Employment contracts
A properly drafted employment contract is essential for safeguarding your business and giving employees certainty about their terms and conditions of employment.
Where employees are engaged without a written employment contract – or the contract used is not fit for purpose – there is always the potential for disputes to arise concerning (for example) working hours, overtime and rates of pay. A business will also be vulnerable to former employees contacting clients, poaching staff or misusing the company’s confidential information if the employee’s obligations both during and after employment are not properly set out in a contract of employment.
Employment contract advice
Our team of lawyers are experts in advising on employment contracts. If you have not reviewed your employment contracts recently, or are still operating without any formal written documents, we’re always available to assist you in this area.
Employment contract templates
For most businesses it is possible to develop a suite of employment contract templates, so that these can be used whenever new starters are engaged. For example, you might require a full time employment contract template, a part time employment contract template, a casual employment contract template and possibly a fixed term employment contract template.
We can draft these contracts to fit the needs of your business to include variables depending on the particular role the contract relates to.
Breach of employment contracts
We regularly advise clients on situations where there has been a breach of an employment contract by an employee. This might include an employee acting in conflict of interest with the employer, breaching a restraint of trade provision (eg stealing clients) or providing insufficient notice of resignation.
We also advise on allegations of breach of contract by employers – for example those relating to pay and bonuses.
In an appropriate situation a breach of employment contract claim can be brought in the courts, which might include an application for an injunction to compel the party in breach to cease breaching the contract.
Executive employment contracts
It is important that businesses properly consider the contractual arrangements for their most senior members of staff. It is these people who (generally) will have the strongest ties with your customers and clients and will have the ability to influence their relationship with the company. It is therefore necessary to ensure that the executive contracts adequately protect the business in this area.
Executives will also usually have more complex arrangements in terms of pay, bonuses and other entitlements which should be dealt with comprehensively in their contract (to avoid the potential for disputes).
We can help you develop an executive employment contract template and/or a CEO contract template that will help you protect your business and provide certainty for your executive-level members of staff.
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