Confidentiality and restrictive covenants
When recruiting your next employee, the furthest thing from your mind will be the thought of them leaving but, as your business develops, you will need to ensure that the business information and contacts that you have tirelessly built up are protected from departing employees who are often well placed to take advantage of confidential information, strategic plans, customer and client details.
It is for this reason that employers must be able to rely on robust and enforceable restrictive covenants, whether in contracts of employment or as a separate contractual policy or agreement.
The types of restrictive covenant clauses which may be included in these agreements are:
- Confidentiality: To impose a duty on the ex-employee to keep your business information a secret.
- Non-poaching: To prevent your ex-employee from taking your staff to new employment or a business.
- Non-compete: To prevent the ex-employee from working for a competitor or seeking to set up a competing business.
- Non-solicitation: To impose a duty for an ex-employee not to approach your business’s existing or prospective customers or clients with a view to doing business with them.
To ensure any clauses added are enforceable, the restrictive covenants you put in place will need to be reasonable and only as wide as necessary to protect the legitimate commercial interests of the business.
