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
Toxic employees are a cancer to a small business. You must get rid of them, otherwise they will poison the rest of the staff. As for employees considering stealing your clients, it’s important to get back on top of your relationships with high end clients. My field is somewhat relationship based so this isn’t a huge issue for me (I have to stay in touch to keep my business) but I can recognize what a rogue employee could do.
Have an action plan and don’t react with emotion. Mitigate risk, get back with your best clients, if you think an employee is poised to snatch them, get them off those accounts. You can very easily explain it away by saying you want to ensure you’re contributing to the success of the company and that it’s your way of keeping touch with the day to day and what your employees have to wrestle with.