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You have a severance offer in front of you. The number on page one seems arbitrary. Maybe it feels generous, maybe insulting, maybe just confusing. The question almost everyone asks first is the same: "How do I know if this is fair?"
The honest answer is that there is no single number. Severance is not regulated by Utah law in the way wages or overtime are. Outside of specific contractual obligations or group-layoff requirements, your employer can offer two weeks, ten weeks, or twelve months. Any of those could be defensible depending on the circumstances. What does exist is a working set of market benchmarks, position-based ranges, and situational factors that experienced employment attorneys use to evaluate offers. This guide walks through that framework so you can evaluate your own offer before deciding whether to accept, push back, or seek counsel.
Utah is an at-will employment state. Outside of an existing contractual obligation—an employment agreement, a written severance policy, a collective bargaining agreement, or a representation in an employee handbook that creates a binding promise—employers are not legally required to offer severance at all.
That absence of a legal floor is what makes benchmarking so important. When there is no statutory minimum, the only way to evaluate an offer is against market practice, the specific circumstances of your termination, and what the employer is actually receiving from you in exchange. Employers know this. The initial offer is usually constructed with reference to internal company practice, a budget for the separation, and an expectation that some employees will negotiate. It is rarely the number the employer would refuse to exceed.
We have written separately about the leverage Utah employees actually have in severance negotiations, and the analysis there is directly relevant: your leverage shapes the negotiation, but the benchmarks shape the conversation.
The most widely used severance benchmark across industries is some multiple of weeks of pay per year of service. This is the formula most HR departments use internally to construct initial offers, and it is the framework that experienced employment counsel applies first when evaluating an offer.
The typical ranges look like this:
These are starting points, not entitlements. Two weeks per year of service for a ten-year exempt employee produces twenty weeks of pay. That is roughly the midpoint of what most market surveys identify for that profile. An offer materially below that range deserves scrutiny. An offer materially above it may reflect circumstances—potential legal claims, retention concerns, internal precedent—that are worth understanding.
The weeks-per-year benchmark is the starting point. Several factors push the appropriate number up or down from there, and any benchmarking exercise has to account for them.
A no-fault layoff in a budget-driven restructuring sits in the middle of the range. A termination that follows protected activity—reporting harassment, requesting a disability accommodation, taking FMLA leave, raising wage complaints—shifts the analysis entirely. The employer is no longer just providing a goodwill payment; it is purchasing a release of potential legal claims that could result in significant damages.
Performance-based terminations sit at the lower end. A termination for documented cause such as actual misconduct or repeated policy violations, often comes with no severance at all, or with a nominal amount conditioned on a full release.
Tenure matters, but quality of service matters as well. A ten-year employee with consistent strong reviews, no disciplinary history, and a track record of meaningful contributions has a stronger position than a ten-year employee with documented performance concerns. Both fall within the same benchmark range; the difference is where within that range the negotiation lands.
Severance norms vary by industry. Technology and financial services tend to offer more generous packages, particularly for senior roles. Healthcare and professional services often build severance around contractual provisions in employment agreements. Retail, hospitality, and manufacturing typically run leaner. None of this is dispositive, but if your offer is well below the norm for your specific industry, that is a useful data point.
The implicit purpose of severance is to bridge the employee to the next role. Markets where comparable roles are scarce, or where specialized fields have limited employers, justify longer severance periods. A senior medical specialist in a narrow subspecialty in Utah may need substantially more bridge time than a general business analyst in the same metro area.
Severance is consideration, payment for something specific the employer wants from you. The bigger that something is, the higher the appropriate number. If you are signing away potential discrimination claims, wage-and-hour claims, or other legal exposure, the value of what you are giving up should be reflected in what you receive. Similarly, if you are accepting new restrictive covenants you did not previously have—a non-compete, a customer non-solicitation, an expanded confidentiality obligation—those carry independent value that should be priced into the package.
Focusing exclusively on weeks of pay misses a substantial portion of what a severance package is actually worth. Several non-cash components routinely add meaningful value and should be evaluated alongside the headline number.
COBRA premiums can run $700-$2,500 per month for a family plan. An employer-paid COBRA subsidy for three to six months can be worth $5,000-$15,000 in real cost. For employees with health concerns or dependents, this component often matters more than an additional few weeks of pay.
Unvested equity is typically forfeited upon termination. A severance package that accelerates vesting, extends post-termination exercise windows for stock options, or pro-rates RSU vesting for the current period can be worth substantially more than the cash component.
We cover the mechanics of equity treatment on termination in our guide to equity grant awards (the same principles that apply at hire apply at exit).
If you are terminated partway through a bonus performance period, a pro-rata bonus payment for the time you worked is often negotiable, even when the underlying bonus plan technically requires employment on the payment date. For mid-year terminations, this component alone can equal several weeks of additional severance value.
