Been told to stay home during your notice period? Here's what garden leave actually means for your pay, your new job, and your rights — and when it can be challenged or negotiated.
Garden leave is a period during your notice where your employer tells you not to attend work or carry out your normal duties, while you remain employed and fully paid throughout. It's most commonly used when a senior employee, or one with access to clients or sensitive information, hands in their notice to join a competitor. Rather than let them work their notice as normal — with all the access and influence that comes with it — the employer sends them home, or somewhere else entirely, until their employment officially ends.
The name comes from the idea of an employee sitting at home "tending the garden" on full pay, doing nothing work-related, until their contract runs its course.
Only if they have the contractual right to. Most employment contracts for roles where this matters — senior managers, salespeople, anyone client-facing — include an express garden leave clause. If yours doesn't, and your employer sends you home and withdraws your work without a proper contractual basis for doing so, that itself may amount to a breach of contract, which can affect the enforceability of other restrictions in your contract and, in some cases, support a constructive dismissal claim if handled badly.
You remain a full employee throughout garden leave. That means your salary, pension contributions, bonus eligibility (subject to your contract's terms), company car, private medical insurance, and any other contractual benefits continue exactly as before — you are simply not required to come in or do the work.
Generally, no. You're still bound by your existing contract, including your duty of fidelity and any exclusivity clause, so beginning work for a new employer before your garden leave ends will usually breach your contract, even though you're not actually doing anything for your current employer. In practice, most people agree a start date with their new employer that falls after garden leave ends, and there's often room to negotiate exactly when that is.
The two are frequently confused but work differently. Garden leave applies during your notice period, while you're still employed and paid. A restrictive covenant — like a non-compete or non-solicitation clause — applies after your employment has actually ended, when you're no longer being paid by your old employer at all. Some contracts allow a garden leave period to be offset against a subsequent restrictive covenant, so you aren't restricted twice over for the same competitive risk — whether yours does, and whether that's being applied correctly, is exactly the sort of thing worth checking before you sign anything or start a new role.
If you're being placed on garden leave, or it forms part of a settlement agreement being offered to you, there is frequently scope to negotiate: how long it lasts, whether it counts towards or shortens a restrictive covenant, what you're permitted to tell prospective employers in the meantime, and whether you can be released from it early so you can start your new role sooner. We review garden leave clauses as a matter of course whenever we advise on a settlement agreement or notice dispute.
Call us on 020 3058 3365 or complete the form for a free, confidential assessment of your garden leave clause, notice period, or settlement agreement.
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