Contract employment – Responsibilities ?

It’s a long , I mean really long time since I posted on this blog. The lot happened over the past year, new job, new house, new responsibilities that kept me away and how much I missed being here.

With today’s post, I would want to share an experience with you all and invite your comments, observations and opinion…..

What are your entitlements and liabilities of being a contract employee?

In a recent situation at work, an employee for  hired on contract to support the project through a critical phase, left a whole project team in a difficult situation. He was hired for a fixed term contract, specifically to work on reporting and quality dashboards. Since the beginning, he would want to work in isolation, not willing to share tool know-how with the team and towards the end of the contract, refused to hand over the project documentation assuming it his individual work. He even refused to share passwords of employer provided laptop and mobile as he thought it had confidential information of his work.

As per my observation, being first time on contract, he misunderstood the terms of contract agreement and assumed he had rights over his work.

Being on contract is different than being a employee with the company but it has some implied rules everywhere that make part of the service agreement.

• The ownership of the intellectual property rights usually lies with the employer for any job/ work that was done during the course of employment.
• Document, design, copyright material that was created during the job, by self or as part of the team, belongs to the employer and shall be shared while or after the contract is completed.
• As a contract employee, you are responsible to protect the confidential information tat you have learnt or even created on the job.
• Unless authorized by the employer, copying any data or information from employers’s computer or any system system is not recommended.

Are you a contract employee or do you deal with contract employment cases? Share your opinion and experience with us