How many warning notices before dismissal?

The short answer: there’s no fixed number

There’s no legally fixed number of warning notices required before a dismissal. Neither the Protection Against Dismissal Act (KSchG) nor the German Civil Code (BGB) names a figure. The Federal Labour Court’s case law doesn’t work with a tally either, but with a case-by-case assessment.

The famous rule “three warning notices, then dismissal is allowed” is a myth, and it’s dangerous in both directions: if you believe you still have two free mistakes left after the first warning notice, you’re underestimating your risk. If you assume after the third warning notice that the dismissal is now unassailable, you’re overestimating the employer’s position.

What actually matters are four things: the relevance (does the warning notice cover the same category of duties as the dismissal charge?), the severity of the breach of duty, how current the warning notice is, and only then its number. That gives you two sentences that describe the answer to your question better than any figure ever could:

• A single warning notice can be enough, if it was relevant and you repeat the same behaviour shortly afterwards.
• Five warning notices can support nothing, if they cover five different topics, are worded too vaguely, or date back years.

At the far end sits the opposite case: for a serious breach of duty, such as theft to the employer’s detriment, no warning notice is needed at all. Then summary dismissal can follow immediately, based on good cause under § 626 BGB.

Important: once the dismissal has actually arrived, only one figure still counts, and it has nothing to do with warning notices: 3 weeks from receipt of the written dismissal to file your unfair dismissal claim (§ 4 KSchG). After that, even a completely baseless dismissal is treated as valid.

What a warning notice is actually for

To understand why there’s no fixed number, you need to know what a warning notice is legally meant to achieve. It serves three functions:

• Reproach function: the employer names a specific piece of conduct and makes clear that it considers it a breach of duty.
• Warning function: it announces that, if the behaviour is repeated, the employment relationship itself is at stake. This is the core element: without this warning, the letter is merely an admonition and cannot support a later dismissal.
• Documentation function: the incident is recorded and can later be proven in proceedings.

According to the Federal Labour Court’s case law, for controllable behaviour a warning notice is generally a requirement for a conduct-related dismissal. The reason lies in the so-called prognosis principle: dismissal isn’t a punishment for the past, it’s meant to prevent future breaches of contract. The employer must therefore show that your behaviour is likely to be repeated. That negative prognosis can only seriously be made once you’ve been warned and behaved the same way regardless. You’ll find more on this standard under conduct-related dismissal.

This is exactly why a fixed number would make no sense: the warning notice isn’t a points tally, it’s evidence for a prognosis. And a prognosis doesn’t improve just because three slips of paper sit in the file instead of one. It improves when the warning matches the charge, is still recent, and you ignored it anyway.

Note: this works in your favour too. The warning notice is explicitly the milder measure: an employer who issues one is thereby saying they want to continue the employment relationship. For that same, already-warned incident, they can no longer dismiss you afterwards, they’ve used up that right with the warning notice.

The four factors that really matter

Instead of counting, labour courts examine four criteria. If you want to know how close dismissal actually is, run your own warning notices through this list:

1) Relevance: does the warning notice match the charge?

This is by far the most important factor, and the one most dismissals fail on. A warning notice only has effect for the same category of duties. Someone warned over repeated lateness isn’t thereby warned that private internet use could lead to dismissal. The employer would need to issue a relevant warning for that first. Three warning notices on three completely different topics therefore don’t add up to anything stronger, they’re three separate first warnings.

2) Severity: how serious was the breach of duty?

The more serious the breach, the fewer repetitions are needed. For trivial matters (being five minutes late once), dismissal is often disproportionate even after several warning notices. For significant breaches (persistent refusal to work, unexcused absence over several days), a single relevant warning notice can be enough.

3) Currency: how long ago was the warning notice?

A warning issued years ago, never followed by anything else, warns nobody anymore. There’s no statutory expiry period, but the warning function fades with time and with unblemished conduct.

4) Number: only now, and only as an indicator

Number is the last factor, not the first. Several relevant warning notices can help the employer prove the risk of repetition. But they can also work against them: someone who issues four warning notices for the same minor matter and keeps you employed thereby shows that continuing was actually reasonable for them.

