A Guide to Garden Leave for Employees

What is garden leave?

If you hand in your notice and resign from your job and you are in a senior position or client facing, your employer might ask you to stay at home. This is known as garden leave. It is more likely if you are going to a competitor. Why? A period away from work and customers and even colleagues put space between you and reduces your influence as well as your knowledge.
The term garden leave, as it usually is called, is mostly used in conjunction with post termination restrictions (or restrictive covenants) and protects the employer.

You have a garden leave clause in your contract

Your employer may have included a garden leave clause in your employment contract (if you have one). If that is the case, they generally have the right to require you to stay at home and you are unlikely to be able to challenge it. You might be able to challenge being placed on garden leave if, for example, you receive commission and during garden leave you are not compensated for the commission you might lose.

You have no garden leave clause in your contract

If there is no garden leave clause, and your employer prevents you from working your notice period, this is a breach of contract and you may be entitled to resign and leave early. If you did so, it is possible that any post-termination restrictions in the contract cease to apply. This is something that employers can overlook.
An employer does not need to use garden leave for all of your notice period. You might work part of the notice period to carry out a handover or complete work tasks.

What happens to your salary and benefits when on garden leave?

If you are put on garden leave for all or part of your notice period you should continue to receive your salary and contractual benefits (unless the contractual clauses say otherwise). Generally, this will include a company car and compensation for any commission or bonus you might otherwise have received. You will also continue to accrue holiday and may be required to take some or all of your accrued holiday so there is no lump sum payment at the end.
Garden leave is generally considered a good idea for employers. Some employees love it; after all you should be paid as if at work but without having to work. Other employees loathe it. Some see it as something to be got through as they don’t like not having work to do. Others see it as disruption of their plans to encourage customers or colleagues to follow them.