Non Compete agreements usually have four dimensions. These are solicitation of clients, solicitation of staff and suppliers, and a prohibition on any work that competes with the ex-employer.
In my view the first two are reasonable, the last two less so. When I say reasonable, it depends on the business of the employer and the reality of the business relationship. These were originally developed to protect businesses from competition from very senior executives moving to their competitors and taking inside knowledge with them. In this light, it seems reasonable for a company to seek that departing sales staff don’t solicit customers, and that senior IT workers don’t solicit staff to join them in a new competitive venture. Where the relationship is owned by the staff member such as personal fitness or hairdressing/barbers then it becomes a lot more questionable and also excludes the customer choice.
The [English] courts aren’t very sympathetic to non-compete clauses that stop someone earning a living. The nature of the business also means that if an aggressive geographic constraint is sought, the agreement may be vulnerable to legal challenge. An aggressive non-compete agreement applied to a too a junior level member of staff may be overturned by a court leaving the company contract vulnerable to challenge for all staff that they seek to constrain or apply them to.
