Switzerland Employment Notice Periods: Art. 335c OR Explained

An employment contract in Switzerland can generally be ended by either side without giving any reason at all. What actually has to be respected first is the notice period, and that period depends almost entirely on how long the employee has already worked there when notice is given.

Two provisions of the Code of Obligations do nearly all of the work here. Art. 335b OR governs the probation period at the very start of a job, and Art. 335c OR governs every notice period once that probation has ended. Getting the wrong figure from either one is the single most common employment law mistake in Switzerland, on both sides of the desk.

Information last verified on 21 July 2026. This page provides general legal information about Swiss law and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

Probation is the first month by default, not a fixed clause

Unless the employment contract says otherwise, Art. 335b Abs. 1 OR sets probation as the first month of an employment relationship. During that month, either the employer or the employee can end the contract at any time, on seven days notice, and that notice can be given on any day of the week, not just a weekday or a month end.

This is a genuinely short window compared with what follows it. A newly hired employee who decides the job is not a fit, or an employer who decides a new hire is not working out, does not have to wait for a month end or give months of notice to walk away during this period.

Parties are free to change the length of probation. Art. 335b Abs. 2 OR allows a written agreement, a Normalarbeitsvertrag or a Gesamtarbeitsvertrag to set a different probation period, but the extended period cannot exceed three months under any circumstances. A contract that purports to set a six month probation is simply wrong on that point, regardless of what it says.

There is also a real, separate mechanic worth knowing about. Art. 335b Abs. 3 OR provides that if probation is effectively shortened because the employee was unable to work due to illness, an accident, or an involuntary statutory duty such as compulsory military or civil service, the probation period is extended by a corresponding amount. An employee out sick for two of their first four weeks does not lose probation protection just because the calendar month has technically ended.

The three notice bands once probation is over

Once probation ends, Art. 335c Abs. 1 OR takes over, and it sets three bands tied to how long the employee has been with the employer. Each band is expressed as a number of months, and every one of them runs to the end of a calendar month, never a random weekday.

These bands apply equally whether the employer or the employee is the one giving notice. The length is set by how long the employee has worked there, not by which side wants to end the relationship.

The boundary almost everyone gets wrong: your current year, not your completed years

Here is the detail that causes more disputes than any other part of Art. 335c OR. The statute speaks in terms of the service year that is currently running when notice is given, not the number of whole years the employee has already finished.

That means an employee who has completed exactly one full year of employment is not still in their first Dienstjahr. They have already moved into their second Dienstjahr, the day after their one year anniversary, and they are therefore already on the two month notice band, not the one month band.

Consider a concrete case. An employee started on 1 March 2025. On 1 March 2026 they complete one full year of service, and from that date they are in their second Dienstjahr. If notice is given on 15 April 2026, more than a year after the start date, the applicable period is two months, not one, because the employee is squarely inside their second service year by then.

This reading is the standard, undisputed one in Swiss employment law commentary, and it is worth stating plainly because it is so easy to miscalculate. A one year anniversary does not buy an extra month of the shorter notice period. It moves the employee straight into the longer one.

How far the standard bands can be changed by agreement

The bands above are defaults, not absolute floors and ceilings in every direction. Art. 335c Abs. 2 OR allows the parties to vary them by written agreement, a Normalarbeitsvertrag, or a Gesamtarbeitsvertrag, and many Swiss employment contracts do lengthen the notice period, particularly for more senior roles.

Shortening is much more restricted. The statute allows a notice period below one month only through a Gesamtarbeitsvertrag, a collective bargaining agreement, and only for the first service year. Past that first year, there is no route to a notice period shorter than one month by ordinary written agreement between employer and employee, no matter what both sides sign.

This asymmetry matters in practice. An individual employment contract that promises a two week notice period in an employee's fifth year of service is not enforceable on that point unless it happens to be shortening within a collective agreement's first year carve out, which is a narrow fact pattern that rarely applies once someone has been employed for years.

An edge case: unused parental leave can extend an employer's notice

Art. 335c Abs. 3 OR contains a mechanic that surprises most readers because it only runs in one direction. If the employer gives notice, and the employee still has an unused entitlement to the other parent's leave under Art. 329g OR before the employment relationship actually ends, the notice period is extended by however many of those leave days remain unused.

This provision only applies to employer initiated notice. An employee resigning is not affected by it in the same way, and it only comes into play at all if there is a genuine unused entitlement under Art. 329g OR at the relevant time. Most notice situations will not touch this provision, but it is a real rule rather than a theoretical one, and an employer giving notice to an employee who recently became a parent should check it before assuming the standard band is the final answer.

No local custom escape, unlike a residential lease

One more contrast is worth making explicit, because readers sometimes assume employment and tenancy notice work the same way. Under Art. 266c OR, notice on a residential lease can run to an ortsüblicher Termin, a locally customary date such as the end of March, June, September or December, if local practice recognizes one.

Employment notice under Art. 335c OR has no equivalent escape hatch. It runs to the end of a calendar month, full stop, regardless of any local custom in the canton or industry concerned. Do not import the tenancy rule into an employment calculation, since the two systems genuinely diverge on this point.

Where this fits in the wider picture

Everything above describes the standard notice periods for an unbefristet employment contract outside any protected window. Certain periods, such as illness, accident, military service and pregnancy, suspend or void notice altogether under a separate rule, covered in full on our protected periods page.

If a notice you received or gave looks like it might have been abusive rather than merely inconvenient, that is a different legal question addressed on our wrongful termination page. For what belongs in a reference letter once employment actually ends, see our job reference guide, and for the wider Swiss employment law picture start at our employment law hub.

For the rest of Swiss law beyond employment, our guide to Swiss law covers the wider picture.