Resignation

• When a person hands in his resignation, he will generally affix a date on which he wants the resignation to take effect. If the employer accepts the resignation, then the employee ceases being an employee on the day that the resignation takes effect. Although an employer might allow the person to use paid leave days before he resigns, the employee cannot use them afterward.
  
  

Vacation Days

• Vacation days are days of unpaid leave that a person has accrued as part of his work with the company. A person will usually acquire a set amount of days after a set amount of working hours. For example, a person might receive one hour of vacation time for every 20 hours worked. Sometimes, an employer will allow the person to spend the last days before he resigns. However, he is not required to do this, nor to compensate the employee unless his contract calls for it.
  
  

Sick Days

• Similarly, an employer can choose to let an employee call in sick for his last days with the company. However, it is not required for the company to do so, as sick days are designed to allow an employee to recuperate when he is unwell. A person, therefore, cannot schedule sick days as he can with vacation time.
  
  

Considerations

• How and whether an employee will be compensated for unused sick days and vacation time will be determined by a company's policies and the employee's contract. By law, a company is not required to provide a person with financial compensation for either of these types of days when the person quits, although some companies make it a policy to do so. A company is more likely to compensate someone for vacation days than sick days because the latter are reserved for recovery from illness.