Sorry, but I can't let this comment sit here unaddressed: "Employees were as eager as the employer to include non-disparagement and confidentiality causing," etc. ... Can you please provide evidence of that claim? That seems spurious to me. If you don't have evidence of that, it should be noted here, your statement appears to be unwarranted and misleading. While I'm sure some (maybe a few) employees do want this kind of protection, for various reasons, existing EEOC laws (https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/publications/background_checks_employers.cfm) already protect people during reference checks. So those people asking for NDAs would be in the smallest of minorities, and the requests probably have something to do with bad behavior they are trying to hide. Your statement makes it seem like a lot of ordinary, respectable, hard-working people want that. I suspect that's not true. But feel free to prove it.