Seven editable Word documents, from the offer letter to the confidentiality undertaking. Written against the Indian Contract Act and the four labour codes, not translated from a foreign precedent whose best known clause is void here.
Editable Word, blanks in square brackets, each clause naming what it rests on.
A twenty clause employment agreement, and separately the appointment letter in the format rule 6 prescribes. They are two documents and only the second is compulsory. Its fields for the category of skill and the broad nature of duties come from a written job description or from nowhere, and its sixteen fields are personal data, so the pack sets out what the Digital Personal Data Protection Act does and does not yet require.
Section 2(o) defines fixed term employment as engagement on a written contract for a fixed period, so a verbal six month understanding is not one. Three provisos travel with it, including gratuity at one year rather than five.
A conditional offer that does not pretend to be the appointment letter, and a contract for services with the seven question test to run before you use it. Misclassification decides provident fund, gratuity and leave, and it decides them looking backwards.
Confidentiality, intellectual property and non-solicitation written so that section 27 does not reach them, with the four assignment particulars section 19 requires. Then the training bond, built on vouched cost rather than a round number.
Each one in wide circulation, each doing something other than what the person who pasted it in believes. Set out three ways: what people write, what happens to it, and what to write instead.
Attendo (formerly Petpooja Payroll) holds the contract terms and the wages on one record, so clause 4 and the payslip agree.
Almost no employer in India is required to have an employment agreement. The appointment letter is the one nobody gets to choose about, and it has had a prescribed format since May.
Section 6(1)(f) of the OSH Code lists it among the duties of every employer: issue a letter of appointment to every employee on his appointment in the establishment, with such information and in such form as may be prescribed. The same clause dealt with people already on the rolls, who had to be issued one within three months of commencement, and commencement was 21 November 2025, so that date fell on 21 February 2026. Rule 6 of the Central Rules, notified as G.S.R. 345(E) on 8 May 2026, then supplied the form: sixteen numbered fields, opening with the line that no employee shall be employed in any establishment unless an appointment letter has been issued in the format given below. Five of the sixteen are the ones nobody fills, because they are not in any agreement template: the Labour Identification Number of the establishment, the Universal Account Number, the category of skill, the type of employment as Regular or Fixed-term or Contractual, and for a woman employee the maternity benefit available under Chapter VI of the Code on Social Security.
Two narrow cases do compel a written agreement, and they are worth naming because almost nothing else does. Fixed term employment is one: section 2(o) of the Industrial Relations Code and section 2(34) of the Code on Social Security both define it as engagement on the basis of a written contract, so choosing it makes the writing compulsory. An audio-visual worker is the other, and it is stricter still: section 66 of the OSH Code says no person shall be employed as one unless an agreement in writing is entered into and registered with the competent authority. Outside those two, no central provision requires the agreement at all, and it is worth checking what your own state adds. The letter is not yours to choose either way.
Read the scope of the letter duty too, because the duty and the threshold count different people. The duty binds an employer, and section 2(u) defines an employer as somebody employing one or more employees in his establishment. Section 2(v) defines an establishment as a place where ten or more workers are employed. So the threshold counts workers. Once it is crossed, the duty runs to every employee, and section 2(t) puts managerial, administrative, technical and clerical staff inside that word with no wage ceiling on it. Ten workers switch the duty on; the managing director then needs a letter too. Below ten there is no establishment under this Code and your state's Shops and Establishments Act governs instead.
Then there is the clause everybody pastes in and nobody checks. Section 27 of the Indian Contract Act reads: every agreement by which any one is restrained from exercising a lawful profession, trade or business of any kind, is to that extent void. One exception follows, for a person who sells the goodwill of a business. Read the words that are not there. The section does not ask whether the restraint is reasonable, whether it is limited in time, or whether it protects a legitimate interest, and that test belongs to English law rather than to this section. The word reasonable does appear once in section 27, inside the goodwill exception, where it governs the local limits of that one agreement and not the general rule. Redrafting a non-compete to three months and one city therefore changes nothing.
The Specific Relief Act closes the enforcement route separately, and it takes three sections to see whole: section 14(c) puts a contract dependent on personal qualifications outside specific performance, section 41(e) bars an injunction to prevent the breach of a contract that would not be specifically enforced, and section 42 then says that notwithstanding 41(e) a negative agreement may be injuncted after all. So a negative covenant is injunctable in principle. What section 42 cannot do is revive an agreement section 27 has already made void.
