In a market constantly looking for talents, contracts are becoming more and more complex.
Jacopo Moretti – Partner, Trifirò & Partners Law Firm
Dynamism, it is the main feature of the financial sector labour market, in which the demand for qualified professionals is constant and features frequent transition of employees between companies. For this reason, it has become essential for banks and asset management companies to be able to keep their networks secure and protect them from the “sirens” of the market, especially in these times of uncertainty, where the economy is stagnating and severely tested by the Covid-19 health emergency.
As part of these dynamics, employment contracts have evolved and become increasingly
structured and complex, incorporating the numerous tools that our labour law system makes available to employers. This is in order to stabilise employment relationships and retain talents, both to protect and safeguard the wealth of knowledge, as well as business contacts. These evolutions range from the extension of the notice period longer than that provided for by collective bargaining, to the stability pact which introduces a minimum duration clause of the employment relationship by limiting the possibility of withdrawing for a predetermined period in the absence of just cause. This is useful for both parties of the agreement.
Further developments involve the non-competition agreement, which normally serves the company (but which must also have a concrete benefits for the worker as it concerns remuneration) to the non-solicitation agreement which is something less than the non-competition agreement, but something more in the context of the termination of the employment contract and which can also have an economic consideration. As well as this, the privacy and confidentiality agreement which can be used both during the employment relationship, with more stringent effectiveness than the legal regulations and after the termination of the employment relationship.
Additional evolutions include the incentive and retention plans, which provide for the payment of bonuses, often of a significant amount, for the achievement of objectives spread over a medium to long term period and on condition that the beneficiaries are still employed by the company at the time of payment. They are sophisticated tools, which combine the economic and motivational aspects (results that the company and workers must achieve) with those of loyalty and mark the new direction in which the market is moving.
