Employment agreement contract specialists
Need advice about employment agreements? Stacks helps you understand your legal obligations as an employer, and helps protect your business in the case of any breaches of contract.
Employment contracts are a necessary part of running a business. Every time you employ a new staff member you will need to draft, and very often negotiate, an employment agreement. When contracts come up for renewal, you will need to review and renegotiate the terms. For a contract to exist, both parties need to consent to the terms.
So how can you ensure that the terms of the agreement are fair? How can you protect your business from the possibility of an employee leaving and taking trade secrets or valuable clients with them down the track? And what happens when an employee breaches the terms of their contract?
A Stacks employment law specialist can help you to understand your legal obligations and to draft and negotiate the terms of your employment agreements. We can provide advice about protecting your business against breach of contract or unfair contract claims and act for you in any legal proceedings that may arise. Our lawyers are highly experienced in dealing with the various courts and commissions that exercise jurisdiction over employment law, both at state and federal level.
Key features of an employment contract
- The employee’s salary
- The employee’s duties and responsibilities in the role
- The employee’s work hours
- The employee’s entitlements such as sick leave, long service leave, annual leave, compassionate leave, parental leave, redundancy or severance pay. Some extra entitlements may apply to particular roles such as travel allowances, home office expenses, use of a work car etc.
- The duration of the contract (eg. a fixed term of one year)
- Public holidays
- Superannuation plan
- The procedure for terminating the contract. eg. the amount of notice the employee is required to give if they decide to leave the position or that you are required to give them if their position becomes redundant or they are dismissed for breaching the contract
- Any restrictive covenants such as a restraint of trade clause. These serve to protect your business interests when an employee leaves by restricting their ability to set up a competing business within a certain geographical area and for a certain time period
- A dispute resolution process
Issues to consider when drafting an employment agreement
- The wording of an employment agreement is important in order to ensure that the terms are clearly understood and that you have legal recourse in the event that one of the terms is breached by an employee.
- Potential employees have the right to negotiate the terms of their contract such as their salary and entitlements. Once they have signed, they are legally committed to the terms for the period specified in the contract.
- Employment contracts can be verbal or written or a combination of both. Offers that you make verbally during contract negotiations may be considered legally valid.
- The contract must meet the minimum conditions of employment prescribed by certain industrial instruments such as a modern award or enterprise agreement.
Need advice about employment agreements? Call us today
