most employers nowadays do an amended or appended contract wherein pag may foreign training na medyo malaki expenses, they want an employee to stay for a certain amount of time just to recover costs.

although i am really against it, dahil it sorts of restricting the freedom of the employee to move on in case an opportunity to more forward is there, i would also have to go by it din. if you look at the side of the employer (or management perhaps), expense ang training, which means, it has to be recovered sooner or later. the employee that was trained should be able to recover the cost of training by applying the training to the daily operations of the company. it means that the company has the right to impose some monetary considerations in case the employee that was trained abroad resigns/terminates employment before the agreed period.

ang nakikita kong mali dito sa case na ito is that during the appending or amending of the contract before the training, the employee affected should have negotiated for a smaller bond sa employer. this is the case if there are no written guidelines (sa employees manual or such), before agreeing and signing with the terms of the training.

ngayon kung may fixed guidelines on these (including the amount of bond or the required period of stay), imho is that kung may malilipatan yung affected employee immediately after resigning from the company, pwedeng i-negotiate yan sa new company (with certain provisions and agreements again) to pay the former company the required bond amount (lalo na kung management position na yung affected employee).

also, kung walang written guidelines yung company tapos wala man lang coordination with the affected employee dun sa amending the contract, pwede syang mag-reklamo sa labor. the contract should be a two-way communication facility to seal the agreement eh. kung implemented without consulting the employee, medyo mali yun.

btw. i am a management employee kasi, and our company implemented this approach last year. medyo nagkagulo gulo initially eh. three of my current staff are affected by this change of guidelines.