I’ve been in business 20+ years - starting alone for the first years. Built it up and now have 5 employees. Recently I have been talking to my employees about buying into the company as I am nearing retirement. I gave two of my employees raises one of them a percentage based on his production. after that I got total silence never a thank you or anything so that caused some concern right there. One of the employees was receiving over $1000 a month raise. Recently I got Covid-19’s bad and was out for 2 months. I I have cameras at work so me and my partner were reviewing the cameras and noticed they were talking a lot of shit about me and making plans to start their own business I’m presuming stealing all the high-end clients. The Reality is that is if you put employee in the responsibility of dealing with clients you have to deal with the prospect that he might steal them eventually. less people and less drama and possibly hiring subcontractors to handle the business that I pay these people a lot of the time to stand around and do nothing might be better. We have a established a business location and will probably be fine. previously I’ve been talking with my right hand man about my exit strategy but now I want to talk to him about his exit strategy, one of the employees is poison to the others I can hear him talking shit about me and the business. I’m sure a lot of you experience the same type of situation’s any advice on how you handled it and the outcomes thereof would be appreciated thanks guys
Do you have your employees sign an agreement that they cannot poach clients?
As a freelancer I have a similar clause that states I cannot poach employees. You may want to think about including this going forward.
Once you fire them, all that goes out the window in right to work states. From a different perspective, it takes an employee a lot of gumption to step out on their own versus a safer bet as an employee. Usually their motivation is because they feel at a dead end and have been over promised and under delivered. It’s a balancing act, but I’d say these days that employees are mostly impacted by their expectations from the employer falling short - an obvious one is wages not keeping up with inflation, but the more significant reasons are generally their perception of whether they have a positive outlook in their existing role. Acknowledge top performers and reward them, at the same time, don’t let the clock punchers bleed you dry; they’re not going anywhere anyways…