'Short service is not short notice': What HR gets wrong in dismissing new hires

A recently dismissed corporate controller in Victoria walked out of B.C. Supreme Court with a four-month notice award — despite having worked for his employer for less than three months.

The result in Ho v. Monk Office Supply Ltd. is a useful reminder of a common misassumption in HR: that short service means short severance.

"In my experience, the vast majority of both workers and employers do not understand the fact that you do see disproportionately longer severance periods for short-service employees," says Andrew Vey, founding partner at Vey Willetts in Ottawa.

"We have to have this conversation over and over again… employees and in particular employers can be surprised by how weighty severance awards can be for short service.”

The takeaway is straightforward, according to Barry Fisher of Barry Fisher Arbitration and Mediation in Toronto. "Short service is not short notice. And the sooner employers internalize that, the better."

Two months for employee dismissal

Quoc (Tobey) Ho was hired as corporate controller at Monk Office Supply in Victoria on April 1, 2024, at a salary of $125,000 a year. He lasted just under 11 weeks. On June 17, 2024, Monk's president and CEO called him into her office and terminated his employment without cause and without explanation.

Ho, who appeared in court without a lawyer, sued for wrongful dismissal. He asked for six months' notice and aggravated damages. Monk argued two months was sufficient and that no aggravated damages were warranted.

Justice Gareth Morley found for Ho on the notice question, awarding four months — but dismissed the aggravated damages claim.

The math: $125,000 annually works out to roughly $41,667 for four months. After subtracting the $1,369 already paid on termination, Monk owes Ho $40,296, plus pre-judgment interest from June 17, 2024 to July 10, 2026.

“Really. the courts are trying to answer one principal question, and you see this in the B.C. decision prominently, which is ‘How long will it take the worker to find comparable re-employment?’” says Vey.

“And the reality is for a lot of jobs out there, especially more professional managerial ones or roles in highly isolated industries where there's not a lot of employer options in the country, the recruitment process takes time.”

The two- to three-month starting point

The framework courts use to determine reasonable notice traces back to a 1960 Ontario decision, Bardal v. The Globe & Mail Ltd., which identified four factors that have been applied ever since: the character of the employment, the length of service, the age of the employee, and the availability of similar employment.

In Ho's case, Justice Morley found age was neutral — Ho was in his early 40s — and length of service was at the low end. The real weight fell on the fourth factor: how hard it would be for someone with Ho's profile to find a comparable role.

The legal framework in B.C. for short-service employees also traces back to a 2009 Court of Appeal decision, Saafeld v. Absolute Software Corporation, which established a starting point for employees with less than 18 months of service, says Vey.

"[Saafeld] set out this expectation of a minimum, pseudo floor of two to three months for short-service employees who were typically of the managerial or professional level — the logic being it’s probably going to be harder to find comparable work.”

From that starting point, courts look for factors that justify an upward adjustment. In Ho's case, there were two: his job search and the fact that the job he eventually found paid $35,000 less per year than the one he'd lost.

"The court leaned into the fact that this worker was out of a job for five months," says Vey. "Even when he accepted a new job, he took a significant pay decrease which the court inferred was demonstrable of the fact that there simply were not available comparable jobs out there for him to secure.”

Ontario courts have taken a similar approach, though the reasoning can cut in a less obvious direction. In a 2025 Ontario decision Chan v. NYX Capital Corp., the court treated short service or “churn” as an impediment for the worker in looking for a new job, says Vey.

"It would require him to explain to prospective employers why he was terminated so soon after being hired," he says, and that extra burden justified a longer notice period.

Vey says he understands “the allure” of using the one-month formula, but there are limits.

"If the purpose of reasonable notice is to provide income support while you're transitioning, and it's going to, by default, take a couple of weeks to a couple of months to secure a new job, it follows that severance awards should track similarly."

Notice 'shockingly unpredictable'

Many HR professionals reach instinctively for the rule of thumb of one month's notice per year of service. But Fisher is blunt about the formula's limits, calling it “shockingly unpredictable.”

"That's never been a decent rule, not for short-service people," he says. "It starts working when you get around over five years. But under five years, it's not a one-to-one ratio at all."

Fisher says the B.C. case is interesting in that the court tries to provide some rules by saying that for an employee with service under 18 months, the starting point should be two to three months.

“I've never seen a judge go down from the starting point," he says.

The result is that short-service employees will almost always receive notice periods that look disproportionate relative to their tenure.

"You can get a notice period equal to or longer than your employment period," says Fisher. "That's going to shock the daylights out of a lot of employers."

However, he has a broader critique of how courts reason in this area, calling it a “circular argument.” When judges extend notice periods beyond standard ranges — whether past the two- to three-month floor for short service or past the informal 24-month ceiling for long service — they typically invoke "extraordinary circumstances" to justify the departure.

But Fisher says those factors almost always turn out to be the Bardal factors themselves: age, seniority, specialization, difficulty of re-employment.

"One would have thought that exceptional circumstances would be something not taken into account by the Bardal factors at all — but they just repeat,” he says.

“I gave up a long time ago thinking this analysis was logical. There's a lot of just sort of presumptions and emotion in it.”

Is an explanation required?

In the Ho case, he also sought aggravated damages — compensation for psychological harm caused by the manner of his dismissal — arguing that Monk's refusal to explain why he was fired compounded the blow.

The court declined. Justice Morley acknowledged that Ho found the termination "a shock" and that it affected his sleep, caused anxiety, and damaged his confidence. But the judgment drew a firm line between suffering caused by the decision to fire someone and suffering caused by how the firing was carried out.

Employers who dismiss without cause have no obligation to explain themselves, the court held. Not offering a rationale is not a breach of the duty of good faith. Neither is failing to give advance warning. As Justice Morley put it: "If no cause is alleged, and the employee is not unionized, there is no common law doctrine of progressive discipline."

Federally regulated employees — those in industries like banking, telecommunications, and interprovincial transportation — have a mechanism under the Canada Labour Code by which they can formally request a written reason for their dismissal.

Should dismissals be explained?

That said, both lawyers caution against reading the court's endorsement of the policy as a strategic recommendation.

"Just because you don't have to give an explanation to the employee doesn't necessarily mean you should avoid doing so," says Vey. "What I've seen, time and time again, is that if you leave the question 'Why?' hanging out there, employees will sometimes try to fill in the details themselves."

If employers leave that part blank, there’s the increased risk that ex-employees may take legal action based in part on hurt feelings or a misunderstanding, he says.

Fisher is similarly pragmatic. "Sometimes they sue just to find out why they were let go," he says.

Both lawyers suggest that a short, honest, human explanation — even something as simple as acknowledging a poor cultural fit — is more likely to prevent a claim than to invite one.

"Try to provide something, even if it's relatively brief," says Vey. "Make sure it's honest. But don't leave them questioning that."

Termination clauses matter

 Both lawyers note that the entire exercise of calculating reasonable notice is irrelevant if the employer has a valid, enforceable termination clause capping notice at something less.

But they both flag that such clauses fail in practice far more often than employers expect.

"Well over 50% of the cases I see, the first fight is over the employment agreement, whether the termination clause is enforceable," says Fisher.

“Employers don’t make it easy… they know how simple and easy it could be, but employers want to add a sentence here, they want to add a word here… it’s very much a game.”