GARDEN LEAVE IN TURKISH LABOR LAW
A garden leave refers to the period time during which an employee stays away from the workplace or works remotely and gets a salary and social aid during the notice period. This type of arrangement is often used by employers to protect business secrets and prevent employees from competing with themselves or getting another job during their notice period. Employer may request that the employee “takes care of the garden” or “stays at home” due to the garden leave arrangement. In this practice, the employee is not able to access the employer's confidential information during garden leave, and possibly the confidential information the employee already has will become invalid or at least less valuable when the employee starts working for a new employer. Garden leave is typically implemented for higher-up executives due to their importance within organizations. Parties may additively determine non-competition agreement.
During garden leave, employees are not generally allowed to work for another company or become self-employed. Besides employees bear no responsibility for current duties. However, employer may request employee to back to work, to share necessary information, or to get collaboration about one issue as long as garden leave continues. It should be noted that employee will continue to receive his wages and social benefits provided by the employer during the garden leave.
Garden leave is not regulated in the Turkish Labor Law but parties may decide to implement garden leave with an employment contract or a separate contract to be signed among themselves. Garden leave rule included in the employment contract or agreed upon in a separate contract should be reasonable in terms of time and protecting the interests of the employer. In this case, garden leave period should not exceed the notice period determined in the law.
Garden leave can also be used as a tool to suspend employee from workplace in cases disturbing the peace at the workplace or criminal acts such as sexual harassment. It is not appropriate for employee to continue working at the workplace in case that an investigation is necessary to remove a suspicion if employee is involved in a crime or noncompliant circumstances according to employment agreement. Nevertheless, garden leave period should not be long in the matter of improvement of his/her abilities and skills.
CONCLUSION
As a consequence garden leave provides many advantages for both employers and employees alike such as protecting business secrets from being shared outside of the organization, preventing competition between current staff members, and ensuring that all confidential materials remain protected even after leaving one’s position. Garden leave offers security measures for maintaining organizational stability throughout transition periods. It should be noted that there must be a written contract between the parties regarding garden leave. Garden leave should not be implemented as a restriction against freedom of employee and should be provided to protect only the employer's interest in non-compete.