The nature of business competition is a harsh one. A dog eat dog world where very few things can really be as safe as you want them to be. No price is too high for good information, and people understand that. Fortunately, an employee confidentiality agreement is one measure you can take to prevent your company’s private information from falling into the wrong hands.
The nature of today’s business entails that a business remains mindful of its secrets and keeps them away from the prying eyes of a competitor. Business secrets are sensitive and could be of great value to the company by dramatically improving their profitability. And especially when it comes to an untapped business opportunity, they’d better keep it under wraps lest the competitor take it away from them. Which is what makes confidentiality in the workplace such a big fuss. In cases where information is so sensitive, it is good to keep some sort of a binding contract ready.
Explaining the Agreement
If it’s a secret and worth enough money, you’ve got to pull out all the stops so that it doesn’t slip out of your hands. The employee confidentiality agreement is an instrument of business communication prepared with the same end-result in mind. Yes, it is good to trust employees and not be mistrustful of their intentions but some secrets need to be protected with utmost care. And this is where the agreement steps in. This document is the proverbial watchdog which stands guard to the safe, should the employee drop the keys where he or she shouldn’t have. The good thing for the employer is that it gives him the satisfaction that the recruit won’t blab at the bar about that awesome thing he just saw. Often, it comes with a liability for the employee, should he be the one who, in a drunken haze or in a perfectly sane frame of mind, leaks out sensitive information.
The contents of a confidentiality agreement differ from one company to the other. For the more secretive companies, this type of non disclosure agreement template is a long and tiring one which gives every painful detail about the nature of the undisclosed matter and the repercussions of its disclosure. The simple ones don’t bore and confuse the reader with mind-numbing content and in a very straightforward way, lay down the content.
Sample Agreement
Writing the employee confidentiality agreement is best left to a qualified lawyer, or at least one well versed with the duties of one educated in secretarial practice. However, just for example, here’s the basic template:
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SAMPLE EMPLOYEE CONFIDENTIALITY AGREEMENT LETTER
This employee confidentiality agreement is made between Mr. Smith (hereon referred to as the “Employee”) and Mr. Jones (hereon referred to as the “Employer”). The Employee agrees to the terms of this agreement:
Employer ____________ ________ Employee ___________ ______________ |
Business writing, like I said before, is best left to the experts because you don’t want a loophole in such an important document!