If you have employees then you have contracts with your employees. The law creates that by default. If you have a written contract then your employees know how much they’re being paid, what their hours are, what the vacation policy is, what the sick policy is and what benefits they have.
If you just have a verbal contract with your employees some of those things are going to be in doubt and that leads to conflicts and disputes. If you have a written contract that typically makes your employees more secure and feel a little bit more comfortable with their relationship with you as their boss because they know what’s expected of them.
Now, an employment contract can be simple, it can be a one-page letter, it can even be an email as long as it spells out what’s required of the employee and what they should expect.
If the relationship involves an employee who is more important, who may be exposed to confidential information, who has compensation that’s more complicated because it involves a sales commission structure, it involves, say, a company car or stock options. These sorts of things lend themselves to a more complicated more involved contract. The higher the level of the position, whether or not a non-compete is needed, a non-disclosure provision is needed or a non-solicit of either employees or customers is needed, all of those things indicate a more complicated sort of employment contract and your attorney can help you properly draft the kind of employment contract that is needed for a particular employee.