The legal obligations between an employer and an employee are crucial to understanding. This is particularly important to know the boundaries if you hold a key position in the organization.
A non-solicitation agreement is the one that oversees the time period after the termination of the working term between an employer and an employee has occurred.
If you are looking for more in depth info about non-solicitation agreements, here’s the right place to continue.
What Is a Non Solicitation Agreement?
The non-solicitation agreement is put into place by an employer to protect their business identity, goodwill, and intellectual capital, so employees may not disparage either of these after the working term to an end.
After leaving the company, the employee realizes that the information they hold from their time at the employer's office is of crucial importance to the organizational integrity of the employer.
Therefore, the employees shall keep and protect the information for a given time, as mentioned in the agreement, so that the employer does not face any difficulties regarding the handling of their classified information.
The employers can hold the employee lawfully liable in case the employee decides to use the information against the employer's organization.
This agreement is a way to protect the future interests of your company from the previous employees, contractors, and agents of the company.
When a Non-Solicitation Agreement Is Used?
A non-solicitation agreement is used whenever the employer is retiring an employee of such rank or designation, who has had intensive knowledge about the working of the organization.
According to a non-solicitation agreement, the employee is not allowed to further seek employment from the competitors of the employer, after the termination of their working term.
This agreement might be used by big corporations when they retire their CEOs and CFOs. Small companies and businesses can use non-solicitation agreements while dealing with non contract workers and agents.
Some employees hold such classified information and gain intellectual knowledge from the employer over the course of their working term, which will hurt the employer and its business if used by the competitors.
Therefore, these employees are told to refrain from any formal or informal dealings of such a nature with the competitors that may allow them to access this information which can give competitor’s an edge in the market over the employer.
It is also used by employers in case of employees who were given crucial intellectual property during their working, to facilitate their working. It asks them to secure and protect this information in the foreseeable future.
What Are the Features Included in Non Solicitation Agreement?
The following features form the basics of a non-solicitation agreement:
- The non-solicitation agreement is directed from an employer to an employee.
- Its basic feature is to ask the employee to recognize that he holds crucial information and the leakage of this information will hurt the employer. The employee is made aware of the weight of the information being carried by him.
- Secondly, the employer binds the employee for a specific time period into an agreement that stops the employee from carrying out a number of certain types of activities.
- The types of activities that the employee is asked to refrain from really are spread over a wide variety such as not working with or aiding to the competitors of the employer.
- It also stops them from contacting or persuading another employee of the organization. This clause is put into place to keep the employees of the organization loyal to the organizational cause.
The additional clauses that might be included in the non-solicitation agreement are:
- The employer determines a certain time period in which a non-solicitation agreement holds valid, depending upon the context of the information that might be held by the let-go employee.
- The agreement is carried between the employee and all the subsequently appointed employers of the company.
- An essential part of the non-solicitation agreement states that even if a single clause or the article of the agreement is voided by either of the parties, the rest of the agreement shall remain in full force without any changes whatsoever.
- Moreover, the non-solicitation agreement goes into explicit detail about the way of communication between the parties and also the legal liabilities that shall be held if this agreement is breached by any of the parties.
Conclusion
The basic purpose of a non-solicitation agreement is to safeguard the rights of an employer. It binds and holds the employees after the termination of their working term from indulging in such activities that may be considered competing by their previous employer.
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