How close is dismissal? Four typical scenarios

Do you recognise your situation in one of these rows? Work out in 2 minutes with the severance calculator what severance pay would be a realistic point of reference if dismissal does happen.

When no warning notice is needed at all

The question “how many warning notices” has an uncomfortable flip side: sometimes the answer is zero. According to the Federal Labour Court’s case law, a warning notice is unnecessary if it couldn’t fulfil its purpose from the outset. This essentially covers three categories:

• Serious breach of duty: the breach is so severe that you couldn’t seriously have expected the employer to tolerate it. Typical examples are theft, embezzlement, fraud, expense manipulation, or falsifying working hours.
• Breach in the area of trust: it isn’t the work performance that’s affected, but trust itself. Trust destroyed by property offences can’t be restored through a warning, which is why the warning notice would be pointless.
• Clearly no change in behaviour to be expected: you make it clear that you won’t change your behaviour under any circumstances. Here too, the warning falls flat.

In these cases, the employer regularly resorts to summary dismissal and relies on good cause under § 626 BGB. The underlying general legal principle, that continuing obligations can be terminated for good cause, is found in § 314 BGB, with § 626 BGB as the more specific rule for employment relationships. What else has to come together for this, you can read under extraordinary dismissal.

Important: “unnecessary” doesn’t mean “automatically valid”. The employer must prove the serious breach of duty, and must observe the 2-week deadline to declare the dismissal under § 626(2) BGB. If they can’t prove the act and instead rely only on suspicion, even stricter rules apply, including a requirement to hear you out beforehand. More on this under suspicion-based dismissal.

When a warning notice doesn’t help at all: other types of dismissal

A common misunderstanding: “I was never warned, so I can’t be dismissed.” That only applies to conduct-related dismissals. The Protection Against Dismissal Act lists three grounds for dismissal in § 1(2) KSchG, and warning notices play no role at all in two of them:

• Operational dismissal: your job disappears. Exemplary conduct on your part changes nothing, a warning notice would be pointless. Entirely different points are examined here, above all the social selection criteria. Details under operational dismissal and severance pay.
• Person-related dismissal: you can no longer permanently perform the owed work, without any fault on your part. Since there’s no controllable behaviour involved, there’s nothing to warn about. More under person-related dismissal, the most common application being illness-related dismissal.

In practice, this means the warning notice question is only your central lever when the employer is actually accusing you of specific conduct. If the dismissal letter states something else, or gives no reason at all (which is permitted, the reason only needs to be set out during proceedings), the review shifts. The same 3-week deadline applies regardless, in every case.

A side note on the works council: where one exists, it must be consulted before every dismissal under § 102 BetrVG, regardless of the type of dismissal or warning notices involved. If it isn’t informed, or only incompletely, the dismissal is invalid for that reason alone. More under works council.

When does a warning notice lose its effect?

There’s no statutory deadline after which a warning notice automatically disappears from your personnel file, it can remain there permanently. But its effect is something different from its existence, and that effect fades.

The longer the warned incident lies in the past, and the longer you’ve behaved without further complaint since, the less a warning notice can support a prognosis for the future. How quickly this happens depends mainly on the severity of the original breach: a warning notice over a single instance of lateness is used up much faster than one over a serious breach of duty.

Separate from this is the right to removal. If a warning notice is factually incorrect, too vague, disproportionate, or infringes your personal rights, you can demand that it be removed from your personnel file. The Federal Labour Court’s case law derives this right from § 242 BGB in conjunction with § 1004 BGB by analogy. It doesn’t require the passage of time: you can challenge a false warning notice immediately.

Note: the same incident may only be warned once. If the employer later issues a second warning notice for the same facts, it’s invalid. A combined warning notice bundling several accusations into one letter is also risky for them: if even one of the accusations is inaccurate, the whole letter can be removed from the file.

Formal errors that make a warning notice worthless

If you want to know how many of your warning notices actually count, check each one individually against this list. Any one of these errors can mean the warning notice fails to support a later dismissal:

1) Vague accusation without a specific act

“Your work performance is inadequate” or “there have been repeated irregularities” isn’t enough. The warning notice must describe the criticised event specifically enough that you know exactly what’s meant: what, when, where. Without a date and the facts, you can’t targetedly change your behaviour, and that’s precisely the point of a warning notice.

