Employment Agreement: senior employee
A comprehensive contract for senior staff, designed to protect your business.
Hiring senior employees comes with greater responsibility – — and greater legal risk. Our Senior Employee Employment Contract template is designed to meet those challenges head-on. Drafted by expert UK employment solicitors, this professionally written contract gives your business the legal protection it needs while setting clear, practical expectations for senior hires.
This contract goes beyond the basics required by employment law. It includes enhanced protections around confidentiality, intellectual property, and post-termination conduct, making it ideal for senior-level roles where the stakes are higher.
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What this document covers
This contract template includes all the statutory terms required under the Employment Rights Act 1996, plus enhanced commercial protections tailored for senior or managerial employees.
It’s suitable for roles with strategic, managerial, or high-trust responsibilities – — such as heads of department, operational leads, or senior client-facing staff.
Key terms covered in this template
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- Job title and duties
Sets out the employee’s role and may include a high-level description of strategic or leadership responsibilities. - Start date and continuous employment
Confirms the start date and continuity, with options to reflect prior service where relevant. - Working hours and location
Allows for greater flexibility in hours and working patterns, including provisions for hybrid or remote leadership roles. - Salary, bonuses, and benefits
Goes beyond the junior template to include optional clauses for performance-related bonuses, car or travel allowances, private healthcare, or other senior-level benefits. - Annual leave
Offers flexibility to include enhanced holiday entitlement above the statutory minimum, in line with seniority or market expectations. - Sickness absence
Includes optional enhanced sick pay terms, suitable for more senior roles, while remaining compliant with statutory requirements. - Notice periods and termination
Provides longer notice periods (often 3–6 months), with options to include garden leave and payment in lieu of notice (PILON) to help you manage exits smoothly and protect business interests. - Confidentiality and data protection
Enhanced clauses to reflect access to high-value information, client data, strategy documents, or trade secrets. - Intellectual property (IP)
Strengthened provisions to ensure any business-critical IP created in the role belongs to your company. - Restrictive covenants
One of the key enhancements in this contract. It includes optional post-termination restrictions to help prevent senior staff from:- Poaching clients or employees
- Misusing confidential information
- Competing unfairly after leaving
Disciplinary and grievance procedures
Refers to internal procedures, with optional tailoring for seniority and board-level involvement if required. - Job title and duties
Why use our template?
This template is a step up from a standard employment contract. It’s designed specifically for roles where the risks – and the rewards – are higher. That includes:
- Greater commercial protections to help safeguard your business
- Provisions that reflect senior-level responsibilities, including decision-making, staff management, or access to sensitive data
- Optional clauses that allow for customisation based on role, sector, or benefit structure
Whether you’re hiring a head of operations, finance lead, senior engineer, or department manager, this contract ensures you’ve covered the legal essentials and protected your business interests.
Practicle guidance included
As with all PaperRock templates, you’ll receive clear, plain-English guidance notes to help you fill out the contract confidently. These explain key terms and outline any options or decisions you may need to make, such as whether to include restrictive covenants or enhanced benefits.
You don’t need to be a lawyer to use this document. It’s designed for businesses that want professional-grade protection without professional-grade fees.
When to use this contract
This employment contract is suitable for:
- Heads of department
- Senior managers or team leads
- Strategic or operational hires
- Employees with access to key clients, data, or trade secrets
- Staff earning higher salaries or receiving performance bonuses
If you’re hiring someone into a junior or non-managerial role, we recommend our Simple Employment Contract (Junior Employee) template instead.
Template details
- Jurisdiction: England and Wales
- Format: Microsoft Word (.docx)
- Length: Approx. 13-15 pages
- Includes: Detailed guidance notes and clause options
A trusted resource for growing teams
This senior employment contract has been created by leading employment lawyers with deep experience advising UK businesses. It reflects current legal requirements as well as best practice when hiring at senior level.
At PaperRock, we know how important it is to get the legal detail right – especially when you’re trusting someone with a key part of your business. That’s why we’ve created this flexible, robust, and user-friendly contract to help you hire with confidence.
When do I use this document?
- as the disclosure letter to be delivered at closing of an investment in a private limited company
- for general and specific disclosures to be given by the persons acting as warrantors under the investment or subscription agreement
What are the key features?
- in letter form from the warrantor(s) to the investor(s)
- introductory paragraphs, linking the disclosure letter and disclosures to the warranties in the investment or subscription agreement
- general disclosures of certain matters, including:
- the contents of the disclosure documents, which are usually the documents provided to the investor(s) during due diligence and to be set out in an index to the disclosure letter
- in relation to commercial property, matters available from public searches
- matters which would be available from:
- a Companies House search of the target company
- a winding-up search on the target company
- a search of the UK Intellectual Property Office
- matters disclosed in correspondence between the parties and their advisers
- specific disclosures against the warranties to be included in table form
What else do I need to know?
Corporate transactions usually involve one party (the warrantor) providing warranties to another party concerning the company and its business, financial performance, prospects, assets, contracts, rights and liabilities. A breach of the warranties may result in a legal claim against the warrantor for damages for breach of contract.
The warrantor may wish to disclose specific events or circumstances as exceptions to certain warranties. The disclosure of these matters is intended to shield warrantor against a potential claim for breach of the particular warranties. Instead of amending or qualifying the warranties themselves, the disclosures against specific warranties are set out in a separate letter prepared by the warrantor, known as a “Disclosure Letter”.
As an example in an investment transaction, the agreement may include a warranty that the target company has complied with all legal requirements in its business conduct. If the founders, acting as warrantors, are aware of a failure by the company to comply with a specific legal requirement, they would disclose this as an exception to the warranty. This is done by setting out a narrative of the circumstances of the breach, along with supporting documents, in the Disclosure Letter. If the disclosure satisfies the defined requirement of “fair disclosure” in the investment agreement, it should shield the founders from a claim under the investment agreement for breach of this warranty regarding the disclosed non-compliance.
The warranties may explicitly require that certain facts or documents be included in the Disclosure Letter. For instance, a warranty might require that the Disclosure Letter contains details and copies of all material contracts entered into by the target company. Failure to disclose a material contract may result in a claim against the warrantors for breach of warranty if the omission causes loss to the investor(s).
Upon receiving disclosures during transaction negotiations and discussions on the draft Disclosure Letter, the investor(s) have several options:
- to accept the disclosure, with the result that the investor(s) have no legal recourse if the disclosed matter leads to an actual liability or loss
- to request specific indemnity cover from the warrantors in the investment agreement to cover the disclosed matter, under which the investor(s) may be able to recover any resulting liability or loss notwithstanding the disclosure
- to renegotiate the transaction terms, such as adjusting the company’s pre-investment value, or hold back some investment until the risk of a liability or loss has expired in the future
- to withdraw from the transaction entirely
What other documents are available?
For a disclosure letter for use in a share purchase transaction, see
For a disclosure letter for use in a business purchase transaction, see
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