The practical answer is to move the weight onto the clause that restrains information rather than the one that restrains a person. Confidentiality restrains no profession, so section 27 does not reach it, and neither does a non-solicitation clause aimed at named relationships rather than at working in the trade. The pack drafts both that way and says plainly, in the undertaking itself, that nothing in it stops the employee working elsewhere. The letters that end the employment are a separate pack, and the appointment letter formats on the blog are the shorter version of Format 02.
Each one is in wide circulation in agreements signed in India, and each does something other than what the person who pasted it in believes.
| Clause | What it is worth here | Instrument | Section | In the file | Void? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Non-compete after the last day | Void to that extent | Indian Contract Act | 27 | Clause 01 | Yes |
| Confidentiality, listed by category | Stands, it restrains no trade | Indian Contract Act | 27 | Format 06 | No |
| Waiver of gratuity or bonus | Null and void | Code on Wages | 60 | Clause 04 | Yes |
| Bond for a round number | A ceiling, not a debt | Indian Contract Act | 74 | Format 07 | Capped |
| All nine | Each with the wording that works |
The appointment letter has a format now, and it is not a matter of house style. Rule 6 opens: no employee shall be employed in any establishment unless an appointment letter has been issued in the format given below.
Source: OSH (Central) Rules 2026, G.S.R. 345(E), rule 6Every agreement restraining the exercise of a lawful profession, trade or business is void to that extent. The one exception is the sale of goodwill, and the operative part sets no test of reasonableness.
Source: Indian Contract Act 1872, s.27Where the excluded allowances pass one-half of all remuneration, the excess is added back into wages. The arithmetic is exact, so wages land on one-half whatever the basic pay clause says.
Source: Code on Wages 2019, s.2(y), first provisoThey are two documents. Section 6(1)(f) requires the letter, in the prescribed form, and outside fixed term employment and section 66's audio-visual workers no central provision requires the agreement at all. There is no penalty attached to section 6 by name: section 94 is the general penalty on an employer, not less than ₹2,00,000 and up to ₹3,00,000, and section 97 sets a lower band of ₹50,000 to ₹1,00,000 for a contravention by any person. Which of the two reaches a missing letter is not settled by the text, and this page does not pretend otherwise.
It is void to that extent under s.27, and tightening it does not help because the operative part of the section sets no reasonableness test to satisfy. Leaving it in is not free either: it tells a departing employee that the rest of the restrictive covenants section is bluff, and the clause that does work is usually in the same paragraph.
A clause barring the use of any knowledge, skill or experience gained during the employment is a non-compete wearing a different label, and it fails for the same reason: skill and experience are what a profession consists of. List the categories of information instead, in a schedule, and carve the employee's own general knowledge out expressly.
The proviso to s.2(y) adds back whatever the excluded allowances carry above one-half of all remuneration, and the algebra means wages land on exactly one-half however the split is drawn. Budget on that, and note that clauses (j) and (k) sit outside the test. The number then has to survive into the register it appears in every month.
Section 19 of the Copyright Act asks an assignment to identify the work and specify the rights, the duration and the territorial extent. Leave the period out and s.19(5) deems it five years. Leave the territory out and s.19(6) presumes India. And a patent has no employer default at all: s.6(1) of the Patents Act lets the true and first inventor apply, or an assignee of the right to apply.
Section 18 of the Code on Wages allows only the deductions it lists and caps the total at half a wage period, and consent does not widen the list because s.60 voids a clause reducing the liability. Recover it as a debt. The same applies to any day rate you compute for a shortfall in notice.
One file, foreign precedent
Seven documents, editable Word
Seven editable documents, nine clauses taken apart, and twelve checks before anybody signs. The rest of our free HR downloads is open too.
Attendo, formerly Petpooja Payroll, is payroll and attendance software used by more than 40,000 businesses in India, across manufacturing, corporate offices, retail, hospitality and education, on a flat annual fee with no per-employee pricing. The terms you sign are the terms payroll has to run on, and attendance, wages, leave and the final settlement all come off one record. See what it does.
What clause 4 promises and what the payslip pays should not be two different numbers.
