Free Employee Reference Release Agreement Templates

This agreement is signed between the employer and employee of a company or business and allows the employer to keep specific information hidden from the perspective employers of the former employees and only disclose particular employment-related information that is mutually agreed in the agreement and accepted by the employee.

Brief Description of Employee Reference Release:

To understand this very complicated legal document, suppose you run a company and an employee wants to leave you for another job or you want to fire some staff members for downsizing in the corporation. If you have signed a reference release agreement with the employees by the time of hiring them in the company, now you can protect your information and operations inside your company. When the former employees are employed in another company, their new employer will ask you to provide a reference for those employees that left your company and with this agreement in your hands, you can only disclose the mutually agreed details and information with the prospective employer of the other company. The information can be of any kind and it depends on each company and employer what type of information about their employees they want to share in the reference letters.

For example, a company asks the employees to sign an agreement by which they agree that their employer will only disclose their employment date, duration, and salary package and nothing else where another employer adds the designation details in this list or anything else that has no objection to share with the other employer about their company and its employment policies. This is very important, especially when a very high-profile company is in discussion and it is not possible to give the specifics of a position in the company to outsiders. When companies sign non-compete and non-disclosure agreements with the employees, the key reason behind creating such documents is that if the employees leave the company, they won’t share the secrets and intellectual property of the company with anyone else outside the company.

when such employees are hired by some other company and their new employer wants to verify the references and asks for what these employees did in their previous company, it can create a situation for the employer as he can’t disclose the job specifics and particular responsibilities with anyone else and if he has this agreement in hands signed by the employees, he can simply deny disclosing any deeply related information about the job designation of an employee in the company and when the employee has signed this agreement, he can’t force the employer to give details or information to his new employer and he can’t go in court with this agreement either.

Key Elements to add to the Employee Reference Release:

Name of the employee
Name of the employer/company
Terms and conditions of the agreement
Clauses of the agreement
Termination of the agreement
Results or violation of the agreement
Validity of the agreement
Signature of both parties with the date