In today’s world, more and more businesses are adopting the concept of confidentiality agreements. They realize this to be an effective way to protect their business from damaging leaks, intentionally or unintentionally. Today, many companies, worried about this, have confidentiality clauses as a part of their employee contracts; others go a step ahead and make employees and subcontractors sign a separate confidentiality agreement before they join employment. If you run a business and your employees handle sensitive information or you have to share business-critical information with a partner, it is good to make employees and partners sign this contract.
Many organizations do not realize the amount of damage unauthorized disclosure of information can do. It takes just a single careless or devious employee or person to cause thousands of dollars worth of damage to your organization.
Why Does Your Business Need This Agreement?
Some of the information or data that can damage your business if leaked is as follows:
- Business plans
- Business strategies
- Client passwords and other access information
- Technical diagrams
- Software programs that the company has developed
- Financial information
- Personal details and information of employees
- Research results
- Legal documentation
- Certain confidential correspondence
If one of the aforementioned items is leaked out incorrectly or reaches wrong hands, it could not only cause a PR headache, it could cause your business irreparable damage too. That is why you need to sit down and check your company’s processes to see which of your employees and subcontractors have access to business-critical and sensitive information and how you can cover that information via a confidentiality agreement.
How to Implement the Agreement?
Your business can implement the agreement as a separate confidentiality agreement form or you can add the details of the form into employee contracts. However, it is important that the agreement has the right words and legal terms, and becomes legally binding when it is signed by the employee or subcontractor.
When the confidentiality agreement form becomes legally binding, you can take legal action against the person who breaches it. You could file a criminal lawsuit and seek jail time and/or damages from the person. To ensure the agreement has legal standing, it is best to get a form from a website that has legal experts drafting the agreement. Alternatively, you can ask your lawyer draft it on your behalf. This will ensure that the agreement clearly states the terms and conditions in a legally acceptable manner.
Author’s Bio:
Mark Smith is a legal advisor, and comes across many people who are flummoxed by the intricacies of the different laws. He is of the belief that there is no substitute to thorough information, and the one who is informed will never lose his/her way. These posts are a part of his initiative of disseminating legal knowledge among common masses.
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