Free reference
Employment contract clauses, in plain English
Eleven clauses decide whether you can hold a second role, and most people have never read any of them. Each page below tells you what the clause does, what to search your own document for, how to tell a permissive version from a prohibitive one, and what to ask before you sign.
Every example is generic wording written for teaching, not copied from any real agreement. Employment law varies by country and state, and none of this is legal advice.
Outside work
- Outside employmentStates whether you may hold another job at all, and if so under what conditions. This is the clause that decides whether anything else in this course applies to you.
- Exclusivity and full business timeCommits your working hours and attention to one employer. Not the same as an explicit ban on outside work, but it operates in the same territory and how it is read depends on jurisdiction.
Ownership
- Intellectual property assignmentDecides who owns what you create. For someone with one job this is mostly theoretical. For someone with two it is the mechanism by which one employer ends up with a claim over work done for the other.
- Prior inventions scheduleLists what you already owned before you joined, so it is carved out of the assignment. Most people leave it blank because they are signing on their first day and nobody explains it.
- ConfidentialityObliges you to protect the company's information, typically without a time limit for trade secrets.
Restrictions
- Conflict of interestDefines what counts as a conflict. Employers define this much more broadly than 'working for a direct competitor', and their definition is the one that binds you.
- Non-competeRestricts where you can work after you leave, and sometimes during employment. Enforceability varies enormously by jurisdiction, and several US states sharply limit or ban them.
- Non-solicitationPrevents you recruiting the company's employees or approaching its customers, usually for a defined period after you leave.
Housekeeping
- Company property and acceptable useGoverns what you may do with company devices, accounts and networks, and usually states that they may be monitored and must be returned.
- Policies incorporated by referencePulls the handbook and other policies into your contract, and often allows the company to change them later without renegotiating with you.
- Notice period and garden leaveSets how much notice each side must give, and whether the company can require you to stay away while still employed.
Reading your own agreement next?
The free guide covers the four gates a role has to clear before it is worth applying for, and the agreement is the first of them. It takes about ten minutes to read.