Non-compete enforceability

How it works

Narrow time, narrow scope, tied to real secrets, maybe consideration, still a fight. A global two-year ban on ‘any remote admin work’ is a bad paragraph. Protect IP and customers with confidentiality and access cuts instead of a fantasy injunction in Delaware. For a U.S. company hiring one Filipino teammate, write this into the brief, the employment contract, and the peso payroll file before the start date. Slack habits do not override the Labor Code, BIR, or NPC. If the local employer of record holds the paper, they run the statutory step; you still owe a clean operating definition so the seat does not fail in week three. Put a number on the example when you budget loaded cost, because a nameless allowance always returns as a December surprise or a missed SLA.

Example: clause: 24 months, all of IT-BPM, no extra pay. Likely weak. Clause: 6 months, your named accounts, secrets defined, paid garden month: less weak.

How it differs

Confidentiality and IP assignment are the workhorses. Quitclaim is not a non-compete.

Common errors

Copying a California non-compete as if that were the current U.S. fashion to import.

In practice

Treat Non-compete enforceability as a week-one operating object. Ask who signs the notice, who remits, and who would answer DOLE. If three vendors each point at the other, you have a story rather than a file. Write an owner - founder, local employer, or worker - and a date you will look at it again: first cutoff, first holiday, or first miss. If nobody can show a contract clause, a payslip line, a calendar block, or a checklist box, you do not have non-compete enforceability yet. You have a conversation. Convert the conversation before the person starts, while changing the deal still costs a paragraph rather than a resignation. Re-read the worked example above against the actual hire in front of you. If the numbers in that example cannot be swapped for this seat’s pesos, hours, and start date, the brief is still unfinished.