[Pelican]

A new slant on a topic I raised in the past. I now have a current employee who is doing sidework and tonight I learned he's working in my neighborhood!

I had talked to him about his side work before, but he told me he does masonry work such as foundations and concrete, these are outside the services I offer. This afternoon I stopped by to settle my account with a vendor, my employee was there with a neighbor buying stone for a landscape project.

I have talked to this neighbor in the past and have determined I probably wouldn't be working for him, but I'm thinking maybe I need to set some ground rules as far as moonlighting is concerned by my employees. Does anyone have a policy in place?

[Bill Schwab]

No moon lighting Pelican! PERIOD! If he wants to operate his nown business, let him get insurance and have at it. He just beat you out because you got more overhead and operate leagally!

[Stonehenge]

Yup. No moonlighting. I had a guy ask to use one of our compactors for a patio at his house. No problem. During the off season he then said he might do some work for a neighbor, and asked how much I'd charge for a X sqft patio. Big problem.

We parted company.

[jwholden]

I find that once people start moonlighting they lose interest in your company and only look out for themselves. I hate when employees start asking what I charge for a project, very uncomfortable for me, but tell them something to the effect of what I need to charge to pay the bills.

I have tried to do the guys a favor and gotten them sidework, when younger, only to discover they would miss work on Monday because they burnt themselves out over the weekend.

Please don't think ambition to have your own business is a bad thing. We all started there when working for someone else. The problem relates to missed days and lack of enthusiasm on the job. If someone truly has the desire to go out on thier own they will.

Keep the job interesting, stretch their knowledge a bit, find out what they want from thier job, have fun. Trust me, I'm not the perfect boss and don't know everything, but I like to read books about beeing a good boss.

[P-Train]

Is he really becoming a competitor?

Or is this just eating at you because he got a side job on a property you had already determined you weren't going to be working at anyway?

Your employee is his own person and can work on his spare time doing anything he wants.

Now, if you see his production rates decrease because he's tired or wanting days off to do other work then you have a problem. I would state that to him and make it clear that what he does on his own time is just that, but if it causes a problem with your company then he will be let go.

[Pelican]

No, this job he is on doesn't concern me. The intent of my post is to determine whether I need to set some ground rules so I am not bidding against him and vice versa on the same jobs.

I've got no problem with him working on jobs outside the services I provide, but it does seem to be a conflict of interest for him to be doing the same work we do.

A similar situation: A subcontractor I had hired for tree work many times decide to make his own deal with one of my customers, it was the last time he worked for me. I've got no problem with a guy wanting to do his own thing, but if my work should suffer as a result, I should continue to employ him?

[Nebraska]

If they are out there providing services within the same industry as you, they are in competition with you. Certain situations begin to teeter on the fence while others are black and white. Exceptions definitely exist for an employees family...while other exceptions are up to you to define.

I definitely agree that if it affects your business negatively it would be grounds for termination.

[MarkH]

My last boss I had before going municipal had soem policies. If we had a job lead and had the company do it, we would get a percentage of the job ontop of our normal rate. Also if we were set on doing our own thing it was good-bye and the the now ex employee had to abide by the non-competative agreement they signed when hired. Basically they could not go after any of the companies current customers for "x" amont of years and also included a regional area clause also.

[Stonehenge]

Pelican, let me give you some perspective from my own personal experience. I was sneakier than my boss realized at the time, and helps illustrate why a very tight leash is needed for this.

I was in my 6th season of landscaping, still in college, running a crew for my company. One of my guys pulled me aside one day and told me he had a side job for us, if I was interested. It was about 150 sqft of paver work. Small, yes, but my company would have still taken it on. Anyway, this guy and I took this project, used our own tools, had it done in a weekend and made a few hundred bucks each. It got my wheels turning...

Next thing you know, whenever I was working on projects for my company that I knew were multi-year, multi-phase projects, I would write down the name, address and phone of the client, make a copy of the plan if I could, and any other info I could get about the project (like the price). The plan was to call them the following year, after quitting my company, and undercutting my soon-to-be old boss for the future work. I also would bend over backwards to be sure they really liked me, so that next year they'd feel OK about jumping the company ship to go with me.

So in light of that - if I was working for you and doing work on the side, wouldn't you be at least a little interested in keeping the reigns tight on me? Heck, I might even fire me.

[justgardens]

I used to get side work for my guys so they could make a few extra bucks on jobs I didn't want or was too busy for. It came back to bite me in several ways. The customer always still thought of me concerning the job for questions, replacements and putting them in touch with the guys. A royal PAIN! No more!!!!
I pay as well as any factory here and if they don't like the pay go find another job. I try to treat everyone like I would like to be treated but I won't be taken advantage of ..... not twice anyway.

[NC Lawnscapes]

Here in NC a No Compete policy wont hold water due to this being a Right to work state. BUt I will say this If I have and employee "moonlighting" then as long as he didnt use my equipment or try to hit on my customers then it would be of no problem to me.

You see when I first started in this Biz I too worked for someone else and to this day I have never tried to go after one of there Properties.

Now as far as him going after my properties IF Im giving Top notch service and the customer sill goes with him then Yes I would be upset with him BUT that is a customer I didnt need anyway.

I run an LCO and there is new pop up companies every season and I welcom the competion every season. because the sloppier there work is the batter mine looks.