Garden leave (sometimes written as gardening leave) is a period during which a departing employee remains on the firm's payroll and under their employment contract, but is relieved of all duties, excluded from the workplace and typically prohibited from contacting clients or colleagues. The employee continues to receive their full salary and contractual benefits during this period but does not work. The name derives from the informal image of an employee spending their notice period at home in their garden.

Garden leave is used primarily as a protective measure by consulting firms when a senior consultant or Partner departs — particularly when departing for a competitor or setting up a competing practice. Its purpose is to create a defined period of separation between the individual's active involvement with the firm's clients and projects and their commencement of new employment, during which confidential information becomes stale, client relationships can be transitioned, and the firm can put alternative arrangements in place.

Why Garden Leave Is Used in Consulting

Several features of consulting make garden leave particularly relevant:

• Client relationship sensitivity — Senior consultants often hold primary client relationships that could follow them to a competitor. A period of garden leave allows the firm to reconnect the client with an alternative relationship holder before the departing individual is free to approach them in a new capacity.
• Confidential information — Partners and senior consultants typically have access to pricing, pipeline, methodology and client strategy information that would be valuable to a competitor. Garden leave allows this information to age and in some cases to become commercially irrelevant before the individual is free to operate in the market.
• Team stability — A departing senior figure who remains active in the firm during a long notice period can destabilise teams, accelerate the departure of others and undermine client confidence. Garden leave removes this risk by creating a clean break while maintaining the legal protections of continued employment.

Garden Leave and Non-Compete

Garden leave and non-compete clauses serve overlapping but distinct protective functions. Garden leave provides protection during the notice period by keeping the individual off the market while they remain employed. Non-compete clauses extend the protection beyond the end of employment, prohibiting competitive activity for a defined period after the employment relationship ends.

Courts in many jurisdictions treat garden leave favourably compared to post-employment non-compete restrictions, because the employee is being compensated during the garden leave period — making the restriction easier to justify as reasonable. A firm that enforces a full garden leave period may find that courts are less willing to also enforce a lengthy post-employment non-compete on top, since the individual has already been kept off the market for a significant period while remaining on full pay.

Garden Leave and Compensation

The key compensation implication of garden leave is that the full notice period is paid — the firm incurs the cost of the employee's salary, benefits and any other contractual entitlements for the duration of the leave, without receiving any productive output in return. For senior consultants with 6–12 month notice periods, this is a substantial cost that must be factored into the total cost of a senior exit.

The treatment of bonus and deferred compensation during garden leave is a frequent point of negotiation. Whether a consultant on garden leave is entitled to a pro-rata bonus for the current year, and what happens to unvested deferred awards during the period, depends on the terms of the employment contract and the circumstances of departure. See Severance, Notice Period and Vesting.