I have a colleague who signed a training contract/bond at the start of their employment in order to study professional qualifications, in which they agreed to reimburse the employer a proportion of their training costs should they leave the Company within a period of 3 years. After 18 months of employment, the employer has now asked the employee to retrospectively sign an additional training contract for a further sum of money in relation to an additional qualification which was undertaken at the start of employment and completed over 12 months ago.

Can the Company do this and what is the employee’s situation if they refuse to sign it? I personally believe that if the Company failed to request a signed training contract at the time of study (over 12 months ago), they can not justify such a request at this point in time.

Lindsey Thompson