As lawyers, we more or less deal with clients who for well-reasoned explanations want to cease employment relations with a certain white-collar employee from their company but do not understand how to approach the employee. And all but for one simple reason – there is no enabling provision in their underlying employment contract or their employment policies to do so! Even if there were some provisions made in the employment contracts or employment policies to justify a termination for cause or seek other interim remedies, they are mostly riddled with informal, contradictory or ambiguous language which make the whole proposition simply a matter of interpretation. It is also observed that employment policies are not properly updated and disseminated, are not acknowledged by the employee upon joining or are not deemed enforceable as a part of the employment terms.
Say, an employee is associated with a company for decades. Such employee starts off in a junior position and eventually rises the ranks to become one of the leading members of the management team. While the salaries and designations change with time, the employment terms are not strengthened at each stage to match the responsibilities which ideally should have come with the prevalent seniority of a certain position. Or perhaps think of a situation where a company engages an indvidual who just turns out to be what every employer wants – energetic, driven to success, result-oriented, willing to upskill, good team leader and so on; the entire reins of operations are handed over to this one person without an optimum reporting mechanism and with minimal limitations on authority. This may impose on such individual, an arbitrary sense of ownership over the company, which in a worst case scenario could lead to the individual developing a healthy ego about what this individual brings to the table and of course what such individual can easily take away from the company.
In these cases, the equilibrium of mutual benefits is lost. What most employers do not realise is that when an employee gains years of service or newly joins a company due to their managerial abilities, the level of moral culpability towards the employer, their affiliates, their respective stakeholders and the general workforce surrounding them is much higher than what is typically anticipated by an employer. Unfortunately, it only becomes evident once something goes terribly wrong.
Principal Associate
JSA
Whether you are an owner of a long standing business or of a start-up who is looking to work with enthusiastic young minds and industry veterans, it is likely that your employment contracts are drafted in a standard form and are broadly the same in all aspects irrespective of the grade of the employee or that individual employee’s contribution to your business.
To maintain a business in the long run, it is essential that the employees that you engage are conscious of the duties assigned to them from time to time and in fact, not just the duties, but the consequences which could arise if the employee materially deviated from their duties. Mind you – the purpose here is not to terrorise your beloved employees with a thick contract which is nothing short of a landmine. The logic here is, if certain employees are entrusted with authorities and roles which are cardinal to your business and where such individuals are being compensated for the same, then it is only fair that the employees accept an equitable amount of accountability towards their employer. No employment contract or employment policy can assert an employee’s conduct absolutely; yet these employment terms should at the least be so drafted that an employee inevitably becomes cognisant of what clearly is and is not acceptable to their employer in any given scenario.
