der Angestellte muss bis März des Folgejahres entweder noch angestellt sein oder, falls er zwischenzeitlich gekündigt hat, bis dahin die Kündigung erklärt haben - so ungefähr

hieße das, dass "to serve one's notice" genau das gleiche bedeutet wie "to hand in one's notice"?

Wenn er also bis März des Folgejahrs die Kündigung zwar eingereicht hat, aber noch dort arbeitet, dann kriegt er den Bonus noch, oder so?
Aber dann müsste man das doch gar nicht extra erwähnen, das wäre doch einfach dann im ersten Teil des Satzes schon ausgedrückt, er arbeitet noch dort, also bekommt er den Bonus.

Maybe the difference is that I could say that as of March 1st I'm leaving a company and then take a week of vacation and receive my sick time in a lump sum payout, and not really be there working for the company in March. Maybe?

#3: I'd say give notice, but I would understand either of the other variants you mentioned.

To serve one's notice means to me that you have given notice to quit but that you are still in an employment relationship. You may be still doing work, on vacation, whatever, but you are still an employee. Why stating that the employment relationship must still be in existence is not sufficient is not clear to me. (But then I'm not a lawyer.)

Also, IMHO, if you're going to say anything about serving notice, it ought to read:

In order to qualify for the xy bonus payment, the employee must be employed or serving his or her notice in March of the year following the bonus period.

Now that I think of it, "in March" is a bit vague for a legal/contractual thing, isn't it? Shouldn't that be a specific date?

Yeah, SD3, I thought the same thing. Typically one would see something like "on or before March 1st" or "on or before March 31st". The "in March" struck me as too vague and not sufficiently legalistic, but I'm not sure of the source.

SD3: re #6, I'm not so sure. Initially, I thought the same as you, but then I googled "serve his notice". If it means "work his notice", it generally seems to be followed by "period", i.e. "serve his notice period". In the wider sense, to serve a notice means imho to give notification of something that is yet to happen. That, coupled with the fact that the text says "must be employed or serve his...notice" rather than "serving", makes me come down on the side of "hand in / give notice".

re: March. It could be a rather vague way of saying "in the month preceding the end of the financial year". Is that 5th April everywhere or just in the UK? I don't find "in March" particularly satisfactory either, but maybe Goldammer has simplified that part of the sentence.

No, I haven't changed anything in the text. It's written exactly like that in the source.
The friend who asked me in the first place said it might be not the best of translations (it's from an internationally operating company in a German speaking country). So it seems to me that this might be true, and in consequence, SD3's guess in #6 might be right after all.
What remains unclear is the vague notion of "March"; you are right about this, I hadn't noticed.

I also don't think 'serve' is intended here in the sense of 'serve out a period of notice,' but simply in the sense of 'give' (AE) or 'hand in' (BE), i.e., kündigen.

That said, in my experience, 'serve notice,' unlike the other two, is usually used only figuratively, e.g.: The treasury secretary's criticism served notice that financial executives could no longer accept shamelessly huge bonuses without facing the consequences. 

So I wouldn't use this sentence as an example D>E, as it does indeed sound a little off, at least to my ears. And it does sound as if they ought to have written 'in or before March,' or 'by March,' or something slightly different, unless the bonus applies only to the month of March and nothing before or after it.

It seems clear that the bonus for year N will only be paid if the employee is still working through the full month of March of the following year (N+1), irrespective of whether or not he/she is still on regular employment or has given notice already.
In diesem Sinne:
während der Kündigungsfrist

@hm--us
Sorry, I am getting completely confused now.

Do you or don't you think it is an example for German badly translated into English?

I do think it is unclear English. fairfax's explanation seems plausible, but that would actually be expressed differently in clearer English -- e.g., as fairfax wrote, through the full month of March.

I don't have any idea what language it might have been translated from. But there could also be a cultural difference, because other countries may not have the same automatic rules for a long official notice period as Germany seems to.

I should add that what is described here (in somewhat dubious English) is how the "Weihnachtsgeld" used to be treated "im Oeffentlichen Dienst" in Germany. You only got to keep it if you were in employment through March of the following year. I do not know whether this is still the case. --- What's the origin of the source sentences?

Aus einem Schweizer Unternehmen; also wenn es eine schlechte Übersetzung ist, dann (Schweizer-) Deutsch --> Englisch

@Anne(gb): You could be right with regard to the meaning of serve one's notice (similar to serve a writ), but wouldn't you then expect "notice of termination of employment" or some such language?

Apart from that, I don't understand the significance of the month in which notice is given. As I mentioned earlier, what seems more relevant to me, as a layperson, is whether or not the person concerned has or has not an explicit or implied employment contract on the cutoff date, whenever that may be. (Incidentally, I've just had a look at my own profit-sharing plan. It's very specific with regard to dates - absolutely no sign of "in the month of xxx" or anything of that kind.)

Clearly, I'm arguing here from my sense of logic. I don't know what the original author had in mind. Whatever it was, s/he seems to have expressed it poorly or to have been poorly served by the translator.

BTW hm--us, the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) uses the term "give notice" on its workSMART website.
http://www.worksmart.org.uk/rights/viewsectio...

Ich habe gerade nochmal mit meinem Bekannten gesprochen, und ich möchte euch einfach interessehalber noch einige Hintergrundinformationen geben.

Die Formulierung ist aus einer neuen , verschärften Regelung über die Prämienvergütung, die zum Jahresanfang gewissermaßen "durch die Hintertür" eingeführt wurde. Bisher galt eine Regelung, nach der man auf jeden Fall die Prämie noch anteilig bekam für das Jahr, in dem man - egal aus welchem Grund - ausschied. D.h. wenn man z.B. noch bis einschließlich Juni angestellt war, bekam man noch die Hälfte der Jahresprämie.
Die gewollte Aussage ist höchstwahrscheinlich die, dass die Prämie in Zukunft nur noch dann bezahlt wird, wenn man auch noch im März des Folgejahres angestellt ist und bis einschließlich März des Folgejahres auch noch in einem ungekündigten Arbeitsverhältnis steht.
Eine ziemlich massive Verschärfung der Regelung, wie ihr seht.

Diese gewollte Aussage geht aber, darüber besteht hier ja Konsens, eindeutig nicht aus der Formulierung hervor. Wir vermuten, dass es ein Übersetzungspfusch ist - derjenige, der diesen englischen Satz verfasst hat, hatte keine Ahnung, was eigentlich ausgesagt werden sollte. Peinlich für das Unternehmen.