2) Missing warning function

Without the explicit statement that the employment relationship itself is at risk if the behaviour is repeated, it’s only an admonition. It may be unpleasant, but it can’t support a conduct-related dismissal. Check carefully whether your letter actually threatens any consequences at all.

3) Wrong recipient or wrong sender

Only someone with managerial authority may issue a warning notice, typically supervisors, HR management, or company management. A reprimand from a colleague without such authority isn’t a valid warning notice. Equally problematic: behaviour attributed to you collectively as part of a team.

4) Combined warning notice with one weak point

If the employer bundles several accusations into one letter and even one is inaccurate, that can make the entire warning notice vulnerable. They can’t then simply fall back on the claim that the other points were correct.

5) Delay and prior toleration

There’s no statutory deadline for issuing it, but if the warning notice only arrives months after the incident, it looks contrived. The employer is especially weak if they previously tolerated the behaviour silently for a long time, for example years of tolerated private phone use suddenly being warned about.

6) Double warning for the same incident

The same facts may not be warned twice. If an incident appears twice in your personnel file, the second warning notice is invalid, shrinking the number of warning notices that actually count.

Does at least one of your warning notices show a point from this list? Then the severance calculator is worth it: it shows you in 2 minutes what negotiating value your situation has.

What you can do against a warning notice

Unlike with dismissal, there’s no exclusion period running against a warning notice. You don’t have to respond within 3 weeks. That gives you room to act, but it also tempts you to do nothing. These four routes are open to you:

Don’t sign it as an acknowledgement

A signature isn’t a requirement for validity, so you don’t have to sign at all. If the employer insists on a signature, draw a clear line between confirming receipt and agreeing with the content. Write explicitly: “Receipt confirmed on [date], content not acknowledged.” Without this note, your signature can later be interpreted as an admission of the accusation.

Counter-statement for your personnel file

You can write a statement that must be added to your personnel file. It puts your view into the official record, which helps later in proceedings. Keep it factual, name witnesses and evidence, and skip any counter-accusations.

Demand removal from the personnel file

If the warning notice is factually wrong or formally flawed, you can demand its removal and, if necessary, enforce this claim before the labour court (§§ 242, 1004 BGB by analogy, per the Federal Labour Court’s case law). This is the clear route if you want to keep working and keep your file clean.

Deliberately waiting: the tactical option

Not every warning notice needs to be challenged immediately. In practice, the attack on a warning notice is often only made during the unfair dismissal proceedings, for a simple reason: the employer already carries the full burden of presentation and proof for the warned incident there. A separate removal claim can, by contrast, escalate conflict without gaining you anything financially.

Important: “waiting” means documenting, not ignoring. Secure everything that undermines the accusation immediately, and write down from memory how the conversation went. Two years later, nobody remembers the details, and if you’ve secured nothing, you’ll stand empty-handed in proceedings. Which option is smarter depends on whether you want to stay or leave.

What this means for your severance pay

No claim to severance pay follows from a warning notice, and even after a dismissal there’s generally no statutory claim to severance pay either. Still, the warning notice question is economically one of the strongest levers there is, for a very sober reason:

Every vulnerable warning notice weakens the dismissal built on it. If it isn’t relevant, too vague, late, or long since faded, the conduct-related dismissal lacks a foundation. The employer then risks losing proceedings, having to keep employing you, and having to backpay your wages for the entire length of the proceedings. In practice, they regularly buy off this risk with a settlement: the employment relationship ends by mutual agreement, and severance pay is paid in return.

As a point of reference for the amount, the rule of thumb is 0.5 gross monthly salaries per year of employment. It isn’t a claim, it’s a negotiating anchor: the weaker the employer’s warning-notice position, the more is often achievable. What other factors move the amount, you can read under severance pay: amount.

