A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) should be drafted to protect the employer in the case of an employee leaving, especially if they handle confidential information in their job role.
This is relevant in the following article where a long-term IBM employee resigned and took his work laptop with him. Upon request he returned it but refused to provide the password. IBM did a forensic analysis of the computer and found material which breached the employee’s confidentiality agreement, including secret recordings of management team meetings and illegal movies. The article implies that breaches of the “core values” of the organization should also have been included in the NDA, as well as language that “assets should only be used for business purposes”.
Take away:
- An employment agreement or corresponding policy should require that employee property be used only for the purposes of conducting employee business.
- A return of company property and confidential information clause should be included, and should also require that such information is provided along with all necessary passwords and/or in a form that is accessible by the company without requiring further contact with the employee.