Six out of ten employers (59%) said that in the event of a redundancy they would try to reach a mutually agreeable leaving date with an employee. One in four (26%) said they would not expect the employee to work any of their notice under these circumstances.

Very few said they would force the employee to work some (9%) or all (7%) if their notice period.

But where an employee has resigned, more than half the employers on our panel (53%) said they would expect the individual to work their contractual notice period in full.

Four out of ten (39%) said they would be willing to reach some form of compromise about a leaving date. One in ten (9%) said they would expect the employee to work some but not all of their notice.

More than half the organisations surveyed (52%) also said that there were some categories of employee who would be expected to leave the building immediately once their departure had been decided.

These included not just employees found guilty of gross misconduct, but also those with access to sensitive information, those leaving to work for a competitor, and those working in roles where they could have an adverse commercial impact on the company.

The IRS survey is based on responses from 101 HR practitioners working in organisations that collectively employ some 340,000 people.

In addition to these findings, the survey looks at the length of notice periods in different organisations (and the reasons many employers have more than one set of notice periods), and the use of confidentiality and non-compete clauses and compromise agreements.