A garden leave clause in your offer
Garden leave means that once notice has been given, the employer can keep you on payroll but away from the office, the systems, and the clients until your last day. You're paid to do nothing, and you can't start the next job until the leave ends.
What it's for
It's a way of enforcing a notice period without having a departing employee inside the building. The company keeps paying you, so you stay bound by your obligations as an employee — including not working for anyone else — while your knowledge of current customers and plans goes cold. For the employer it's a softer tool than a non-compete because it costs them your salary; for you, it's a delay between resigning and starting elsewhere.
How it shows up in an offer
"Following notice of termination by either party, the Company may in its sole discretion require you not to attend work, not to contact clients, suppliers or employees, and not to perform any duties, for all or part of the notice period. During any such period you will continue to receive your base salary and benefits, and you will remain an employee bound by all obligations to the Company."
Once either of you gives notice, the company can send you home for the rest of the notice period — some of it or all of it — and tell you not to talk to clients or colleagues. You still get salary and benefits. You are still an employee, so everything an employee can't do (work for a competitor, use company information) still applies. "Base salary" is specific: it doesn't say bonus, commission, or equity vesting.
What to check in yours
- How long your notice period is. Garden leave is only as long as the notice. If your notice is three months, that's three months you may be paid but unable to start anywhere else.
- What you're paid during it. "Base salary and benefits" is what's promised in the sample. Whether bonus continues to accrue, whether equity keeps vesting, whether commission on deals you closed is still paid — often the clause doesn't say, and the answer is in the bonus and equity clauses read together with this one.
- Whether it's at the employer's discretion. "May in its sole discretion" means they choose whether to use it. It's a tool available to them, not a promise to you.
- What you're barred from during it. Contact with clients and colleagues is usual. Some clauses also bar attending industry events or contacting anyone connected with the business.
- Whether it counts against a non-compete. Some agreements reduce a post-employment non-compete by the time spent on garden leave. Some don't. If you have both clauses, check whether they run one after the other.
- Whether you can start elsewhere with permission. Occasionally the clause allows early release; if it does, it says so.
Where a lawyer comes in
Garden leave, a non-compete and a notice period are three ways of keeping you out of the market for a while, and how they combine — and whether that combination holds in your jurisdiction — is a legal question. If your offer has more than one of them, a lawyer can tell you how long you'd really be out. The report reads the clause as written, tells you what's paid and what isn't during the leave, and lines it up against the other restrictions so the total is visible.
This page explains what a clause says and what to look for in your own offer. It doesn't tell you what the law is where you work or whether a clause would be enforced — that's a question for an employment lawyer, and the page says so where it applies. Informational, not legal advice.