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Employee looking for new job, where do we stand.

Kerry

Ok Im new to HR and so too my organisation in the sense of having a HR department. We have an employee who made a minor mistake and was picked up on it by their line manager (at most a verbal warning) and their reaction was over the top and they informed the line manager that they were actively looking for another job. January is our busiest time (so employees expect to be busy), they also expressed that they have been working over-time (expected at this time) and said we were not addressing the situation which we are. We are training more people to do their role and hiring more employees which had been doing for some time in preparation for busy periods. The manager wants them to leave after this info however that cannot be done like that. My question is where do we stand as the employee deals with alot of sensitve information and if they were to go to a competitor it would be a major conflict of interest. The employee left over 2 years ago and then came back however we don't think they signed a new contract, it was left as the original one. 

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  • Lots of people look for jobs. If you believe the surveys around 1/4 - 1/3 of people plan on moving jobs in next year and are "looking". many people on these communities will have as part of their set up on linkedIn that they are open to discussions. This does not make them bad employees or a particular risk.

    If they have under two years continuous service (and it will be interesting what the status of the "break" was a couple of years ago) then theoretically you could dismiss. But I am not sure I would. Their "complaints" seem fairly typical and reasonable and perhaps management could do a better job at explaining what mitigating actions its taking and why it appreciated people putting the extra effort in.

    If he has more than two years service then...(a) I would see if hes salvageable by having some positive career orientated discussions with him about his future with the organisation and what you and he can do to facilitate that (b) have a discussion with him about how you expect him to behave while hes job searching, the standards and effort you expect and how you can all get on well together or (c) pay him to leave via a settlement agreement.

    I would go for (a) or (b)

    The point someone is thinking of leaving is not the time to worry about introducing new restrictive covenants (if they were planning on taking client lists they already will have them). Your employers contracts seem inadequate on this point and I would use this wake up call to review all contracts and if necessary put in a sensible set of covenants.
  • in reply to Keith
    Thank you. I have my work cut out for me. It will def be a wake up call.
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