7 Things To Never Put On A Resignation Letter

7 Things To Never Put On A Resignation Letter

A resignation letter states two things: that you are resigning, and when your last day is. Everything beyond those two facts is a risk you did not need to take.

It is also a document that lasts. It goes on your personnel file, it gets read by people you have never met, and if the departure is ever disputed it is the first thing produced. Here is what keeps ending up in one that should not.

1. Your reasons

Not the angry ones, and not the grateful ones either.

If you ever needed to argue that you were pushed rather than that you left, this letter is the first thing anyone will read. The Fair Work Act treats a resignation as a dismissal where the person was forced to resign because of something the employer did — section 386(1)(b). A warm paragraph about five happy years makes that much harder to argue later. A paragraph about everything that went wrong creates the opposite problem: it puts your complaint on file in the least useful form, in a document nobody is required to investigate.

There is a simpler reason too. A stated reason invites a counter-offer, and a counter-offer turns a decision you have already made into a negotiation you did not ask for.

None of this means your reasons do not matter. It means they belong in the conversation with your manager, or in the exit interview, where they are not a document.

2. Criticism of your employer, your manager or a colleague

Written criticism outlives the situation that caused it. The person who opens your file in four years has none of the context and no reason to give you the benefit of it.

It also travels. A resignation letter is one of the few documents that gets forwarded without being edited — manager to their manager to HR — so assume the person you name will read the sentence, because they usually do.

If something needs to be raised, raise it separately, in a document written for that purpose, to someone whose job is to act on it.

3. A last day you have not checked against your contract or award

This is where most of the advice online is wrong for Australia.

Two weeks is an American convention. It is not the rule here, and it is not a minimum. The National Employment Standards notice periods are an obligation on your employer when they end your employment — they do not set what you owe on the way out.

The Fair Work Ombudsman is plain about where your notice actually comes from: “An award, enterprise agreement or employment contract may set out how much notice an employee needs to give an employer.” And in awards, “minimum notice requirements in awards are based on the employee’s continuous service with the employer” — so the longer you have been there, the more you owe.

If none of those apply to you, the answer is more surprising: “An employee who isn’t covered by an award or agreement doesn’t have to give notice to an employer before resigning. However, an employment contract may require that employee to give notice.” Where the contract is silent, or there is no written contract, Fair Work’s position is that you “might need to give their employer reasonable notice” — which is a question of fact, not a number you can look up.

Two consequences worth knowing. Give less notice than your award or agreement requires and your employer may be able to withhold pay for the notice you did not give. Give less than your contract requires and you are in breach of it, in the first paragraph of your own letter.

Look it up before you write the date. It takes a few minutes.

4. A last day you have not checked against your leave

Long service leave is state and territory legislation, and the thresholds differ, so check the rules where you work.

Victoria is a useful illustration of how much a date can matter. Under the Long Service Leave Act 2018, “an employee with at least 7 years’ of continuous service with one employer is entitled to receive – in full – payment for any long service leave (LSL) not taken” on the day employment ends — accruing at one week for every 60 weeks worked — and it applies whether you resigned or were dismissed.

Finish at six years and eleven months and you have paid for the privilege of leaving a month early.

5. Requests and conditions

A reference, a payout, an early release, the wording of the announcement — all reasonable things to want, none of them belonging in this letter.

A letter that resigns and asks is a letter that resigns. The resignation takes effect; the requests do not. Ask separately, and get whatever is agreed in writing.

6. Where you are going

You will be asked. You do not have to put it in writing.

If your contract has a clause restricting where you can work next, naming your new employer in a document your current employer keeps hands them the destination and the date on the day they are most interested in it.

Those clauses are under reform, but not yet. Treasury’s position is that the Government announced changes in the 2025–26 Budget banning “non-compete clauses for low- and middle-income workers”, and that “the reforms should take effect from 2027, following consultation and legislation passing parliament.” Not law yet, and not retrospective. Until then the clause you signed is the clause that applies.

Tell them in the conversation if you want to. Keep it off the file.

7. The news itself

The letter should never be how your manager finds out. Tell them first, in person or on a call, and send the letter afterwards to confirm a conversation that has already happened.

The same goes for everyone else. A letter written as a farewell — copied to the team, or written for an audience — takes the announcement out of your employer’s hands, and they are the ones you will be asking for a reference.

What the letter should say

Dear [name],

I am writing to resign from my position as [title]. My last day will be [date], which gives [X weeks] notice.

I will do what I can to hand over properly before I finish.

Thank you,

[Your name]

That is the whole thing. Add a line of thanks if it is true; leave it out if it is not, because a paragraph of warmth about a job that was not warm reads worse than silence.

Send it to your direct manager and copy HR. Where your employer keeps formal personnel records, send it as a PDF and put the same words in the body of the email, so there is no version in which the attachment did not open.

After you send it

Check the final payment. The Fair Work Ombudsman’s position is that “most awards say that employers need to pay employees their final payment within 7 days after their last day of employment”, and it should include accrued annual leave and any long service leave you have earned.

If you are on an individual executive contract rather than an award — with notice measured in months, a restraint clause, or unvested incentives — the date is worth considerably more money and the decisions are different. We have written that up separately.

Sources

• Fair Work Ombudsman, Resignation — read 19 August 2026.
• Fair Work Ombudsman, Final pay — read 19 August 2026.
• Business Victoria, Long service leave: employment termination, under the Long Service Leave Act 2018 (Vic) — read 19 August 2026.
• The Treasury, Non-compete clauses and other restraints — read 19 August 2026.
• Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), s 386(1)(b).