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
You didn’t mention what the business is so that makes it harder – lost of employees talk big about starting a business but most can’t. I would start with that – what are the costs associated with your business and do these people even have the means to become a competitor? My guess is probably not but it really depends on the business.
I would fire the poison employee immediately – I am not going to pay someone who talks shit about me behind my back.
Again it depends on the business and jurisdiction but it is probably actionable if they go after clients using information they gained while working for you.
If they start a competitor I would sue them – I would do this regardless of my prospects for a successful outcome simple because presumably you have deeper pockets than they do. This should kill their business simply because litigation is expensive and because stress causes conflict and they will already have plenty of conflict if they start a business and then this is just gasoline on that fire.