Employee guidelines policy template: what we do not restrict

The "what we do not restrict" clause says what an employee guidelines policy template does not reach. Most guidelines omit it and are worse for it. Without it, a list of prohibitions reads as covering ordinary conversation about work, which nobody intended.

Square brackets in the clause mark decisions you have to make. This clause has the most of them, because the answer changes with the place people work and with who is covered. Counsel must draft or approve it wherever you employ people.

What to take away

The clause states the activities the guidelines do not reach. Omit it, and the prohibitions read as covering ordinary talk about work.
It names two protectionsconcerted activity under federal law, and lawful off-duty conduct where state law protects it.
Counsel drafts or approves it for every location. It is the clause most likely to be postponed.
Bracket every line that depends on place, and involve any works council or union at draft stage.

Why the clause exists

A list of prohibitions says what staff may not do and stays silent on what they may. People fill that silence with caution. The clause fills it for them, in writing, with the activities the document was never meant to touch.

A guidelines document with prohibitions and no stated limits on them is the version that produces the most complaints and the least compliance. Staff cannot tell whether a post about pay or a weekend event falls inside the rules, so some stay silent and others push back.

Two protections the clause names

In the United States, Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act gives employees the right to engage in concerted activities for collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.

That covers employees who act together about wages, hours and working conditions. Section 8(a)(1) makes it unlawful for an employer to interfere with those rights.

California, Colorado and New York are among the states that also protect lawful off-duty conduct, including political and recreational activity away from work. Which protections apply depends on where people work and who is covered, so counsel drafts or approves the clause for each state. Working out which rules apply to a given team is a method of its own.

Protection	Where it comes from	What the clause says	Who confirms it
Acting together about pay and conditions	NLRA Section 7 and Section 8(a)(1)	The guidelines do not limit it	Counsel, for each location
Lawful off-duty conduct	State law, in places such as California, Colorado and New York	The guidelines do not reach it where the law protects it	Counsel, for each state

Model wording for the clause

Write the clause as a short list of limits, each in one plain sentence, with a bracket wherever the answer depends on place. Five steps cover it.

List the activities the document does not reach, starting with ordinary conversation about work.
State the NLRA protection in one plain sentence, naming pay and working conditions.
Add a bracket for off-duty conduct in each state where you employ people, and leave counsel to fill it.
Give one example under each protection, so the line is something a reader can picture.
Read the clause against the three things that are never fine in the same document, which are other people's personal information, unreleased work and security detail. Neither should contradict the other.

What we do not restrict. [This document does not limit employees' right to talk with each other about pay and working conditions, or to act together about them.]

[It does not reach lawful activity away from work where the law protects it. Counsel to list the places.]

[Ordinary conversation about work is not covered by the prohibitions above.]

Keep the brackets until counsel has filled them. A guess that reaches publication does more harm than a bracket that does not, because the guess reads as a promise the organization may not be able to keep.

Three blanks decide whether the template works

This clause is one of three placeholders that people leave bracketed, and each decides whether the document works at all. The other two are the response time in the ask route, the line that says who to ask and how long an answer takes, and the scenarios.

Placeholders left bracketed

Response time in section 6
Section 7 in full
The scenarios

The clause is genuinely the hardest of the three. It needs jurisdiction-specific input, and it is therefore the one that gets postponed. The other two blanks are easier to fill and just as easy to forget.

The template cannot supply the response time, because it depends on who staffs the route and how. It has to be an actual commitment, stated in working hours or days in the document itself. An unanswered question is indistinguishable from a prohibition, and people resolve it by staying silent.

Placeholder scenarios copied from a template are visibly not about your organization, and readers discount the entire document accordingly. The clause and the scenarios work together: a scenario shows the limit applied to a real situation.

What this clause is not

It is not the governing policy. Account ownership, credentials, access removal, monitoring, records and enforcement belong in that document, where they can be written carefully and reviewed by the people who own them. A structure for that is set out in a skeleton for the governing policy.

This does not describe anyone's legal position, because what an employer may require, monitor, or act on outside work varies by jurisdiction and contract. The clause states a limit on the guidelines. It does not decide what the law allows.

One country's equal employment body, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, publishes guidance for employers on rules that reach employees' conduct. In the European Union, Article 88 of the General Data Protection Regulation sets how employers may process employee personal data, and the U.K. Information Commissioner's Office publishes its own employment practices guidance. Each describes one system, not yours.

Screening candidates through their accounts is a separate subject, covered in what US employers must document. Briefing counsel on this clause is one step in how compliance work runs, and the answer belongs on file.

Before you adopt it

Counsel review in every jurisdiction where you employ people, on the full text rather than a summary, with this clause called out specifically.
Consultation with any works council, union or representative body, at draft stage rather than at announcement.
A check that the clause and the three things that are never fine do not contradict each other.
A check that the governing policy and this document agree. Where they do not, fix the governing policy, because that is the one that will be applied.
A named owner and a review trigger for the clause, so a new state or market forces a read. A verifiable policy record shows when each version applied.

Common questions

Can we leave this clause out?

You can, and the document is worse for it. A guidelines document with prohibitions and no stated limits is the one that produces complaints, and the clause is short once counsel has filled it.

Can we copy another employer's clause?

Not without counsel. The protections depend on where people work and who is covered, so another employer's wording describes another employer's position. For a comparable structure, see the age restrictions template.

Do we need staff to sign it?

Signature is an evidentiary question for counsel where you are. What matters more operationally is that people read it at a moment when it is relevant, and a signature at onboarding does not achieve that.

What if we operate in one country only?

The clause still needs local review, and it is still the part that decides whether the rest is enforceable. Operating in one place makes it easier, not optional.