Chinese instant messaging and online game company Tencent, which is currently in a dispute with a number of its ex-employees over non-compete clauses in their contracts that are allegedly invalid, has published a corporate citizenship and social responsibility report to celebrate its tenth anniversary.<\/p>\n
The report covers five areas: independent intellectual property rights; promoting the healthy development of the Internet industry; creating social values; caring for employees and customers; and public welfare initiatives. The report paints a rosy picture of the status of the company's staff training, corporate culture, internal governance, and information security. However, the dispute over non-compete clauses suggests that in some areas of human resource policy and practice Tencent may well have room for improvement.<\/p>\n
Tencent recently confirmed to local media that the company has formally sued 15 former employees who are suspected of violating non-compete obligations in their work contracts. The employees counter claim that since no special compensation was paid in respect of the non-compete obligations in their contracts, then any such restrictions are invalid.<\/p>\n
According to lawyers quoted in local media reports on this issue, non-compete agreement are divided into two categories. For senior management staff on high salaries, there is an obligation to observe a non-compete agreement and the company does not necessarily have to pay compensation. For lower-level staff, the company should pay compensation to make the non-compete agreements valid. However, different cases require their own dedicated detailed analysis because each case can be different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chinese instant messaging and online game company Tencent, which is currently in a dispute with a number of its ex-employees over non-compete clauses in their contracts that are allegedly invalid, has published a corporate citizenship and social responsibility report to celebrate its tenth anniversary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[3177,231,3178,811,165,3169,164,441,66,3183,440,2921,946,1232,3168,163],"class_list":["post-3599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","tag-corporate-values","tag-csr-report","tag-employee-relations","tag-human-resources","tag-im","tag-information-security","tag-instant-messaging","tag-intellectual-property-rights","tag-internet","tag-internet-game","tag-ipr","tag-litigation","tag-online-game","tag-public-welfare","tag-social-values","tag-tencent"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n