[Anna Warren]

Hello!
I've serviced customer for nearly three years, firstly myself then my worker took over.
Yesterday cleaner sent me a message customer doesn't want to go thru me anymore and she'll work directly for her. Apparently I didn't provide good enough service. I called customer twice and she didn't take my calls. I'm suspicious and wondering has cleaner started to poach my customers from me. What should I do?

[Scotbrite]

Hi,
It depends on what sort of work contract you have with both. You should have an exclusion agreement in both to prevent this, if not there is not much you can do except learn from this & move on. Make sure you have a covenant in any other workers contract of employment for the future & also put a clause in any client contract's to stop them approaching workers directly, although i think IMHO these are quite hard to enforce without resourse to court & is it really worth it. You have to trust the people that work for you inevitably !!! Can you do this Hope this helps
Cheers
Ron

[Rosemary Bolton]

There is NOTHING you can do. Restrictive covenants don't work in cleaning as they would breach TUPE law. If your client wants to take the cleaning "in house" you are powerless legally to stop it. All you can do is make sure you get all your equipment back.
It really annoys me when cleaners choose to text message a major piece of information like this. I would track the cleaner down and speak to her face to face. Does she clean any other sites for you? If so you should be worried.

[Anna Warren]

Thanks for replies.
Yes, she does. She's been working for me for nearly two years by now, we seemed to get on well, I was thinking about her as my friend. My company is little , only five workers altogether, all part-timers. She carries on like normal, all I heard from her was : "It was customer ,who asked me to work for her directly, not other way round".

[Scotbrite]

It may have been the customer who brought it up. BUT, if the employee was "company orientated" she should have told the customer she could/would not discuss this &  come back to you. She was obviously more interested in what she could get out of it. I would watch her VERY closely & in fact actively move towards getting rid. If you want your business to grow, this is not going to help. You need to be able to trust your employees, remember, for the most part the survival of your business rests in their hands
Cheers
Ron

[Neil Jones]

I would also be inclined to inform inland revenue to make sure she is trading legally.

[Anna Warren]

Thanks for replies.
I was thinking about getting rid of her, just don't know how to approach it. She also is often poorly, there's no month she won't call with something. In fact I had to cover for her today as "she'd got cold". Even customer noticed that, said :" Oh , she is poorly quite often, doesn't she?"
I'm pretty sure she doesn't  declare her newly acquired income.

[Neil Jones]

Get rid Anna, whats the point in having someone working for you who causes nothing but aggro. Get rid and report her.

[Anna Warren]

Thanks Neil
I don't know how to do it and I don't want to cause myself trouble. Well , I guess, when you employ people, someday you'll going have to sack someone.
Shame. I really liked her and she's a good cleaner.

[pristineclean]

When you say you don't know how to do it, do you mean from a procedure point of view or from an ET claim liability point of view? It's never easy firing someone but it's unfair, in my opinion, to your loyal staff to keep someone on for whom the rules seem not to apply. There's no possibility, on the facts you've given, that your cleaner could present any claim to a Tribunal.

[Anna Warren]

Both, to be honest. Never sacked anyone. I don't know where to start. Keep on learning.

[Ian101]

why is this person still in your employ ??

how many more customers would you like to loose

[pristineclean]

Given the facts which you've stated, my procedure would be to write to the employee inviting them to a disciplinary review following their decision to accept work directly from one of your customers and advising that they are free to bring someone with them. The letter would advise that the acceptance of the work breached the trust element of their contract of employment. As I've mentioned before, trust and confidence is an implied term of all employment relationships and it doesn't matter whether or not this is mentioned in the terms and conditions on which you employed her. For that matter, it doesn't matter whether you even gave her written terms and conditions at all in relation to the termination.

If you're not good at confrontation (and I'm not generally so would sympathise) then the review would be a thanks for all their hard work in getting the business set up but an immediate termination of employment with your expressed regret - you'd likely say that they had seven days to appeal the decision in writing but that the conduct leaves you with no realistic options. I doubt whether she's 'laughing' at you but this employee must be very puzzled as to why you haven't done this yet. No one could expect any other outcome from this action.

[Anna Warren]

Thank you for your reply.

[John Kelly]

Good answer above. Basically she has  broken the trust of her employer and doesn't have a leg to stand on. Its the same if someone working in Tesco told a customer don't buy this bread I'll bake some and you can buy it off me, their feet wouldn't touch the floor.