At some time senior employees are likely to leave their current employer - to suggest that doing so is somehow ‘shafting’ their employer, being mercenary and dumping them “in the poo” is just plain silly. When they do leave it is unrealistic to believe that they won’t be doing so to join a competitor. What do you expect them to do, learn a completely new skill set?
There are numerous methods to protect proprietary information and other confidentialities being misused by ex-employees - senior executives regularly move between organisations and if there weren’t such measures in place you would regularly hear of court cases.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts I don’t understand why contracts with a gardening leave clause get signed, An employment contract always has details of how they can be terminated, handing in your resignation is not breaking your “bloody word”. The only ‘promise’ an employee makes is that they will continue to carry out the work they were employed to do until the time defined by the contract is up. Gardening leave prevents them from doing this.
One thing that I’ve not seen mentioned is how the saga of DA leaving and the way the club has reacted may have on hiring potential future employees - would you be keen to join an organisation that on the face of it wants to make leaving in the future as difficult as possible and likely to sabotage any future employment prospects?
I’m sorry to see DA leaving the club but IF the club’s demands on Newcastle are being purposefully unrealistic, (something we don’t know one way or another), in order to ‘punish’ DA for daring to resign then I’m not impressed and I think it might come back to bite us.
In my experience contracts don’t usually have a ‘gardening leave’ clause as such…………it’s simply the common term for making (or more usually allowing) someone see out their notice period without having to come into work. Ashworth will have known what his notice period was, and whilst he (and Toon) might have hoped to negotiate an earlier termination he would have known he couldn’t insist on it.