My employer is trying to change my notice period from 3 months to 6 months stating that all senior managers are required to give 6 months. Can any senior managers please confirm their notice period and industry? I would like to benchmark data. Thank you
Anything over 3 months for a role below senior executive is pretty excessive. However, this hurts the employer more than the employee (assuming that it's a mutual six months!).
An employer wanting to give someone notice will have to give six months notice or six months' PILON. But employees actually have very little obligation to give contractual notice if they don't want to, especially when it is unjustifiably excessive, as six months would be in most cases. Employers attempting to enforce a six month notice period would have to make an extremely robust case for why they were actively hampering their employees' ability to obtain new employment, and anything short of "national security" is going to be looked on pretty dimly.
A six-month restrictive covenant, of course, is much more reasonable and enforceable in situations where senior managers may be poached by competitors for short-term intelligence gains.
Generally, if an employer wanted to impose a six-month notice period *and* it was mutual, I'd just nod and say "Yeah, fine" in the certain knowledge that I would under no circumstances ever give them six months notice and would be very unlikely to face any consequences from not doing so.
