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- Monday – Friday 8 AM – 6 PM
We can help you put in place appropriate terms and conditions of employment for your staff including, where appropriate, bespoke restrictive covenants, confidentiality and data protection provisions. We can include additional provisions for employee shareholders to supplement the provisions of a Shareholders Agreement and the Articles of Association and how their shares will be dealt with when they leave. In privately owned and run companies, you really don’t want to have ex-employees as minority shareholders.
Even with appropriately drafted terms and conditions of employment, special care must be taken in the run-up to and the termination of employment so that the employer does not inadvertently do anything which either makes the post-termination covenants vulnerable to challenge or even invalidates them completely – which happens all too often. We advise on procedures to help minimise this happening.
Where the ex-employee acts in breach of contract in relation to restrictive covenants we can advise on the enforceability of the restrictive covenants and confidentiality clauses and support you in seeking to enforce the restrictions against the ex-employee up to the Letter before Claim stage and seeking appropriate undertakings.
We advise on the implementation of a wide range of employee policies and procedures and we can provide support to the employer when dealing with disciplinary and grievance procedures. Whilst no one can stop an ex-employee from filing a claim at an employment tribunal, we draft Settlement Agreements to record the terms of any settlement (on which the employee then takes independent legal advice) and, if they do file a claim, we can assist you in negotiating a settlement at that stage.
We draft EMI share option agreements/schemes used to incentivise key employees and we work in conjunction with your accountants who deal with the related HMRC filings and compliance.