If no information about severance pay has been communicated, check the company policy manual to find out what is standard practice.

CNN: Six ways to prepare for a layoff

And that is the practice recommended by the Department of Justice in the manual distributed to United States attorneys who enforce the criminal code in federal courts throughout the nation.

CNN

Obviously this clumsy manual method would not often be used in practice, and the services of a computer programmer would generally be required to automate it.

ECONOMIST: Cryptography