Employee confidentiality agreement workflow for HR and recruiting

The employee version is built from the same clause library as every NonDisclosures template, adapted to a worker rather than a business partner. In order, it covers:

• Definitions and exclusions. What counts as confidential information, with a broad, standard or narrow definition, and the usual exclusions such as public information.
• Obligations of the employee. Use only for the job, no disclosure, reasonable care, and prompt notice of unauthorized use.
• Compelled disclosure. Disclosure required by law or court order is allowed, with notice where legally permitted.
• Return of company property. Documents, devices and copies come back at the end of employment, with no retained copies.
• Employment relationship. The agreement is not a contract of employment, the employee must not bring in a prior employer's confidential information, and nothing restricts later work beyond confidentiality.
• Optional non-solicitation. A non-solicit of company employees, 12 months by default, which you can switch off.
• Term and survival. Confidentiality continues for a chosen period after employment ends, and trade secrets stay protected while they qualify.
• Protected Activity and DTSA notice. Plain language that the agreement does not limit reporting to government agencies or discussing wages and working conditions, plus the federal immunity notice.
• Governing law and local law. A chosen US state, and a clause that gives way to mandatory local rules where the employee works.

The Defend Trade Secrets Act gives employees and contractors immunity for disclosing trade secrets to the government or an attorney to report a suspected violation of law, or in a sealed court filing. If an employer does not include notice of that immunity in agreements that govern confidential information, it can lose the right to exemplary damages and attorney fees against that worker under the act. The employee and contractor templates include the notice by default.

The National Labor Relations Board has also treated broad confidentiality rules as unlawful when they could stop employees from discussing pay or working conditions or from talking to the agency. The SEC has acted against agreements that discourage whistleblowing. The federal Speak Out Act limits pre-dispute nondisclosure clauses in sexual harassment and assault disputes. The Protected Activity clause is written with these rules in mind. States add their own limits, and California Business and Professions Code 16600 voids most employee non-competes, which is why the template contains no non-compete at all. For the difference, read NDA vs non-compete.

Manual sending works for a handful of hires. Once you recruit every week, it breaks: someone starts on Monday without a signed agreement, or the wrong template goes to a contractor. On the Business and Company plans you connect your applicant tracking system and choose the stage that sends the agreement.

1. Connect Greenhouse, Lever or Workable and choose the hire or offer stage that triggers sending.
2. Map the job type to the template, for example full-time roles to the employee NDA and contract roles to the contractor NDA.
3. Lock governing law, term and the definition so recruiters cannot change them, and require approval for any edit to a protected clause.
4. The candidate receives a personal signing link by email and signs in the browser with a typed or drawn signature, no account needed.
5. The signed PDF with its certificate page goes to all parties and into the register, and on the Company plan a webhook can write it back to the ATS record.

See the setup for Greenhouse NDA automation, which also covers NDAs for candidates in late interview rounds.

When someone leaves, HR needs the agreement they signed years ago, not the current template. Search the register by name, open the signed PDF and use it in the exit conversation: the return of property clause, the survival period and the non-solicit if you enabled one. For contractors, the agreement has an end date calculated from its term, and reminders arrive 60, 30 and 7 days before it expires, which is a good moment to decide whether the engagement continues.

Agreements signed on paper or in another tool can be uploaded as PDF or DOCX. On paid plans AI extracts the parties, term, governing law, expiry and key terms, so legacy agreements and new ones sit in the same searchable list and export to CSV for audits.