David Fermani
Forza Auto Salon
As the old Italian proverb mentions: Keep your friends close, but your enemies even closer.
your hired help leaves....then what
- Thread starter Envious Eric
- Start date
Envious Eric
New member
just to clarify:
no compete contracts are illegal in california....I asked my professor and he confirmed it..
no compete contracts are illegal in california....I asked my professor and he confirmed it..
safetyman2010
New member
A non-compete contract will more than likely mean nothing if someone you have sign one wants to open their own detailing business. The legal costs to try and enforce it (if you can even do that in most cases) would far outweigh the benefits. My suggestion is to have an iron clad employee manual and an employment contract. In the contract you can stipulate that an employee may not discuss anything that pertains to your business after leaving and can forbid them from using your confidential clients list to create business for any reason after they leave. You can also build in such things as having to pay you back for training costs etc.... if you outlay a lot of time to get them trained for thier position. A friend of mine signed such an agreement for a consulting firm he was hired by and when he quit with no notice he lost his last 2 weeks of pay as conpensation. This IMHO would be more effective as a deterrent and probably far easier to enforce.
Eric, the only thing that should really worry you is an ex-employee stealing clients. As others have said, starting a business is hard work, not anyone can do it. I think one way to prevent clients from following an employee is to keep the employees away from customers. That is, YOU should deal with all the clients personally. Develop a personal relationship with them. Ask them about their job, their kids. Become a buddy of sorts. Make them trust YOU and make them understand that your employees are there to help out, under your supervision, and you're doing the important tasks. If a client barely even knows your employees name, he might be less inclined to follow him should he leave and start his own business.
My old boss was like this. He got really friendly with most of his clients, to the point where he'd be invited over for birthday parties and such. He was a terrible detailer, but he had good people skills. More importantly, he didn't let me get close to the customers and never let them know that I actually knew more about detailing than he did. I don't know if he was worried I'd leave with his customers or what, but he had some really loyal clients, despite his bad techniques.
My old boss was like this. He got really friendly with most of his clients, to the point where he'd be invited over for birthday parties and such. He was a terrible detailer, but he had good people skills. More importantly, he didn't let me get close to the customers and never let them know that I actually knew more about detailing than he did. I don't know if he was worried I'd leave with his customers or what, but he had some really loyal clients, despite his bad techniques.