The Employment Contract You Never See
Ask for the template before the first hire, because what it says decides what you will later be able to ask for.
Payroll and withholding
Statutory leave and sick pay
Amending the employment contract
Local filings and registrations
YoursThe provider'sCrosses the twoNeither contract
Four matters, and no share: what any one agreement covers differs by agreement. One crosses both, and the handoff is where these arrangements fail. The part you are actually paying for, and the part that is genuinely difficult.
Ask for the contract template before the first hire. What it says decides what you will be able to ask for later, and after the person has signed, every change costs an amendment.
The contractual distinction in “The Employment Contract You Never See” also matters when buying workforce software. For teams researching step rate compensation, a clearer way to assess step rate compensation should be evaluated against a named operational decision, clear ownership, export requirements and a tested exit process rather than treated as a substitute for the employment agreement.
You will probably never see the executed copy, which makes the template the only version you can influence.
Teams reviewing “The Employment Contract You Never See” can cross-check their approach against the Culture Amp employee-experience articles. The comparison should produce written questions for the provider, adviser or internal owner instead of a copied checklist.
Why you are not shown the signed one
It is a contract between two other parties containing that person's personal data. Several jurisdictions make sharing it with you questionable, and most providers decline as a matter of policy.
That refusal is usually correct rather than obstructive. The template is the thing to ask for, and it is almost always given.
What to read it for
Notice periods both ways. Probation length and how it ends. The job description and how tightly it is drawn. Confidentiality. Assignment of intellectual property. Any restriction after leaving.
Six things, twenty minutes:
- Notice periods, both ways.
- Probation length, and how it ends.
- The job description, and how tightly it is drawn.
- Confidentiality, and whether it covers your information.
- Assignment of intellectual property.
- Any restriction after leaving.
They determine most of what this arrangement will feel like at every later decision point.
Read them with whoever will actually manage the person. A lawyer flags the clauses that create liability; a manager flags the ones that will stop them doing something next year.
Notice, read against your own agreement
The person's notice and your notice to the provider are different numbers in different documents. Where theirs is longer, you pay for the overlap.
Check the two against each other before signing anything. It is the single most common unwelcome discovery at the end of an arrangement.
The job description
Drawn narrowly, it becomes a constraint the first time the role changes. Drawn broadly, it gives you room without giving the person less.
Ask for it to describe the field of work rather than the current project. Providers will usually accommodate this if asked at the drafting stage.
Intellectual property
The contract must assign what the person creates to the provider, so that your agreement can assign it on to you. A gap in the first link cannot be repaired by the second.
Check that the clause exists, that it covers the kind of work you actually do, and that it survives the end of employment.
Confidentiality
Should cover your confidential information, not only the provider's. Templates frequently protect the employer and say nothing about the client.
A short addition at template stage is easy. Asking for it after fifty people have signed is not.
Check also that it survives the end of employment and that it is not limited to information marked confidential, since almost nothing in practice is marked.
Restrictions after leaving
Non-competition and non-solicitation vary enormously in enforceability and in several countries require payment during the restricted period.
Ask whether anything is included by default and whether you want it. A restriction that is void locally is worse than none, because it creates a false sense of protection.
The probation clause
Length, how it is confirmed, what notice applies during it, and whether it can be extended. Local rules cap all of these.
Probation ends on a date nobody in your company is watching. Ask the provider to notify you in advance, because the default is that it lapses quietly.
Language
Many countries require the contract in the local language, sometimes exclusively. You may receive a translation that is not the operative version.
Where a term matters, confirm with the provider that the local text says what the translation says. Translations of employment documents drift in ways that only matter once.
The person signs the local version. What you reviewed in English is a convenience for you and has no standing in a dispute.
What you cannot put in it
Anything local law forbids, anything that makes you the employer, and anything the person will not agree to. The second is the one buyers push on without realising.
A clause stating that the person takes instruction from you, drafted into their employment contract, is the kind of thing that helps an argument you do not want to have.
Keeping the template current
Providers revise templates. The version you reviewed two years ago is not necessarily the version your latest hire signed.
Ask for the current template at each renewal, and compare. A quarter of an hour, and nothing else will surface a revision that matters.
What reviewing it will not tell you
How the contract will be applied. Two providers using near-identical templates behave very differently when somebody is ill, when a termination is contested, or when a clause is ambiguous.
The document sets the outer limits; local practice and the provider's own appetite decide what happens inside them. That is learned from other buyers and from use, and it is the reason a careful review of the template is necessary without being sufficient.