Avoid Potential Traps When Updating Employment Terms In Your Key Documents

There is little debate that best practices for employers include periodically refreshing the company's key employment documents like personnel policies, confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements. Quite often, there are similar provisions in several documents. Team members in different parts of the organization, such as human resources, the general counsel and members of a specific business unit, may make changes to key language. They may also make those changes at different times. Each of these factors can contribute to a risk of inconsistent or contradictory terms and the risk may not surface until a dispute about the terms in question arises. Courts will typically hold these kinds of inconsistencies and ambiguities against the employer.