Bending to employee sentiment and legislative mandate, Microsoft announced a series of reforms Wednesday that will curtail or end some of its most controversial workplace policies and practices.

• The company says it will no longer include non-competition clauses in its U.S. employment agreements, and will remove these clauses from existing agreements. This applies to all employees except senior leaders.
• Microsoft will no longer include non-disclosure clauses in settlement and separation agreements with U.S. workers that would prevent them from disclosing allegations of misconduct. A law targeting this practice takes effect this week in Washington state, where Microsoft is based.
• The company will publicly disclose salary ranges in job posts in the U.S. starting in January 2023. This also coincides with the scheduled implementation of a new law requiring such disclosures in Washington state.
• Microsoft says it will commission and publish findings from a third-party civil rights audit, to be completed in its upcoming fiscal year, scrutinizing workforce policies and practices that impact diversity and inclusion.

Amazon in April announced that it would launch a civil rights audit led by former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Non-compete clauses, limiting the ability of employees to go to work for competitors, were narrowed to apply only to employees who make more than $100,000 per year in Washington state under a law enacted in 2019.

Microsoft says its new policy against...

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