Employment contracts and the '3Cs' - pt.2 | Protecting business interests

What do we mean when talking about ‘commerciality’ in employment contracts? Well, it’s all the stuff that you don’t need to include but can choose to add in order to protect your business interests and what matters most to you.

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There’s loads I could go into but my top tips would be:

Reflect reality – what’s important to your business will change over time. If you don’t think about updating your employment contracts as your business evolves, their value and effectiveness will dilute over time.

Protecting know-how – think about what makes your business unique. Your proposals, pitches, products, pricing…I could go on! They’re all capable of being protected, but you need to call them out in your contracts! Otherwise, they’re often fair game to departing employees.

Post-termination restrictions – “they’re not enforceable!”…if I had a pound for every time I’ve heard that! They’re definitely easy to get wrong, but are enforceable when drafted appropriately. Restrictions that aren’t specific or drafted tightly enough are highly unlikely to be upheld. You need to make sure the terms of the restrictions don’t go further than necessary to protect your legitimate business interests – stating an employee can’t ever work for a key competitor isn’t going to work unfortunately!

Contact me here if you’d like to discuss how we can help you to ensure you’re protecting what matters most to your business. You can also use our free, self-service health check tool to see whether your employment contracts are fighting fit!

This update is accurate on the date it was published, but may be subject to change which may or may not be notified to you. This update is not to be taken as advice and you should seek advice if anything contained within affects you or your business.