Depending on the work environment and the employee’s access to confidential information, a statement in one form or another may be essential to safeguarding the employer’s proprietary information. While a written confidentiality policy does not have the same legal force as a confidentiality agreement, it will nonetheless serve to remind employees of the company’s expectation that certain information will not be disclosed to others outside the business or used by employees to their own advantage. Employees with regular or frequent access to trade secret, proprietary information and/or other intellectual property of the employer should be required to sign a confidentiality agreement (see sample Non-competition and Confidentiality Agreement under the Files and Policies tab above), ideally before the employment relationship begins. Even if employees are required to sign a confidentiality agreement, a confidentiality policy is still beneficial.
The contents of a confidentiality policy should identify the types of information that the employer is most concerned about. Perhaps the employer does not have “trade secrets,” as defined by law, but it does have “confidential information” about customers or its own employees that it would not want to be made public. The sample confidentiality policies below, therefore,...
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