SVR's Employment Group advises and advocates for Employers and Employees alike.

SVR’s Employment and Privacy Group has extensive and focused experience advising and assisting clients with respect to compliance, termination/severance disputes, accommodation issues, performance management, workplace investigations, restrictive covenants, drafting and vetting employment agreements and employer policies, and representing clients before statutory bodies such as the Alberta Human Rights Commission.

Employment law often engages privacy issues, such as compliance with privacy legislation and proper collection, use, and disclosure of personal information. SVR’s collaborative Employment and Privacy Group understands the legal intersections between employment and privacy law and strives to provide top quality service to our clients.

Examples of what we do:

• When departing health care professionals were sued and hit with an injunction application to prevent them opening their new business, SVR successfully opposed the interim injunction application, which allowed its clients to continue in their chosen profession and earn a living.

• When an ex-employee's contract ended and he alleged that he was owed additional severance based on consecutive years service (despite having agreed to a part-time position and exact severance), SVR went to trial for the employer and successfully argued that the employee’s contract was valid – thereby capping their severance entitlements.

• When a key sales manager was constructively dismissed and the employer executed an Anton-Pillar Order, SVR successfully advocated for the employee that the restrictive covenant was unenforceable and the injunction orders be set aside.

• SVR’s Employment and Privacy Group routinely leverages their knowledge of the law and negotiation skills to secure significantly more generous severance packages than those offered by employers, thereby avoiding the time and cost of pursuing the employer in court.

• During the COVID pandemic, SVR’s employment lawyers were able to draw on their years of experience to advise employers and employees with respect to a number of relatively unprecedented matters, such as vaccination policies and work-from-home arrangements. The Employment and Privacy Group also guided and assisted many of their employer clients in the challenging early days of the pandemic with respect to layoffs and mass terminations.

Whether you are an Employer or an Employee, SVR’s Employment and Privacy Group is here to assist you with your employment, privacy, occupational health and safety (OHS) issues, and human rights issues in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Employment Law Practice Team