Outplacement services (executive coaching, resume support, networking assistance) typically cost the employer $2,000-$5,000 and can meaningfully shorten your time to the next role. Reference protocols, neutral reference letters, and agreed-upon language about your departure carry less measurable but very real value.
Some of the most valuable terms in a severance agreement are not in the financial section at all. Restrictive covenants, releases, non-disparagement, and confidentiality provisions can shape your career and legal exposure for years. A severance package with strong cash but problematic legal terms can be worse than a smaller package with balanced legal protections.
The protections that consistently matter in our practice:
We have written separately about why one-sided releases leave employees legally vulnerable, and the same principle applies across all of these provisions. Reciprocity is the baseline; one-sided terms warrant scrutiny.
If you are evaluating a severance offer right now, work through the following framework before responding.
Identify the appropriate weeks-per-year multiplier for your role level using the table above. Multiply by your years of service. Compare the result to the cash portion of your offer. If the offer falls well below the calculated range, that gap is the starting point for negotiation. If it falls within the range, the question becomes whether circumstances push the appropriate number toward the high end.
Work through each of the situational factors and identify those that apply to you: protected activity that preceded the termination, long tenure with strong performance, industry norms above the general benchmark, a narrow job market for your specialty, restrictive covenants you are being asked to accept or expand. Each is an argument for an upward adjustment from the baseline.
Estimate the value of benefits continuation, any equity treatment, bonus pro-rata eligibility, and transition support being offered. Add this to the cash number to determine the total package value. A modest cash number with strong non-cash components may be more competitive than it initially appears.
Identify whether the release is mutual, whether non-disparagement runs both ways, whether confidentiality includes appropriate carve-outs, whether the agreement introduces new restrictive covenants, and whether indemnification survives. Each of these has independent value and each is typically negotiable.
Few negotiations achieve every objective. Rank what matters most to you: additional cash, eliminating a non-compete, preserving equity, securing a neutral reference, mutual release. The clearer your priorities, the more effective the negotiation strategy.
Federal law imposes specific requirements when an employer requests a release of age discrimination claims as part of a severance agreement. Under the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act (OWBPA), an employee aged 40 or older must be given at least 21 days to consider the agreement before signing, with a 7-day revocation period after signing. In a group termination, that consideration period extends to 45 days, and the employer must provide specific information about the job titles, ages, and selection criteria for everyone included in the layoff, as well as everyone excluded.
These requirements exist because group layoffs are statistically more likely to produce age discrimination claims, and Congress wanted older workers to have time and information to evaluate what they were releasing. If you are over 40 and have been included in a group layoff, the disclosures the employer is required to make can themselves be a source of leverage. Patterns that disproportionately affect older workers are exactly what these disclosures are designed to reveal.
Group layoffs above certain thresholds also implicate the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, which requires 60 days of advance notice for qualifying mass layoffs and plant closings. WARN violations can result in 60 days of back pay: an entitlement that runs independent of any severance offer the employer makes.
If your benchmarking exercise suggests your offer is below market, the response is not to react emotionally. The response is to present a structured counter that explains, in writing, why a higher number is appropriate.
Effective counters tend to share a few characteristics. They reference specific market data rather than personal grievances. They identify specific provisions for revision rather than demanding generalized improvement. They prioritize. Not every term needs to change, just the ones that matter most. They are framed around mutual interest rather than confrontation: "To reach a final resolution that both parties can sign, we'd like to address the following items."
If you are worried that pushing back will cause the employer to withdraw the offer entirely, we have addressed that fear directly in our analysis of whether employers actually rescind severance offers when employees negotiate. The short answer is that, in over a decade of representing Utah employees, we have not seen it happen in response to professional, good-faith negotiation.
Not every severance offer warrants attorney involvement. A modest offer for a short-tenured employee with no restrictive covenants, no equity, and no potential legal claims may be straightforward enough to evaluate without counsel. Several signals point in the other direction:
Our practice has handled severance negotiations across a wide range of industries and role levels. The pattern that emerges consistently: initial offers leave room for improvement in the majority of cases, both in cash and in legal protections. The cost of a focused review is modest relative to the dollars typically recovered and the legal terms typically improved.
For a sense of what those improvements actually look like in practice, our results-by-the-numbers analysis breaks down what we have negotiated across recent cases, including both financial gains and the legal protections secured.
At The Utah Employment Lawyer and Crook Legal Group, we help Utah employees evaluate severance offers against market benchmarks, identify the leverage points specific to their situation, and negotiate both the cash number and the legal terms. We provide a clear, honest assessment of what is realistic in your specific circumstances.
If you have an offer in front of you, contact us today for a confidential case evaluation. Text or call us at (801) 695-9039.
Disclaimer: This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. It does not create an attorney-client relationship. The benchmarks discussed reflect general market practice as of publication and are not guarantees of any specific outcome. Every severance situation is fact-specific; consult a qualified Utah employment attorney to evaluate your specific situation.
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