Working for client afterwards

DullGreyGuy

sultan123 said:

Slightly diff question but how hard is it to enforce anti competition clauses. For example if I work at a place where you do 3 months nice and 3 months more not to work at competitior

It depends on many factors:

• What your roles is? How much sensitive data do you have (product specs, supplier T&Cs, client lists, future stategy)? How senior were you?
• How niche/transferable are your skills? What are your opportunities for equivalent level of work with non-competitors?
• What restrictive are the constraints in the contract? Eg no competitors within 5 miles or globally? No competitors that write K&R insurance or just no insurers or brokers at all?
• What was your financial settlement on leaving?

The law has to balance the reasonable desire for a company to protect its secrets with a persons ability to work and support themselves. This balance can be tipped if for example they said no working for any form of competitor for 6 months but gave you a 9 month golden fairwell payment. Similarly if you lived in the back of beyond in a place with just two shops and no internet etc then its unlikely they could stop you working for the other shop as there is no other opportunity for work.