Question 1

What are garden leave and restrictive covenants?

Accepted Answer

Both are mechanisms employers use to limit what you do after you resign, and they work very differently.

**Garden leave** keeps you employed but away from the workplace during your notice period. You remain on full pay, remain bound by all your duties including confidentiality and loyalty, and crucially **cannot start a new job**, because you are still employed. The employer gets to keep you out of client contact and away from current information while your knowledge goes stale.

It requires a contractual clause in most cases, and it is generally enforceable because you are being paid. The trade-off for the employer is paying someone to do nothing, which limits how long they will use it.

**Restrictive covenants** (post-termination restrictions) operate **after** employment ends. The common types:

**Non-compete** — barring you from working for a competitor for a set period.

**Non-solicitation** — barring you from approaching former clients or customers.

**Non-dealing** — barring you from doing business with them even if they approach you.

**Non-poaching** — barring you from recruiting former colleagues.

**How enforceable are they?** In England and Wales, restrictive covenants are **void as a restraint of trade unless** the employer can show they protect a **legitimate business interest** — trade secrets, confidential information, client connections, workforce stability — and go **no further than reasonably necessary** to do so. Courts look at duration, geographic scope and the breadth of activity restricted.

Overreaching clauses routinely fail. A twelve-month worldwide non-compete on a junior employee is unlikely to survive; a six-month non-solicitation on a senior salesperson with client relationships very well might.

**Garden leave usually offsets the covenant period**, and courts may reduce a restriction by the time already spent on garden leave.

**Enforcement varies enormously by jurisdiction** — some US states void non-competes entirely. Take advice before relying on a clause being unenforceable.

Question 2

How to understand employment contracts?

Accepted Answer

Understanding employment contracts involves reviewing key elements like job title, compensation, work hours, and termination clauses to ensure clarity and protection.

Question 3

What is TUPE and what happens when your employer is taken over?

Accepted Answer

TUPE — the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations — protects employees when the business they work for changes hands. Its central effect is that your employment transfers

Question 4

What are the rules on having a second job?

Accepted Answer

Generally permitted unless your contract says otherwise — but several things can restrict it, and the tax treatment catches people out more often than the employment side does. What your contract may

Question 5

What is a probation period and what rights do you have during it?

Accepted Answer

A probation period is a contractual arrangement at the start of a job, during which both sides assess whether it works. It is a contractual concept, not a legal status — which is the point most

Question 6

What is IR35, and who does it affect?

Accepted Answer

IR35 — formally the off-payroll working rules — is UK tax legislation addressing people who work through their own company but who, stripped of that company, would look like employees of the client.

Question 7

What is constructive dismissal?

Accepted Answer

Resigning in response to a fundamental breach of contract by the employer, and being treated in law as having been dismissed — which is why it is described as constructive: the dismissal is

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