What exactly happens if you break a three month resignation period? I don’t advocate doing this in generally but as a hypothetical exercise if this person just stopped showing up for work, what exactly could the company do?
But I think it would be better to keep it above board. Present it as a solution, kinda. Like, "we both want the same thing here".
Ultimately though a person could not show up for any reason at all (e.g. hit by the proverbial bus) and you need to plan for that. Sounds like a company that just flies by the seat of its pants so they probably have that 3-month clause for that reason.
In that particular case, my experience tells me the guy won't get any credit for finding a solution, I would consider sick leave. Burnout, whatever. Doesn't have any monetary consequences in Europe (at least no harsh ones), and Germany covers up to 6 weeks of salary.
Any way, you can forget about getting goods references. Not that would get them anyway, with an employer like that.
It looks like they could probably sort something out, wouldn't be a bad idea to call up any of the old vets who retired to see if they could come down to the office and contract for a week or so.
[edited to add : not relevant, they're in Finland: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/ma4mwl/the_absolu... ]
Source: left voluntarily
Even if you're not responsible for the problem itself, leaving your employer in the ditch, when there's a major outage - well, it just doesn't look good (barring some scenario where your employer is completely unreasonable - like not paying you).
It's kinda like a firefighter that decides to turn off the hose and go home, in the middle of a raging fire. Who in their right mind would want to hire him/her in the future?
But if they get in a situation where management is yelling at them and demanding they work 20 hours a day until this is fixed somehow and they have no idea how to. Management won't bring in consultants, etc. That ship has already sailed.
If your manager does that, you can say "No". They still can't fire you without paying you your 3 month wages.
The firefighter who recognizes when the building is about to collapse and gets out of there is a good firefighter.
Or
If your contract is exclusive they can pay you and prevent you from working for anywhere else (gardening leave).
You can’t (at least in most countries) enforce the contract in such a way that you force someone to work.
But there's some additional factors here. If the employer misses salary payments, then they're in breach of that employment contract, and unless they can't fix the situation really soon, that's grounds for immediate termination.
Also in Finland, salaries earned in a normal employment are backed by the state for up to 3 months of missed payments (the state will then try to collect from the employer). So it's relatively safe for an employee to stick with a sinking company. Just get that CV polished and start warming up the network.
"You need to give us 3 months heads up no matter what, but don't worry, we don't have to give you any if you oversleep for a meeting."
Mind you - if the company is going down the tubes they are highly unlikely to enforce any job contracts.
I didn't break the contract anyway out of some combination of feeling like it was breaking a promise and the worry that Cambridge is a small town.
But this is for when both of them can't find a mutual solution. You can always agree to terminate the contract earlier, if both parties agree.
At least that is how it works in Germany.
It goes both ways of course, my employer is also bound by the 3 month period in case they want to fire me.
There are contractor agencies filling the niche of providing employees on short notice (and usually for a short period), but generally having people begin 3 months later is just something everyone expects and factors into their processes.
The average length of time people spend at a single job is also longer than in the US.
Of course, they would rather it was shorter, but hiring is already a multi-months long process in most cases, so a few more months is inconvenient, but not the end of the world. If you need someone now, you hire contractors.
Also, depending on the country, firing/layoffs can be difficult without cause (and often even with cause) (e.g. you can't layoff someone at will, you might need to prove that you have an economic downturn before downsizing). But this varies way more between countries as far as I know.