Worked example: Tobias and the irrelevant warning notice

Tobias has worked at the company for 7 years and earns €3,800 gross per month. Two years ago he was warned over a late sick notification. Now the employer issues a conduct-related dismissal, this time for allegedly unauthorised private internet use. There’s no warning notice on this topic. Tobias files an unfair dismissal claim on time. At the conciliation hearing it emerges that the existing warning notice covers a completely different category of duties, so the dismissal is unlikely to hold up. They agree to end the employment at the expiry of the ordinary notice period plus severance pay based on the rule of thumb. At 7 years’ service, the statutory notice period under § 622(2) BGB is 2 months to the end of the month.

On top of that, you’d typically also get a favourable reference and wording for the reason for ending employment that defuses the benefit suspension risk. These figures are an example, not a promise, but they show the lever: the entire amount here hinges on whether the existing warning notice matches the dismissal accusation. For the tax treatment of severance pay, it’s worth looking at the one-fifth rule (Fünftelregelung).

How much could be achievable in your case? Work through your own example in 2 minutes with the severance calculator.

Benefit suspension risk for unemployment benefit

If the warning notices actually do lead to dismissal, a second problem joins in, one many people think about too late: the benefit suspension period. Under § 159 SGB III, the employment agency imposes a suspension period, among other things, if you gave the employer cause for dismissal through conduct in breach of your contract. It usually lasts 12 weeks, and it also reduces your total entitlement period for unemployment benefit.

This is exactly the accusation behind every conduct-related dismissal, and warned behaviour is an obvious reference point for the agency. It isn’t bound by the employer’s account, though, it carries out its own assessment. If you push back and get it recorded in a settlement that the employment relationship isn’t ending because of a breach of contract, you can often avoid the suspension period. Full details under benefit suspension period for unemployment benefit.

Be careful too with an offered termination agreement (Aufhebungsvertrag): after several warning notices it looks like the convenient way out, but it can itself trigger a suspension period, because you’re then jointly ending the employment relationship yourself. Don’t sign anything before you know the consequences.

What you should do now

Whether you’re holding your first warning notice or already your third, the order of your steps shapes the outcome. If the dismissal has already arrived, the detailed guide is under dismissal received: what to do? As long as things are still at the warning notice stage, this order will help:

1. Don’t sign it as an acknowledgement. Confirming receipt, yes, agreeing with the content, no. If you do sign, add “content not acknowledged”.
2. Check each warning notice individually. Does it cover the same category of duties as the current accusation? Is the act named specifically with a date? Is a consequence threatened? How old is it? Sort out what survives this check.
3. Secure evidence, immediately. Emails, time records, rotas, chat logs, names of possible witnesses, plus your own written note of the conversation. Later, it can’t be reconstructed.
4. Consider a counter-statement. For factually wrong accusations, it puts your view into the personnel file. Write it factually, cite facts and evidence, skip any counter-accusations.
5. Involve the works council, if one exists. It can advise you, and for any later dismissal its proper consultation under § 102 BetrVG is a separate angle of attack.
6. Document a change in behaviour, where sensible. Unblemished conduct after a warning notice devalues it over time, and it’s a point in your favour when interests are weighed up.
7. If the dismissal comes: 3 weeks from receipt. Only a unfair dismissal claim filed on time at the labour court preserves the deadline (§ 4 KSchG), not an objection letter and not an email to HR. How many days you have left is calculated by our unfair dismissal claim deadline calculator.
8. Have your situation assessed legally. Whether a dismissal can actually be based on your warning notices is a judgement call, and it determines your strategy: stay or leave, and on what terms.

First get an overview of your leverage: The severance calculator shows you your personal point of reference in 2 minutes.

How can we help you?

The question “how many more warning notices?” can only be answered seriously by looking at your actual letters. That’s exactly what we do: we review your case together with lawyers specialising in employment law. Are the warning notices relevant? Do they hold up formally? How current are they? And if the dismissal does come: how strong is your negotiating position, and what’s realistically achievable, continued employment or a well-compensated end to the role?

We carry the risk: purely success-based, with no upfront cost. Start with an initial assessment via our severance calculator, it only takes 2 minutes. And if the dismissal is already on the table: remember the 3-week deadline, it doesn’t wait.