Poaching costs businesses good staff and causes bitter disputes between competitors. The law offers little protection from predatory rivals, so what can you do to keep hold of people when a shark is circling, writes Simon Wicks? 

If you have good staff, other people will be interested in employing them. When a rival tries to pinch your talent, they do so because it will give them an edge in terms of skills, experience and contacts; and it will cause your performance to dip while you recruit and induct a new employee.

Legally, there is almost nothing you can do about competitors tempting your best employees away with offers of more money and better job titles. You can, however, try to persuade your employee to stay and take measures to limit the possibility that poaching will affect your company.

Identify the problem

If the first you know is your employee handing in their notice, it may be too late to keep them. Even so, you should try to find out why they are moving on; changing jobs involves upheaval and people rarely leave a job they enjoy, so the departure of a talented member of staff could be a symptom of a deeper problem in your business.

Invite them for an informal chat off the premises and probe their reasons for wanting to leave – whether they are related to the working environment, rewards and opportunities or personalities within the company.

You might find their obstacle to staying with you is easy to remove; but you might also discover that you have a serious problem, such as bullying, bad management or lack of opportunity, which could drive other staff out, too. If so, you should find a remedy, fast.

Financial offers

Your employee is likely to have been offered more money by your competitor. Assuming you pay the market rate, you should only match the offer if they really are worth it, or if losing them to this particular rival will cost too much, in terms of business lost and knowledge, contacts and expertise transferred.

Offering a higher salary alone will not address the underlying reason for your employee’s unhappiness and will only delay their departure. It could also provoke pay demands from other staff. The way to keep your employee is to address the cause of their dissatisfaction.

If you cannot persuade the employee to stay, try to remain on good terms – you may want to re-employ them in the future. Make sure they don’t take any intellectual property or confidential information with them, however, particularly customer details. If they are in your sales team, put them on garden leave immediately so they cannot lure your best customers away.

Preventing poaching

There is little you can do in law to limit poaching. Companies operating in relatively exclusive markets will often make ‘non-solicitation’ deals with rivals not to poach each other’s staff. But such goodwill agreements are merely a matter of form and carry no legal weight.

Some firms insert restrictive covenants into employment contracts which state that an employee cannot leave to work for a rival, or solicit business from their former customers, and so on. But clauses such as these may be considered a restraint of trade and will only stand up in court if you can prove that the restriction is integral to the operation and health of your business. You can, however, specify in a contract that staff cannot remove commercially sensitive information, such as customer details.

But the best protection against poaching is to make yourself a more attractive employer than your competitors. This may mean creating staff-development plans, introducing performance incentives and fostering a vibrant workplace culture – after all, if your employees enjoy being with you, why would they work for a rival?

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