A worker won $600,000 after Twitter said his goodbye messages showed he had resigned. The case holds valuable lessons for staff and employers.

“This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade,” the billionaire wrote in the email.

Anyone who didn’t click yes on a link in the email to “be part of the new Twitter” by the next day would receive three months’ severance.

Rooney fell into that group. But rather than leaving quietly, he brought a case to Ireland’s Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), claiming unfair dismissal. He won and was awarded around $600,000.

Recently released documents detail the WRC’s decision, revealing new details about Rooney’s case and Twitter’s HR practices under Musk’s direction.

Rooney saw the email but did not respond. Three days later, he received a second email from HR acknowledging his “decision to resign and accept the voluntary separation offer.”

“At no time have I indicated to Twitter that I am resigning my position,” he replied, a week later, according to the WRC’s report. The company told him that not clicking yes was “treated as you having served notice to resign your employment.”

Resignation by omission

It may not seem like common practice to terminate an employee without speaking to them, but no-show resignations aren’t unheard of, said Robyn Hopper, an HR knowledge advisor at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).

Employee handbooks explain when termination may be considered a voluntary resignation. The issue is that many employees tend not to read company policies or handbooks until it’s too late, said Stefanie Camfield, director of HR at Engage PEO.

Camfield said the other factor to be aware of is that many US companies do not offer a written employment contract to workers, and their position in a company is mostly “at-will.”

“At-will means an employer or the employee can end the employment relationship for any reason or no reason, so long as it’s not unlawful,” she said.

If anything is disputed, the courts generally place the employee in a position of less strength.

For example, an employer can terminate an employee without notice if they fail to show up for work. They assume the employee has decided to resign and just hasn’t told them yet, Camfield said. This is known as job abandonment.

How long the employee has depends, but most companies that Camfield works with set a three day rule.

Communication

Camfield said Twitter’s handling of the situation was hampered by unclear communication and informal language.

“The employee wasn’t really given clear terms on the changes to the terms of their employment. They were just told Twitter 2.0, that’s not clarity.

“What stood out to me is that there’s a question about whether the statement that was sent to the employee could be construed as the employee resigning by not checking yes,” said Camfied. “There’s not anything that actually evidences that the employee resigned.”

However, she thought that the employee could have responded in some manner on the day, even if they did not agree with what was being presented to them.

Ending an employment relationship generally deserves face-to-face or at least personalized conversations, she said. But phone calls are often time-consuming and need to be scheduled. Particularly for a large workforce, it’s just not feasible to individually call all employees.

Hopper pointed out that sometimes HR has their hands tied and is acting on orders from upper management.

“Some employers have a requirement that if an employee is resigning, and it is written as an email or text, they will call an employee to make sure that what was received is legitimate,” she said. “But there is no law that I am aware of that states that an employee or employer cannot use email or other communication.”

Hybrid and remote work has also created a new challenge for HR professionals, particularly with employees spread across regions with different regulations, Hopper said.

Your Slack messages aren’t private

The WRC decision report shows that on the day Rooney received Musk’s email, he messaged a colleague on Slack, saying: “Hey – wanted to let you know im going. I need to step away for my own sake. I’m deeply troubled by whats going on here these days.”

In another message, he wrote: “Iv made the decision not to press the yes button, and wanted to drop in a goodbye here.”

Twitter used these messages and others as evidence that he intended to leave the company. The WRC found the slack messages had “no relevance to the question as to what brought about the termination of the Complainant’s employment.”

Even though Rooney won his case, experts told BI that it should serve as a reminder to all employees about the risks of using internal messaging systems.

Employers often have the right to monitor and preserve data on Slack. They primarily use it to ensure company policies are being followed, said Camfield, but it can be used however they see fit — including as evidence in a lawsuit, as Twitter did in this case.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, she added.

“This messaging tends to encourage employees to talk more frequently and more casually. And it can lead to inappropriate conversations.”

Slack messages could just as easily be used as evidence in a sexual harassment case, Camfield said.

Slack is still a great tool for keeping teams connected in the age of hybrid work. However, employers need to train employees to understand that company policies extend to Slack and that their information is not private, she said.