Contract Restrictive Covenants

[cheezdog]

The contract the client has drafted has the following section:

RESTRICTIVE COVENANTS

The Company will not and will procure that its personnel will not without prior written consent of the Client (which shall not be unreasonably withheld) for a period of 12 months after the termination of this Agreement entice, induce, solicit or encourage any employee employed by the Client Company or any Group Company on the date this Agreement terminates, in the Client or any Group Company’s Information Technology Department other than in a secretarial or administrative role, and with whom the Consultant has had direct contact or dealings with within 12 months prior to the date this Agreement terminates in acting pursuant to this Agreement, to leave the Client or the relevant Group Company’s employment


Is this standard practice? I'm moving back to Australia, so any company I would be working for in the next 12 months (if any) wouldn't have any dealing/contact with the client.

[Not So Wise]

OK that's a first for me, at least in contracting.

Sometimes see clauses like this in other lines of work or in larger B2B deals though, basically can be summarised as

"No poaching our staff"

(Though you are welcome to the secretaries )

If the place deals a lot with larger consultancies that would explain why it's getting copied over to your contract

So unless you plan on poaching their staff should be no issue

ps: though would be interesting to see what they would do if you met the love of your life while there and enticed them to go back to Aus with you, a personal relationship breaking contract law, that would be an interesting court session

[Sysman]

"No poaching our staff"

(Though you are welcome to the secretaries )

This happened frequently in the 1970s where several manufacturers doing the same thing were located in the same local area (in my area it was textiles, engineering and chemicals), and in an era where many folks could walk to work.

The government pay freeze then meant your only chance of keeping up with inflation at 25% + was swapping jobs.

Yep, it was about "No poaching our staff". None of this was openly published at the time of course.

[zamzummim]

I had the "No poaching our staff" (but in our cases it means do not encourage permie client staff to go contracting) in several of my contracts, no prob.

It was difficult to do that during the good days, most permies would ask so many questions and actually ask you to help them to go into the contracting market/introduce them to agencies!

[Menelaus]

Simples

...there are scarily few cases in which a restrictive covenant are held up by the Courts. I'd imagine this is the pimp trying to pull a fast one.