Confidentiality
Employee confidentiality agreement
The confidentiality promise made by somebody who works inside the business rather than across a table from it. It covers what a person learns because of the job — customer lists, pricing, roadmaps, code, unpublished plans — and says what they may do with it while employed and after they leave. It is often signed on the first day alongside the employment paper, and in many companies it travels with an invention assignment so ownership and secrecy are settled in one place.
- In the catalogue
- Confidentiality
- Where it can live
- Any of the 184 governing laws
Who uses one
- Employers putting a new starter on the payroll, usually as part of the first-day pack.
- Companies whose staff see customer data, pricing or unreleased work as a matter of course.
- A person joining a company who is asked to sign one and wants to read what it actually says.
What you are deciding
- What counts as confidential in this business, in concrete terms
- Whether it covers information learned before the job started
- What the person may do with it during the job
- What happens on the last day: devices, files, copies, accounts
- Whether the promise carries on after employment, and for how long
- How it sits beside anything the person owned before joining
- Whether invention assignment is in this paper or its own
Blanks you leave stay blank and wait in the room. Nothing is filled in from a guess.
The sections a draft usually has
- 1The parties and the role
- 2What confidential information means
- 3The promise while employed
- 4The promise after leaving
- 5Company property and return of materials
- 6What the person already owned
- 7Exclusions
- 8Governing law
A general outline, not a required one. What turns up in a draft follows what you described. A contract is written in the order a contract is read.
What people call it
The names this kind of paper goes by. They are here because people search for them. They also filter the catalogue. They are not a wordlist the door matches. At the composer you describe the deal in your own words instead.
- employee nda
- staff confidentiality agreement
- employee confidentiality
- worker nda
- confidentiality agreement for employees
- employee non-disclosure
Questions people ask
- Is this the same as a non-compete?
- No. A confidentiality agreement is about information; a non-compete is about where a person may work next. They are separate papers and are treated very differently from one legal system to another.
- Does it usually survive the end of the job?
- Confidentiality promises commonly continue after the last day, and the paper says for how long. Whether a particular promise holds, and for how long it holds, is a question for local law.
- What about work a person did before they joined?
- Papers of this kind often carry a list where the person names what they already owned, so it is on the record before the job starts rather than argued about afterwards.
General answers about the document. Not advice about your situation. Not written about any one country.
Where it lives
A contract names the legal system it is governed by. That is a separate decision from which paper it is. You pick it at the door, from any of the 184 units in Governing law, including England and Wales, Delaware, California and New York.
You do not start from this page. Describe the deal in one sentence at the door. Read the draft back in plain language, in the order a contract is read.
Start it at the door →Related kinds