As you will see below, our expert Employment and Executive Compensation team routinely covers a very large amount of ground. But whether we’re advising large corporations on cross border employment policies, designing new compensation plans, or acting to resolve potentially expensive disputes, we’re here to help organisations and individuals work better together and more productively.

Our lawyers are among the very best in their specialist field. Kala Anandarajah and Abdul Jabbar have both been cited as leading employment lawyers in AsiaLaw Leading Lawyers. On the contentious front, our specialist partners, including Andre Yeap SC & Francis Xavier SC, have a proven track record of successfully handling the entire range of employment disputes in both court and arbitration settings.

WITHIN THIS PRACTICE
Practice areas

The following provides a very brief summary of the main areas covered by this practice, and the ways in which we are most frequently able to help our clients. For more detailed information, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Employment appointment and termination

• Advise private, public and multinational companies extensively on employment related matters, including appointment, rights and duties of employees and employers and termination
  
• Draft employment agreements for employees at multiple levels 
  
• Counsel, advise clients on cross border employment concerns
  
• Drafting cross border employment agreements
  
• Counsel, advise and draft relevant documentation in relation to secondment of employees at various levels, within Singapore and across jurisdictions, including advising on tax and other incidental implications 
  
• Counsel and advise on issues relating to termination of employees, including drafting appropriate exit and no claim letters 
  
• Advise extensively on unfair dismissal allegations across the region and managing such claims

Employment policies

• Advise, design and draft various forms of employee handbooks and manuals dealing with employee entitlements, rights and obligations 
  
• Advise, design and draft various policies on monitoring employee use of emails and other official modes of communication
  
• Advise, design and draft various forms of whistle-blowing policies, assist with implementation processes and conduct regular training for continuity
  
• Advise, design and drafting ethics, anticorruption, anti-trust, health and various other types of policies

Managing confidentiality, restraint of trade and non-competes

• Advise on all aspects of restraint and non-compete provisions for various levels of employees from varying industries, including financial institutions and multinational corporations
  
• Advise, design and draft policies intended to protect the confidentiality of trade secrets and other proprietary information
  
• Advise, design and draft data protection policies
  
• Advise non-compete provisions, the validity of such provisions and resolving the dispute before court proceedings commence

Executive compensation

• Advise, design and drafting various forms of compensation and benefit plans and agreements
  
• Advise, design and draft Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) including providing advice relating to tax
  
• Advise, design and drafting Long Term Incentive Plans (LTIPs)
  
• Advise on benefits issues in corporate reorganisations and restructuring, including advice on post-closing benefits issues and plan terminations or restructuring

Restructuring, reorganisation and retrenchments

• Counsel and advice extensively in restructuring and retrenchment exercise of large multinational corporations and financial institutions
  
• Drafting relevant documentation for management of employees being retrenched, subsequent placements and referrals
  
• Advice on requisite training and re-skilling opportunities to be provided to retrenched employees
  
• Advice on claims arising out of the retrenchment exercises

Occupational Health and Safety

• Advise on various aspect of compliance with health and safety regulations
  
• Ensuring board compliance and implementation of appropriate processes and procedures to meet reasonably practicable standards mandated by law
  
• Advise on SARS, H1N1 (Swine Flu) and other pandemics in relation to instituting best practices to manage compliance with regulatory requirements, leave and other  benefit issues, and employee privacy matters

Mergers and acquisitions

• Advise on the transfer of employees resulting from mergers and acquisitions
  
• Advise on the rationalisation of human resource policies in merged entities

Contentious employment issues

• Enforcement of restraint of trade clauses and employee confidentiality agreements
  
• Investigation and action against employees for fraud, breach of fiduciary duties, business diversion and confidential information theft 
  
• Action on behalf of employers in contractual disputes arising from termination or retrenchments of officers and employees, payment of salary, bonus, stock options etc
  
• Claims under Keyman and Directors and Officers (D & O) insurance policies