Non-compete agreements are designed to help your business, and they can be used with your employees to keep them from working for the competition. Essentially, the idea is that you do not want to train employees for other companies. A non-compete agreement allows you to give your workers the training, experience, and knowledge that they need without worrying that they are just going to jump ship.
However, there are many restrictions on how these can be used, and a lot of them won’t stand at all if they are too restrictive. It’s important to understand what some of these restrictions are when creating the documents.
Where does the agreement say the employee cannot work?
Geography does have to come in to play, as a non-compete agreement can certainly not apply to every business in the country or even the state. It usually has to be for a relatively local geography. It’s one thing to keep your employees from going to the competition across the street, but quite another to try to prohibit them from moving to a different city and getting a job.
What does the timeframe look like?
Additionally, a noncompete agreement may only be allowed to last for a certain amount of time, such as 6 to 12 months. It can’t last forever because it may make it so that the individual who signed it would not be able to continue their career. This does mean that even an employee who signed a non-compete agreement may simply take a break from working in the industry and then join your competition when the agreement expires. But you cannot create them to run indefinitely.
Are you interested in setting one up?
If you’ve been thinking about using noncompete agreements, you can see that it’s important to get all the details right. Make sure you know exactly what legal steps to take to set everything up.
