To enforce or not to enforce !

When it comes to enforcing employment bonds, one might reason that it may not be enforceable unless the employer imparts training and spends amount on the employee. But an employment bond is a contractual ‘agreement’ between the employer and the employee and it can be enforced unless its terms and conditions violate you constitutional rights ! There are situations in which they might be waived. If one is leaving for higher studies, or if someone who has the authority to waive the bond might do so. Companies, who suffer from high attrition, lose a large chunk of trained manpower to competitors. They resort to the use of employment bonds to prevent such incidents in future. The bond mandates employees to reimburse the cost incurred on certification, special training, etc in case of a premature exit. But one might also consider the time and the monetary resources that is spent in such a scenario. A practice which is at times followed in firms is that when an employee resigns, if the employment bond issues have not been resolved, they might not give the release letter or the experience letter. But even if there is a legal issue involved a firm is obligated to give these documents to the employee. When considering this situation from an employee’s point of view, the reason for leaving the job might be varied. Although a majority of people do move over to other companies in lure of greener pastures, some might have other reasons such as health, family or in pursuit of higher studies. These latter set of people might have a tough time with regard to the bond. Now consider a person who is unhappy in his present job, he might have to bear with the frustration until the contract period ends. This will result in poor performance on his part. A question that can be raised here is do these employment bonds just provide a psychological barrier to the employees to prevent them from changing jobs or are they implemented to the dot? If they are implemented every time an employee resigns, is it beneficial for the company to spend resources in such legalities?