Can your employer make you leave before your notice period is up?

[OlafLovesAnna]

There has been lots of movement at my workplace and as the employees are mostly quite young I’m curious about how my employers are dealing with the notice periods.

Some staff members have given in their notice and are gone 3 weeks later despite our notice period being 3 months. Obviously they’ve negotiated a shorter notice period as it suits their circumstances better but it’s made me wonder if an employee can insist on working (or being paid PILON) their whole 3 months notice if the employer would rather you leave asap.

I’ve looked at ACAS but I can find the exact answer.

You can insist on being paid for your notice but I doubt you can insist on actually being allowed to enter the premises and carry out work and/or interact with clients.
When I have resigned I always made sure I stated I was available and willing to work my full notice so expected to be paid for it but often I was told not to bother.

@Hoppinggreen exactly this.

They have to pay your full notice. If you resign, give your leaving date 3 months from resignation then they can agree for you to leave early and be available for work and not continue to pay you. You can agree to work your notice and be paid or they can put you on garden leave. This means you are paid your notice, you are not able to work else where but you are not required to work your notice. You are usually required to be available during your normal working hours though.

They cannot ask you to leave and not pay you if you have resigned correctly (giving notice). If you resign with immediate effect, then they can stop payments with immediate effect and only pay for any hours worked.

That’s what I thought, you can either work, get PILON or be put on gardening leave, but the employer can’t just say “oh we’d prefer you to leave in 4 weeks” and not have it either mutually agreed or pay up.

No one of the key tests of being an employee is that the employer controls the access to work.
So once the employer is paying the employee they can order the employee not to attend the premises. This can be by allowing the employee to leave the employment early or by placing the employee on gardening leave.

The employee is not at a financial loss and the employer can organise according to their business need.

Thanks that’s really useful.

They can put you on gardening leave but they must pay your contractual notice period.

They wouldn't want someone spending their entire notice period stealing confidential information, copying client lists, accessing bank accounts, deleting files or sabotaging anything, so if the business is potentially vulnerable in that way they can basically ask you to leave the building as soon as you hand your notice in. They would then have to pay you until the end of your notice period though.