Drafting an Employment Contract That Holds Up

An employment contract is worth exactly as much as the parts of it a court will enforce. Several clauses that appear in template after template are unenforceable in India, and including them weakens the document as a whole.

What holds

• Probation, confirmation and clearly stated notice periods on both sides
• Confidentiality obligations, during and after employment
• Assignment of intellectual property created in the course of employment
• Non-solicitation of clients and colleagues, kept reasonable in scope and duration

What does not

A blanket restraint stopping an employee working anywhere in the industry after they leave is void as a restraint of trade. So is a penalty designed to punish rather than compensate. Bonds recovering genuine, documented training cost may survive; bonds that simply lock a person in generally do not.

Getting it right

Write the notice period so it works both ways. Define confidential information rather than gesturing at it. Keep the non-solicit tied to clients the employee actually dealt with, and to a period you can justify. And put the salary structure in a schedule, so a revision does not require the whole contract to be re-signed.

We review employment templates as a fixed-fee exercise — usually a short job, and much cheaper than discovering the gaps during an exit.