LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP – DON’T JUMP INTO THE FRYING PAN WHEN CHANGING JOBS

There will be many things on your mind when you are looking to change jobs, better money and prospects, better salary, less travel, but you also need to think about what obstacles your present employer may have placed in your way. There are often ways around these problems but you do need to be aware of the key issues.

Here are a few areas that are worth considering before you take the plunge.

Restrictions in Your Contract

The first consideration is to see if your contract tries to control what you can do after your employment comes to an end.

An employer can seek to do this in many ways, whether by banning competition, banning approaches to clients, banning dealing with clients (even if it is the client that makes the initial approach and not the former employee), or banning the poaching of former colleagues.

Many employees take the view that these types of restriction are worthless, but as recent cases have shown, courts are prepared to uphold restrictions if they satisfy the necessary legal requirements.

Preparatory Acts

Even where your contract contains no express restriction, certain types of preparatory activity during employment will be prohibited by law. These include anything done in your employer’s time, soliciting clients, soliciting exclusive suppliers, entertaining offers from clients and memorising trade secrets or confidential information.


Loss of Rewards

It is common place for bonus clauses to state that no bonus payment will be made if an employee is not employed or is under notice at a specified date. If you are lucky enough to be able to pick your time of leaving should always be in your mind when you are considering the timing of your resignation.

Similarly share options will often lapse at the end of employment, or will have to be exercised within a limited time of the last day of employment.

Pay back and return of property

Contracts often contain clauses requiring an employee to pay back all sums due to the employer at the end of the employment, or to allow the employer to deduct these sums from the final salary payment. This can come as a nasty surprise if you have just taken out a large season ticket loan.

Contracts also often require all property to be returned at the end of employment, which should be borne in mind if you have personal information on computers or mobile phones.

Clearly there are many issues to be considered, with the starting point being careful and professional consideration of your employment contract.