[GardenIsle]

Hi everybody,
In the past years the company lost some bids and work to own bidders and laborers. They actually did some work for potential clients and acted as they are working for the company. We caught some and were of course fired on the spot but we expect that it happens more often.
My question is, does this occur in your company and how do you prevent it from happening? How do you keep your employees honest and ethical?
I am looking forward to your replies because losing customers is one thing but having competition from your own employees is just a stab in the back.
Aloha,

[Rick Carver]

Garden

Yea,,,,, no doubt that this is a tough one. Employee poaching by other companies and customer poaching by our own guys, well, it makes me nuts!!!!

Not a lot to do once it happens. We can't do a thing about it here even with a non compete signed by the employee. Owners have tried (me to) in the past but as long as the employee is not working for us at the time and they say they were solicited by the customer, the courts here will find that we (the company) cannot infringe on the employees right to make a living,,,, and we still have to HUGE cost of enforceing this kind of legal action. Different story when another company hires my employee and the Xemployee attempts to steal company info etc etc.

I had this happening a few times and actually asked a couple of my resedential customers for their opinions as far as how I can stop this from happening. I had a real good relationship with these folks. It was interesting. They said to find out what kind of service the employees were doing and if possible at what price. This would help if the info is obtainable. Normally, of course, it would be a cheaper price.
OK,,,, now make sure the customer either becomes an X customer and tell them the reason why,,,,,,,, or tell them if they want to keep you as their outdoor service provider they cannot hire any of your employees ever again. Tell them that you have mouths to feed, school funding for your own kids, insurance etc etc.
Another way would be to ask your customers to let you know if they ever have any weekend work for your employees who want to work more, for cash money. As long as the work is minimal and nothing much to do with what you provide in your company. Like garage cleaning, or painting etc. If we can come up with ways to keep this type of issues from being hidden, even though we don't like it, we still can have some control of it and at least we know about it. I tried this a couple of times and it turned out OK. Some customers actually scheduled a month ahead and had an employee help them one Sat or Sun. a month type of deal, but the customer never played against me.

It is a real bad feeling when this kind of thing happens behind our backs,,, best to try and get past it as fast as you can.

Good luck, let us know what you do about it.

[paponte]

We have both a non solicit cause in our contracts, as well as a non compete clause our employees sign. I guess it rally comes down to you catch what you see, and what you don't you can't stop. Makes you think sometimes.

[Bill Schwab]

Our company job model is based off location, income, cost/worth of home, and we charge minimums for any amount of work regardless of what it is, So, when I get calls that the guys can do as a quickie some weekend that won't compete with our company, I pass it along to them. In turn, if they are asked from a neigbor or something about axtra work, and it is too large for them to handle, they refer it to us.

People appreciate it, the guys appreciate, and they know where the boundries are. Since I'm pretty dialed in to the amounts of time it takes for each phase of our work on jobsites, they would have a pretty hard time explaining why the amount of hours on any given day went over what was budgeted. On their time, they can do whatever they want and there is not too much anyone can do to stop them.