Changing Business Needs

• An employment contract typically describes the employee's position and job duties, so that the employer can enforce them against the employee if need be. However, in fast-moving business environments, an employee's position and job duties may become obsolete before the employment contract expires. Otherwise, a company's shifting market shares in particular lines of business may create a need to reassign the employee to another position or amend some of his job duties. Some of this liability can be mitigated by using general statements to describe employee job duties.
  
  

Grounds for Termination

• Some employment contracts specify "at-will" employment, meaning that the employee can be fired at any time without grounds. Many, however, guarantee the employee a certain duration of employment as long as he does not transgress certain boundaries. The drafter of an employment contract is often caught in a dilemma --- drafting grounds for termination too broadly may make it virtually impossible to fire the employee, while reducing grounds for termination to a list of offenses carries the risk that the employee will commit an offense worthy of dismissal, but which is not mentioned in the employment contract. Courts, however, enforce a few time-honored implied obligations --- an employer may not steal from his employer, for example, even if theft is not mentioned as grounds for dismissal in the contract.
  
  

Ambiguities

• It is nearly impossible to draft contractual language free of any ambiguity. While vague terms such as "moral turpitude" should be avoided, even precise terms included in complex sentence structures can introduce ambiguity of meaning. If the employer drafted the contract without employee input, most courts will interpret any ambiguity in favor of the employee.
  
  

Renegotiation

• If the terms of the contract become obsolete --- if, for example, the employee's job duties change, the contract may be amended or the parties may decide to negotiate an entirely new employment contract. This approach, however, opens both parties to the possibility that the other party will make new demands --- a raise in salary, for example --- as a condition to consenting to the other party's new terms.