the bonus is based on quarterly performance or targets and you were there for the relevant quarter, you are likely to be entitled to it. <\/p>\n

A \u201clong-term incentive plan\u201d rewards key talent for meeting long-term company goals over a period of three to five years. These are designed to retain and motivate executives to contribute to the company\u2019s sustained success by aligning their rewards with the company\u2019s long-term performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are really retention bonuses so if you leave midway through, you don\u2019t get it. You must stay the full three or five years to benefit,\u201d says Reidy. <\/p>\n

If you\u2019re joining a new employer midyear, ask them about your entitlement to bonus too. Sometimes it will kick in from the day you join; other times it will be after you complete probation. <\/p>\n

Shares<\/p>\n

Shares and share options can be hard to get a handle on. As a perk, these can be best viewed as birds in the bush, but not in the hand. <\/p>\n

If you have actual shares in a business, where you have a share cert or, nowadays, electronic proof of ownership, you can quit the job but retain the shareholding. Share options, however, are a different story.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompanies are looking at mechanisms to bring people in and retain them with these share option schemes. But when you look at them, the option really only becomes tangible on its sale, or at a certain point in time,\u201d says Lyne.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at it, you don\u2019t actually own a part of the company,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s not a \u2018Ferrari\u2019, it\u2019s a picture of a Ferrari.\u201d<\/p>\n

Study the scheme rules, she says. \u201cMost have a vesting date. You are offered the share options today, but they don\u2019t actually vest for five years and if you leave before the vesting date, you lose out on them,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Check the vesting date and see if it\u2019s worth hanging on. And even if they do vest soon, do they just vest into something else? <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople can use the word \u2018shares\u2019 or \u2018share options\u2019 to describe what they have been given but it\u2019s not an old school shareholding in a company,\u201d she says. \u201cMost scheme rules are clear; if you leave, you lose them.\u201d <\/p>\n

Study <\/p>\n

If you studied for an MBA on company time, they can\u2019t exactly take back the qualification if you leave. If you qualified on the company dime however, they may well claw something back. <\/p>\n

A part-time executive MBA can cost up to \u20ac40,000 for a two-year programme. Most employers will stipulate that if you leave within a certain amount of time, they will claw it back. For instance, if you leave within two years, they might claw 50 per cent of it back, says Lyne. <\/p>\n

If quitting your job within the clawback period leaves you out of pocket, let your new employer know. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey might look at giving you a sign-on bonus to reimburse you so that you can pay it back,\u201d says Lyne.<\/p>\n

Similarly, professional memberships paid monthly will be stopped when you leave. An employer is unlikely to claw back the balance of an annual membership however.<\/p>\n

Maternity leave<\/p>\n

If you leave shortly after returning from maternity leave, an employer may claw back what they paid during this leave. This will vary by employer so check your contract and the employee handbook.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may be that if you leave within the first weeks of your return, 100 per cent of your maternity pay is clawed back, or if you leave within a year, 50 per cent is clawed back,\u201d says Lyne.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are leaving and moving to a new employer, expect that your employer may look to enforce that clawback.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you are not leaving for another role however, the company may be less likely to pursue reimbursement. Check your contract of employment and the staff handbook, says Caroline Reidy. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you were paid your full salary while on maternity leave, or if they funded your MBA, 99.9 per cent of the time the employer will say, we\u2019ll pay, but you must stay for at least a year after,\u201d says Reidy. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you keep your end of the bargain, you get to keep the money and no more about it. You contractually sign up to it, that\u2019s what counts.\u201d <\/p>\n

Health insurance<\/p>\n

With paid health insurance, find out from your employer or the insurance company to what date you are covered. <\/p>\n

Before your cover expires, contact your insurance provider to arrange a conversion to an individual plan to maintain coverage and avoid a lapse that could affect waiting periods for pre-existing conditions. <\/p>\n

A break of less than 13 weeks is usually fine for maintaining your \u201cloading,\u201d which is a credit for previous time insured. <\/p>\n

Holidays and notice<\/p>\n

If you didn\u2019t take annual leave this year with the expectation of a bumper final pay packet when you resign, think again. <\/p>\n

\u201cAn employer could require you to take untaken holidays during the notice period,\u201d says Anne Lyne. \u201cThey could say, I want you to go on garden leave for three months, you\u2019ve accrued 10 days holiday so take them during the garden leave period. They are entitled to ask that,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In a near-full-employment economy, employers are more likely to ask you to come to work throughout your notice period. <\/p>\n

On the flipside, if you\u2019re tired of the place you want to take all of your accrued holidays during the notice period, they can\u2019t realistically force you to come in, says Lyne. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn practice, forcing you to work right up until the last day, are they really going to get the best out of people?\u201d<\/p>\n

The bottom line, says Reidy, is when leaving a company, try to be as honourable as possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we find is that a new employer is happy to wait the notice period. If you have a three-month notice period, be clear with them about that at the outset.\u201d <\/p>\n

Garden leave of three months may be a contractual requirement to break the relationship you had with a company\u2019s clients, for example. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll want a reference from your current employer and the more honourable you were, the more your reference will reflect this,\u201d says Reidy. \u201cThey might say, you had a contractual agreement and you didn\u2019t honour it. The new employer might wonder, will they do the same to me?\u201d<\/p>\n

Difficult parting<\/p>\n

If you are leaving without completing your notice period, or leaving to join a competitor, things can get contentious, says Lyne. \u201cIn those cases, you can have tricky engagement between employer and employee on their departure,\u201d she says<\/p>\n

\u201cThere may be threats around a non-compete clause where the employer writes to the employee, or to the new employer,\u201d says Lyne. \u201cBut in Ireland, enforcing non-competes in a small economy isn\u2019t done in practice,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere can be letters and threats of litigation but actual litigation is something you see more of in the UK where it\u2019s bigger. In any sector in Ireland, people know each other,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn an 100 per cent employment economy in the past three years, we\u2019ve sent letters on behalf of employers. But non-competes aren\u2019t about the individual in reality, they are about a business thinking, \u2018I need to protect my business\u2019. The employee is just in the middle of it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Your employer may ask you where you are moving, but you don\u2019t have to tell them. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have to tell them, but if you have a non-compete clause, the employer can remind you of that. They can\u2019t force you to say where you are going, but they\u2019ll find out when you update your LinkedIn.\u201d <\/p>\n

Professionalism, or lack of it, when you quit may bring its own dividend. Burning bridges in a small country can prove costly. <\/p>\n

Is there an ideal point in the financial year to leave a company, or join a new one? \u201cNot really,\u201d says Caroline Reidy. \u201cSometimes the ideal job that someone has been waiting for just comes up. It\u2019s advertised and they go for it.<\/p>\n

\u201cGenerally, the ideal job now is linked to flexibility as well as salary and bonus. For a lot of people it\u2019s, \u2018Am I getting the flexibility I need\u2019. We are seeing that to be more and more the case.\u201d <\/p>\n

For the right job, you\u2019ll resign at any time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"So you\u2019re quitting your job? You may be jumping ship to better terms but just make sure you…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60,5144,1962],"class_list":["post-123060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-money-matters","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}