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Author - Associate Kantika Mukherjee

A job aspirant joining a company must ensure three important clauses in the employment contract with the company.

Employment Agreement

An Employment Agreement is basically a legal document, which consists of the ‘terms and conditions’ of the employment. It states the rights and duties of both the employer and the employee and is formed to give both the involved parties security and protection.

A detailed employment contract provides the main duties and the rights of the employee and helps an employee to understand exactly what the employer is expecting from him. The primary objective of an employment contract is to prevent disclosure of information, non-competition, non-solicitation and protection of confidential data, and for this, it is always suitable to execute a written contract of employment amid the employer and the employee.

Therefore, reading the employment contract thoroughly is important. An aspirant must have a very clear picture of what that person is getting into. In this article, we would discuss three things in an employment contract an employee must consider before joining the company.

Job Responsibilities

One good practice is to read the job offer letters carefully before signing. Before a person sings a job offer letter, he/she is required to agree on what the job actually involves. A candidate doesn’t want to settle for a job position when the job duties are misrepresented to them. Therefore, an employee joining the firm must take care that each and every job duties are clearly described in the employment contract. This is vital, in case if in the future the employer tries to change the job responsibilities or downgrade the employee in any way, then the employee has it in writing what both the employer and the employee previously have agreed upon to do.

A job aspirant before joining must ensure that the job scope and the list of responsibilities of the applied role are clearly specified in the employment contract and match with the previous negotiations which you have negotiated before with the employer. This deals with the expectation of both the employee and employer, hence, there would be a clear understanding of the job before commencing the employment by the job aspirant, and also make certain that no additional or hidden responsibilities which the job aspirant are not supposed to do are not imposed.

Also, it is a vital step that the job aspirant must also check that the job title is right and defines the position which he/she has applied for unless an alternate offer was made to you, which you are eager to accept.

Compensation and benefits

An employee might have already discussed the remuneration and bonus with the employee before joining. But it is recommended that the employee must check whether the discussed salary is clearly mentioned in the employment contract or not.

The employee must check whether the employment contract has mentioned the compensation and benefits package to be received from the company and also the employment contract explicitly stated about the annual salary or hourly rate, information about raises, bonuses, or incentives, parental leave to free lunches and even pet insurance and how these shall be obtained by the employee.

Termination terms and conditions

A very important part of an employment contract is the termination clause. The reasons which the employer provides if they want to terminate the employment contract are stated in terms of termination. An employee must read this section carefully and should ask questions to the HR department for clarification if an employee is not able to understand the legal jargon. It is very important that the terms of termination stated clearly. Otherwise, the employee may perhaps end up agreeing to the terms of termination at any time, without notice or maybe without any reason. This is called ‘without a cause’. Also, an employee is required to be careful if they find the term ‘sole discretion’ written in this part of the section in the contract. This term could entail that the employer could decide to fire you at any time without talking to you. This eradicates any chance for further discussion, notification or compromise.

A clause covering the employment period and its termination must be explicitly mentioned in a contract of employment. It is a legislative clause written in the employment contract which explains that either the employee or the employer to the contract might terminate the service of employment by serving a certain notice period of one month or so. A termination clause also must include the terms and conditions that are required to be followed by the employer and employee taking into account the termination of the employment. This clause in an employment contract must cover the details like the amount of notice period which is required to be served by the employee, compensation that will be paid on such termination etc.