At-Will Employment Agreement

Jane Kaye

A legal brief that I obtained stated employers should provide a separate at-will agreement to staff annually reminding them of their at-will status (in addition to employee handbook acknowledgement, etc.). Wording suggested in the legal brief: In consideration of my employment with..., I understand that my employment and compensation are at-will and therefore can be terminated, with or without cause, at any time without prior notice, at my option or ... option. This at-will employment relationship will remain in effect throughout my employment. ..... I acknowledge that I have carefully read this Agreement, that I understand its terms and that I have entered into this Agreement voluntarily. I further acknowledge that I have been given the opportunity to discuss this agreement with my private legal counsel before signing it and have availed myself of that opportunity to the extent I wish to do so.

Question: what if employees refuse to sign and return the form?

Down_the_Middle

Having some experience with this in a former life.............
We treated this acknowledgement differently with the 2 audiences. This would be a condition of employment with all new hires. No sign, no hire.

For current employees, we encouraged staff to sign this and for those that refused, we noted on the form-----acknowledged receipt of info, but refused to sign. Our position was that the employee understood the policy and that was our main objective. We struggled with more than 2,000 employees, so your situation may be much easier if you have a small workforce.

If I was to do this again, I would probably not pursue signatures from current staff. All this does is antagonize the workforce and makes them suspicious that something awful is about to happen. Rather, I would continue mentioning the at-will provision in your employee handbook and policies and let this trickle down to the workforce. If you have provisions for employees to sign for receipt of their periodic handbook and policy revisions you'll have the same thing w/o making people defensive. This is one of those issues that makes very good sense on paper, but is not practical to implement w/o sacrificing other E/R's issues. My 2-cents.,..........

Don D

Agree fully with Down-The-Middle. Whether or not the Ee refuses to sign the form, if you do choose to pursue it with current Ee's, is largely irrelevant. The fact is that your state is an 'at-will' state and his unwillingness to sign won't help his case in the least if he is separated. The only thing that might give him a case is if he can produce something from the company that implies or states, in fact, a contract. I am assuming you did get his signature pre-hire. We also would not hire if someone balked at the signature pre-hire. We have had a salesperson or two question the at-will at times of separation even though they signed the acknowledgement up front and our offer letters to salaried Ee's clearly states the at-will relationship as well as the handbook reinforcing it. We also require the prospect to sign the offer letter and return it to H.R. for the file.

Gillian

I go one huge step further. After a year of debate among senior staff we decided to do away with "employment at will". Our handbook makes clear that we have the right to adjust our workforce according to business demands and to deal in an appropriate manner with individual performance issues. Other than those two things, there shouldn't be threats to an employees job, and in reality, these are the only two things which impact an employees livelihood. We made the change precisely because of the employee morale concerns referenced by the other responders. The change was also the centerpiece of a culture change in our workplace and employees are very grateful. This change has been in place for over two years and nothing has changed, other than the implied threat of the "disposable employee" has been removed.

The bottom line to this one is that it is another illustration of the different role that we play than the legal role. The legal role is avoid risk to the max. This means being able to play the "employment at will" card at the first stage of litigation - summary judgement - and hopefully a judge will throw out the case, because after all, the employment relationship is "at will" Our role is different, it is to create a workplace where employees want to work and the idea that they have to sign documents acknowledging that they can be fired on a whim (their perception) mightily detracts from that. Yes, we have accepted a tiny risk but the benefits far outweigh it.

Don D

Point made. However, having said that, in the final analysis, if challenged, it all boils down to the legality of the term 'at-will'. No amount of cultural shift or diversity dynamics or empowerment reconfiguration will outweigh the value to the place of business of that simple state law.

Gillian

Having researched the topic a bit, it is my opinion that most of us have significantly underestimated the level of employee resentment of the "at will" statements, not to mention the repetitive reminder to employees that they are employed "at will and can be terminated with or without reason, notice, etc. etc."

Jessica

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 04-25-02 AT 09:39AM (CST)[/font][p]We include the At-Will clause in our annual performance evaluation as well as any interim documentation. By doing that, the standard is present without clobbering anyone over the head. That might also make it a little easier for existing employees to acknowledge comfortably.

You may also want to work to simplify the language a little bit. We use a shorter clause:

Company Name is an At-Will Employer. The at-will employment relationship with Company Name can be terminated with or without cause and with or without notice, at any time, at the option of either Company Name or the employee. This document is not an employment contract. Nothing stated or implied in this document will change the above-described nature of employment at Company Name or suggest that discharge may occur only for cause.

In our Employee Manual we use the following version as a section of the acknowledgement page:

I understand that my employment relationship with Company Name can be terminated with or without cause and with or without notice, at any time, at the option of either Company Name or myself. Nothing stated or implied in recruiting materials, pre-hire interviews or discussions will change the above described nature of employment at Company Name or suggest that discharge may occur only for cause.

Our attorneys have established this shorter version for us and have stressed that consistent use is the critical element.

I certainly do like the idea of the shift in corporate culture away from stressing At-Will, but I don't anticipate that direction in our company any time soon, so for now this is our approach.