You receive an email from one of your business clients asking you to call. It seems their current sales force has no employment contracts and they want you to draft employment agreements, including a noncompete, to stop them from leaving to work for their competition across the county. You pick up the phone and prepare to deliver the speech.
Many Pennsylvania employment lawyers have lived this client exchange ad nauseum: “In Pennsylvania, you must provide current employees with additional consideration for a noncompete to be effective.” The client responds, “Like what?” You start to offer some possibilities: “You could provide a cash payment, participation in a bonus plan, additional vacation days, favorable change in job duties, a peppercorn.” The consideration is resolved, or possibly not if the client abandons the idea, concluding the consideration is more expensive than the future competition.
