What You Take With You
What leaves with you is decided by a clause you signed and by what you copied in time, and the second is usually the part people get wrong.
How much notice am I owed, if any?
What you signedIs anything payable to me at the end?
The law where you areCan I be let go without a reason?
The law where you areWill I be told it is coming?
Four questions a person in this position actually asks. One of them has no answer anybody can give in advance, and nothing here fills a blank with a guess. The first two can be settled today and the last one never can be.
What one person could actually keep when an engagement ended, and what keeping it required
The skills and knowledge you gained doing the work
Yours either wayHow you would use it: Nothing. General skill is yours and no clause transfers it, whatever the drafting suggests
Examples of the work itself, for showing to other clients
Only if they agreeHow you would use it: Permission, asked for in writing before you leave, and an agreed version of what may be shown
Your own records of what you did and when
Yours either wayHow you would use it: Keep your own copies as you go, because access to their systems usually ends the same week
Templates and tools you brought with you
Depends where you areHow you would use it: Say in the agreement at the start that pre-existing material stays yours and is licensed rather than transferred
The work product itself, to reuse elsewhere
Depends where you areHow you would use it: Read the ownership clause; in most engagements this belongs to them and reuse is not available
Contact with the people you worked alongside
Not in this positionSix things, and the two that are yours either way are the ones nobody can take. One person's own arrangement; what any clause achieves differs by jurisdiction.
What leaves with you is decided by two things: a clause you signed, and what you copied before access ended. The second is the part people get wrong, and it is the one entirely within your control.
The practical question in “What You Take With You” is easier to handle when expectations and evidence are visible to both sides. For teams assessing getting teams to meet deadlines, open the corresponding official overview can provide time and project context, but the purpose should be disclosed, access limited and every consequential interpretation reviewed by a person.
This article is about both, in the order they actually matter.
For broader context around “What You Take With You”, see HR Executive workplace analysis. Compare its general guidance with the worker category, jurisdiction and day-to-day facts in this case.
Access goes first
Usually immediately or within days. Accounts are closed, the shared drive disappears, and the messages that recorded what you did go with them.
Anything of yours living only in their systems needs to come out before that, within whatever your agreement allows. The time to think about this is before the ending, not during it.
What is yours whatever the clause says
The skill and knowledge you gained. No agreement transfers that, and clauses that appear to are generally read as covering confidential information rather than competence.
A person who learned to do something better while working for somebody takes it with them. That is worth stating because people genuinely worry about it.
What is usually theirs
The work product, in most engagements that address it: the thing you built, wrote, designed or produced for them.
Read the ownership clause rather than assuming either way. The default position varies with where you are and with what sort of thing you made, and the clause usually overrides whatever the default would have been.
Your own pre-existing material
Templates, libraries, methods and tools you brought with you should remain yours, with them having a licence to use whatever is embedded in the delivered work.
That is the normal commercial arrangement and it has to be stated at the start. An agreement silent on it can leave you having handed over something you use with every client.
Showing the work afterwards
The thing most people actually want. Whether you may show what you made to other clients is a separate question from who owns it, and it is frequently not addressed anywhere.
Ask before you leave, in writing, and ask for something specific: a named piece, shown in a particular way. Permission given generally is usually refused; permission for one example is usually granted.
Your own records
What you did, when, and what was agreed. Those are yours to keep and they matter for the arithmetic, for any later question about the arrangement, and for showing somebody what you have done.
Keeping them as you go rather than extracting them at the end is the version that works, because the end is always more abrupt than expected.
Confidential information
Stays confidential, whatever else happens, and generally indefinitely. That is reasonable and it is the part of this area with the firmest footing.
It also does not prevent you from working in the same field or using what you learned, which is the distinction people most often blur.
Things you were given
Equipment, passes, access cards. Give them back promptly and get confirmation that you have.
People occasionally hold on to something as leverage over an unpaid invoice. That converts a payment dispute into a different kind of dispute and is rarely worth it.
Accounts and services in your name
The reverse problem: domains, subscriptions and services you bought for them on your own card or under your own account.
Transfer or cancel those deliberately at the ending, and get confirmation. Otherwise you are paying for something you do not use, or holding something they need, and both become awkward later.
The people
Contact with colleagues is not a clause question in most cases; it is a relationship question. Any restriction on approaching their clients is a different matter and is in the agreement if it exists anywhere.
Staying in touch with people you worked alongside is ordinary, and it is also how a meaningful share of future work arrives.
The checklist to run in the last week
Five items, half an hour:
- Copy out your own records and anything you are entitled to keep.
- Ask, in writing, what you may show afterwards.
- Return what was theirs and get confirmation.
- Transfer or cancel anything in your name.
- Get a name and address for payment questions.
What cannot be settled in advance
Whether a clause will be read the way either side expects. Ownership and restriction clauses are interpreted differently in different places, and the drafting frequently reaches further than it would be given effect.
That is a question for somebody qualified if a real dispute arises. In the ordinary case, what actually decides the outcome is whether you copied your own records in time, and that is settled by you rather than by anybody's reading of anything.