Employee confidentiality agreement

Confidentiality agreements are pivotal for protecting sensitive workplace information. In this guide, we'll explore confidentiality agreements in the context of the employee-employer relationship, and provide a free employee confidentiality agreement sample to get you started.

What is an employment confidentiality agreement?

An employment confidentiality agreement is a legal document that creates a confidential bond between an employer and an employee. In this contract, the employee commits not to disclose any sensitive or proprietary information they learn during their employment.

Such an agreement is generally put in place when an employer has unique methods, business processes, or data that employees will be privy to during their work. For this reason, the employer puts a legal agreement in place to make sure this information isn't shared widely.

What is the purpose of an employment confidentiality agreement?

The primary role of an employment confidentiality agreement is to protect confidential workplace information from being shared or leaked.

A robust employment confidentiality agreement ensures that such information remains private and confidential, and can't be used against the employer or shared without their explicit consent.

How does it differ from a standard confidentiality agreement?

An employee confidentiality agreement isn't too different from a generalised confidentiality agreement. However, it's drafted with the type of information an employee will be exposed to in mind, not an external party. This means that it's always better (and less risky) to use an employee confidentiality agreement with more specific terms, if the relationship you're looking to govern is an employee-employer relationship.

Who manages employment confidentiality agreements?

The task of drafting employment confidentiality agreements generally falls on the company's legal department, but it's usually the HR team that shares a copy of the employment confidentiality agreement with the new employee as part of their onboarding. This will often be shared at the same time as their employment contract, option agreement and other onboarding documents.

It's then up to both the employee and the employer to ensure that the agreements are signed, stored, and enforced.

Like this template? Grab our other popular employment contract templates:

• Employment contract amendment template
• Employment termination agreement template
• Offer letter template
• Option agreement template
• Recruitment agreement template

What should an employee confidentiality agreement template contain?

A robust employee confidentiality agreement template should ideally include the following elements:

• Identification of the parties: This section defines the employer and the employee involved in the agreement.

• Definition of confidential information: This is a vital part of the agreement. It should explicitly describe what constitutes 'confidential information.'. The clearer and more comprehensive this description is, the better.

• Obligations of the employee: This part outlines the employee's responsibilities towards the confidential information.

• Exclusions from confidential treatment: This section clarifies what types of information are not considered confidential.

• Duration of the agreement: This defines the period during which confidentiality must be upheld. In other words, it's about how long the contract lasts.

• Consequences of breach: This outlines what actions can be taken if the employee breaches the terms of the agreement.

• Return of materials: This provision often requires the employee to return any materials containing or relating to the confidential information at the end of their employment.

• Jurisdiction or governing law: This part of an employee confidentiality agreement template is usually at the end and outlines which state's or country's laws will apply in interpreting the agreement and managing any potential disputes.

How do you manage an employee confidentiality agreement?

Here's what the process can look like for businesses creating and managing employee confidentiality agreements from scratch, without an automated process.

1. A member of the hiring team contacts legal to request an employee confidentiality agreement to send to a successful candidate. Legal, likely buried in other admin work, will probably prompt the hiring manager to find one in the shared drive.
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2. The hiring manager then locates a template (perhaps not the latest or most accurate version) and populates it with the new employee's information.
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3. They then send it to legal for review and approval, at which point legal corrects the employee confidentiality agreement to reflect the terms in the correct template.
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4. The hiring manager then shares the updated employee confidentiality agreement with the new hire for their review, and to get their signature.
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5. Fortunately, it's uncommon for these types of contracts to be negotiated, so the new hire usually signs it soon after. This is often done using wet ink signatures, or via a separate eSigning solution.
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6. Once signed, the employee confidentiality agreement is uploaded to a shared drive for storage.

Unfortunately, this process doesn't always run smoothly, and it's not always efficient.

Pain points with the employee confidentiality agreement process

• Low-value work: “As the HR manager, I should be focused on making our team successful and happy, yet I spend chunks of my time telling colleagues where to find basic documents."

• Version control issues: “I'm always uncertain about the most recent template - are these the correct terms?”

• Not scaleable: "When we hire and onboard new employees at scale, we're forced to repeat the same manual, admin-heavy process over and over. It's such a drag, and not a good use of our time."

• Lack of visibility: “Post-signature, I don't have visibility of our employee confidentiality agreements - I'm unsure about who has already signed an agreement.”

Is there a better way to manage employee confidentiality agreements?

Luckily, contract management tools like Juro empower HR and legal teams to create and manage employee confidentiality agreements in a more efficient way.

This is because Juro users can automate their HR contracts, rather than drafting them from scratch. They can also manage employee confidentiality agreements in bulk, rather than repeating the same process for every new joiner.

Let's see what this improved process looks like in practice.

How to automate your employee confidentiality agreement template in Juro

1. Generate watertight agreements in just a few clicks

Legal teams use Juro's automated contract templates to make it easy for HR teams to self-serve on employment-related contracts, including employee confidentiality agreements.

People and talent teams can quickly initiate contracts using these templates, populating them using a simple Q&A workflow or by pulling in the data from an ATS or HRIS like Greenhouse, Workday or HiBob.

2. Collaborate in real time

Juro users can also collaborate on employee confidentiality agreements in real time, and from within their browser.

While this type of contract is rarely negotiated, it's still useful for employees to ask questions and request clarification on their employee confidentiality agreement without having to jump back and forth between email chains and Word files.

Instead, they can just add their comments and suggestions onto the contract in Juro when they review it.

3. Manage employment contracts at scale

Juro's mass actions functionality empowers HR teams to create, send and sign employee confidentiality agreements in bulk.

This is perfect for businesses that hire in cohorts or are growing rapidly.

4. Sign agreements on mobile devices

Juro's native electronic signature functionality enables employers and employees to add legally binding signatures to documents using mobile devices and tablets.

This encourages faster contract signing and speeds up the onboarding process.

5. Store and manage contracts securely post-signature

Contracts created in Juro are automatically stored in Juro's secure, data-rich contract repository. From there, they can be organized, queried and tracked in real-time.

This enables you to maintain visibility into who has signed this all-important agreement, and who hasn't.

Get started with employee confidentiality agreements today

Juro's all-in-one contract management solution is a great option for legal and HR teams that need a fast, efficient and scaleable way to manage their employee confidentiality agreements (and other documents). You can get started with the free employee confidentiality agreement template PDF above, or instead, get started with a truly digital template in Juro.

To find out more about how Juro would work for your team, hit the button below.