Employee has been attending audit and compliance schools in order to work at our bank. They were required to sign a reimbursement contract for their first school which says they cannot work in an audit and compliance capacity in a 50 mile radius. They were not given the second reimbursement contract to sign until after the second school. This contract was different, requiring them to work at the bank for a year. If they left voluntarily in that year they would have to pay back the course fees.

We have other employees who have been to extended training and were never given reimbursement forms to sign.

Employee came to me upset that 1. the two forms are entirely different 2. they had talked to other employees and found out through them that they were never required to sign such a form and 3. They are required to sign the form after the training.

Any advice on how we should handle this?

Call your employee attorney. Non-compete contracts are pretty tricky to enforce and having them sign a reimbursement contract after the fact is probably not enforcable.

I agree with RL Carey and very heavily disagree with your management team on this one...

I refer to the statement "It is far better to spend the time and money to TRAIN and employee and lose them, than to not spend the time and money on training and KEEP them."

A non-compete for TRAINING (compliance training no less) is ludicrous IMHO, albeit probably not too terribly far from what happens in a lot of places. I can understand the contract for working for a year, but reimbursment and a non-compete within 50 miles...wow. This policy says to me... we didn't want to pony up the cash for a trained compliance person, and we don't want to pony up the cash to train a compliance person that will leave... yes I'll have some cake... and I will eat it too!

Of course this is all just my opinion and I am sure your institution is a fine place to work... but this reimbursement stuff stinks!