Senior Appointments

Your employment contracts and policies are often the first line of defence for your business, and senior appointments come with specific challenges and questions which need to be addressed properly from the outset in order to protect the employer. A clearly defined relationship between your company and its senior executives and board level directors helps to minimise the risk of problems, and potential damage to your business, later on.

Making senior appointments can come with the extra complication that you may be hiring from a competitor, making it even more important to take expert employment law advice with the aim of protecting your business from any legal action (or minimising its impact) by your new senior executive’s previous employer.

Specialists In Senior Appointments

At Hine Legal, our employment law experts have significant experience in providing advice and support to employers to guide them towards making effective senior appointments. We will advise you and/or your HR team to ensure that your senior recruitment procedures are properly structured and compliant with current legal requirements; that the correct actions are taken; and that employment contracts (which may involve complex questions about a person’s status as employee, shareholder and director) are tightly drafted.

Board Level Employment Law Advice For Recruitment Or Exiting Employees

When your business is recruiting at Board level, our specialist employment law team will assist with ensuring that specific contracts for executive or non-executive Directors are tightly drafted, as well as assessing the impact of post-termination restrictive covenants from previous contracts, where required.

We advise on a full range of partnership issues, from offer to partner exit and team moves. Protecting your business demands that you ensure that partner policies are structured to minimise future risk of claims, as well as being practical and manageable.

Many of our clients have HR teams or in-house employment law advisors for dealing with day-to-day matters. However, there are times when external expertise is necessary, and these clients turn to Hine Legal when:

• Issues arise concerning a senior/board level employee and complex questions arise about their status as employee, shareholder and director.
• Sensitivities around senior level recruitment or issues mean that involving their HR team or in-house Counsel is not desirable.
• The issue concerns terminating a senior/board level employee (and could involve restructure of the senior management team).
• The issue affects or involves the HR Director or in-house Counsel.
• Their usual employment law/HR support is advocating or requiring a process which is proving unworkable for the employer.
• They require an objective, independent second opinion.

We have extensive experience of acting for organisations requiring senior level advice, and frequently advise Boards at short notice. Our experience enables us to devise a strategy for addressing and resolving matters as swiftly and cost-effectively as possible.