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
Lots of people talk about starting businesses. Few do, and even fewer succeed. I wouldn’t sweat it too much. At this point, you are already looking at retiring anyway, so if I were you, I’d just proceed with finding a buyer for the business and move on. If you do fire folks, you’ll probably need to do it quickly and ensure that their access to company systems is terminated immediately to prevent damage or data downloads. Letting folks go will put a lot of pressure on them to either organize very quickly to start the business or find new jobs. Most folks I know when presented with a sudden job loss will default to finding another W2 job. The group will end up scattered and more worried about themselves and maintaining their standard of living than taking the risk of starting a business.