Clean It Up
UK General Cleaning Forum => General Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: karen1802 on September 22, 2012, 07:27:19 am
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any suggestions on how to make sure staff dont poach customers ?
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You should have a solid water tight employment contact with a no compete clause in it.
Paul
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I think whether you have it in your employment contract or not, its just something that you can't really avoid. To enforce it you have to take them to court and that would cost you money.
Best to have it in your contract to use as a deterant though I suppose.
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Ive no idea but reading the Window Cleaning section on franchising , make sure you take on people who own houses so that they would be scared of loosing their house if sued etc
Perhaps your Insurance Policy would cover you for legal disputes but bet it has get out clause etc
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HI
The thing you need is called a Restrictive Covernant. They are useful to have in place but very difficult to enforce (although i do know someone who was sued and lived to regret it!)
You could google them for examples or contact ACAS
Good Luck with this though - its a worrying and annoying thing to happen!
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A restrictive covenant should be straightforward to enforce but will fail if it's too vague or too restrictive. The simplest contractual agreement would be a member of staff agreeing to pay a £500 introduction fee for any works gained during the course of their employment with you and that any works gained would, for the purpose of definition, include any work within 1 mile of either your office or their normal place of work within a 6 month period of their employment or effective termination date of employment (EDT) as appropriate.
The threat would be that a single claim would be enforced for each breach although I would have this as an implied term.
In enforcing this claim, the court would look to the temporal and geographical nature of the covenant to meet the test of "reasonableness" as defined by the Unfair Contract Terms Act (UCTA) and the claim would, following the normal channels for pursuing a debt, be through the small claim procedure. The advantage of that, as we all know, is that there are going to be no crazy legal bills to meet from the other side :-)
Two advantages in my opinion (and it is only my opinion, an LLB qualification doesn't make me a lawyer by any stretch of the imagination) of the above wording - it puts a monetary value on the breach which creates a reality for potential miscreants and it offers a negotiating value for someone who wants to go their own way.
If I found out that one of my staff had done this, I'd also be inclined to point out to the customer that I regretfully accepted no liability for a former member of staff who would be operating from that point on without my company insurance or support. It's highly unlikely for me at the moment since I don't currently do domestic although I'm about to have another tentative bash at the market.
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Tut Tut just cant stay away eh ;D