Garden Leave Investigations and surveillance.

Before we go any further, perhaps we should explain what garden leave, or gardening leave is and why we would carry out garden leave investigations or gardening leave investigations and surveillance.

Garden leave is sometimes implemented when an employer requests that an employee or employees, upon submitting their notice, are not required to  return to the office. They are  asked not to work during their notice period but in anticipation of their departure, are still  kept on the payroll.

The “garden leave” clause in an employment contract is most often used when an employee leaves to go and work for a competitor. This effectively provides a ‘buffer zone’ between their current employment and their future employment. In effect, this prevents them from learning any confidential business information, so as not to share it with a competitor.

Putting an employee on gardening leave also helps someone taking on their previous role to do so without any interference.

When on leave, employees are often refrained from contacting any suppliers of their current employees, or other clauses such as contacting or working for a competitor during the period of the leave. It is at this juncture that we are often tasked with investigating employees that are on garden leave to check if they are adhering to the terms of their contracts.

Let the investigations begin.

Recently our offices were contacted by an employer that had put two of its current employers on garden leave. One of the constraints of the leave was that they were not to contact or work for any other company especially one that would be a conflict of interest ( another company in the same line of business) for the current employer.

Our client strongly suspected that the two employees were in negotiations with a rival firm and wanted us to begin our investigations to ascertain the levels of adherence to their contracts and especially to establish if they were contacting the rival firm.

After exhausting all on line and database avenues to find any evidence of the contracts being breached it was agreed to place them both under surveillance for a week to see if they visited any rival firms or showed signs of working for them.

The surveillance team started on the following Monday morning in  Warwickshire  and operatives did not have to wait long until one of the employees left his home dressed in office attire and drove away. He was followed to the address of the other employee who exited her address and got into the passenger seat of the waiting colleagues car. They were followed 20 miles away to an industrial estate in Coventry and were seen to go through a security barrier and into a car park of a rival company. They were later observed coming out in the evening when the offices closed.

The following day they did exactly the same thing and with all objectives achieved it was decided to stand the surveillance down. Our report and imagery was handed over to a satisfied client and they were no doubt relieved of their positions and any further financial payments from the employer.

If you feel we can help you in a similar or any other type of employee investigation please do not hesitate to call us on 024 7512 0316.