Executive Employment Contract

This Executive Employment Contract is suitable for senior management employees where confidentiality and post-termination restrictions are important.

Use this contract to document senior-level terms from day one

Employers must provide workers and employees with a written statement of their main terms and conditions of employment and this is often known as a Standard Form Section One Statement.

This contract covers the requirements of a Standard Form Section One Statement and must be provided to the employee or worker by day one of employment.

What this contract covers for senior hires

Alongside core employment terms (including duties, pay, holidays, sickness absence, pension and termination), this contract includes additional provisions that are commonly needed for executive and senior management roles, including:

• a Working Time Regulations opt out
• an annual salary review
• benefits provisions, including company car and health insurance
• anti-bribery obligations
• exclusivity of service
• confidential information protections
• a PILON (payment in lieu of notice) clause and gardening leave

The PILON clause enables the employer to require the employee not to work during the notice period whilst retaining the validity of confidentiality and restraint of trade clauses.

Restrictive covenants in the schedule

The schedule to this contract contains three possible restrictive covenants:

• non-competition
• non-solicitation of customers
• non-solicitation of employees

The non-competition clause provides that, for a period of time after termination of employment, the employee will not compete with the company’s business. The non-solicitation clauses provide that, for a period of time after termination of employment, the employee will not deal with the company’s customers (with whom the employee has had dealings) and cannot poach employees of the company.

Restrictive covenants should be no wider than is necessary to protect your “legitimate business interests”. If their scope is too wide, they may not be enforceable. Please ensure that you carefully consider each restrictive covenant, removing any that are not relevant to your particular business and to the specific employee. Ensure that time and geographical limits are appropriate and reasonable to the nature of your business.

Updates reflected in this version

Previously, a version of this employment contract was available without a PILON clause. This version has now been removed, as with effect from 6 April 2018, all PILONs, regardless of their nature, are to be treated as earnings subject to income tax and Class 1 NICs. Click here for more information.

The Pensions Act 2014 introduced a new state pension for people reaching state pension age on or after 6 April 2016, replacing the previous basic state pension and additional state pension and ending contracting out for defined-benefit schemes. This employment contract has been updated accordingly with the removal of the clause referring to the contracting out certificate.

Executive Employment Contract is part of Employment. Just £38.50 + VAT provides unlimited downloads from Employment for 1 year.