Death Of Non-Disparagement Clauses - Is It A Good Decision?

About a month ago, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) made a ruling that employers may not offer severance agreements requiring employees to waive their Labor Law Rights.

This is an important ruling that could bring about the Death of Non-Disparagement Clauses.

But is this a good or bad thing for businesses?

The Reasoning Why

It's been a practice that has been going on in businesses for quite some time.

Even I've signed a Non-Disparagement Clause in the past.

Employers have made it commonplace in the wake of more people utilizing Social Media as they are laid off.

This is something that is important with companies doing mass layoffs, like?Meta that has recently laid off an estimated 1/4th of their workforce.

Often when a former employee goes to social media, they tend to bring up a lot of negative press - sometimes that press ends up going VERY viral.

Businesses have utilized these clauses as a way to prevent employees from disparaging the company in the press, which could have long term implications for the organization.

However, the NLRB is saying that, "employers cannot ask individual employees to choose between receiving benefits and exercising their rights under the National Labor Relations Act."

Is This A Good Decision?

In my opinion, it's the right decision.

The concept of a "non-disparagement clause" seems odd to me.

If you are an organization that is good to their employees, why should you fear what a singular disgruntled employee has to say?

When it comes to authenticity, people always find out the truth.

Sure, a disgruntled employee "could" lie about their experience, but if you're a good employer then you should have other current employees who will rise to defend the organization and call out the inauthenticity of this disgruntled employee.

No, the truth is that most organizations are not afraid of an employee that is disgruntled, they are far more afraid of good employees speaking the truth about bad leadership.

With it being difficult to hire employees as well, getting recognized as a terrible place to work only makes it that much more difficult to hire anyone.

Businesses also know that there won't be anything to hide behind when the truth finally does come out.

According to some studies, over 75% businesses believe their leadership is lacking (this is not disgruntled employees).

Less than 35% of employees are engaged at work.

Nearly 80% of employees quit due to a lack of appreciation from leadership.

Occupational Burnout is so bad that the World Health Organization is actually qualifying it as a Disease, and is connected to 120,000 deaths per year!

This is the truth we are faced with, and getting rid of Non-Disparagement clauses will simply show more people who the bad leaders really are.

What Leaders Should Take Away

However, this shouldn't make businesses or Leaders afraid, in fact they should be enthusiastic!

Getting rid of Non-Disparagement clauses could actually become a tool to hold leaders accountable to actually rising up to greatness, instead of maintaining the currently awful status-quo.

An employee can now state the truth of how they were treated at an organization without a fear for their livelihood. When these accusations grow and there isn't anyone to defend the accused, businesses can now use this as indicators of which leaders either need to improve, or need to be removed.

The transparency could force Leaders to actually start figuring out how to improve themselves, and actually bring in a new Leadership Revolution!

Leaders who are great have nothing to fear with this, and businesses who actually make an effort to create amazing leaders will only see good things from this.

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