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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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  • Welcome, Kerry, to both the forums and to our complex, fascinating and frustrating profession.

    1. As others have said, chances are at least a third of your workforce at any given time is looking for another job with varying levels of commitment. So him announcing the fact should (a) not be a surprise and (b) not affect how you deal with him otherwise.

    2. It would not be a "conflict of interest" if the employee took a role with a competitor unless he was also still working for you.

    3. If any of your employees have access to time-critical confidential information, you should look at introducing a Confidentiality Agreement for all your employees and, for relevant employees, adding a Restrictive Covenant to your contractual relationships, and potentially contractual garden leave clause as well.

    4. Your employee needs to have a new signed statement of Terms & Conditions unless you are counting their service as continuous. Otherwise, what record is there to say that they ever left and came back?

    5. I would encourage you and the manager involved to resist being pulled into conversations justifying yourselves to employees. By all means, communicate to the team as a whole to acknowledge that you've been asking too much of them and telling them what you're doing to address the issue, but when you start responding to individuals who are already fed up, you just come over as defensive.
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  • Welcome, Kerry, to both the forums and to our complex, fascinating and frustrating profession.

    1. As others have said, chances are at least a third of your workforce at any given time is looking for another job with varying levels of commitment. So him announcing the fact should (a) not be a surprise and (b) not affect how you deal with him otherwise.

    2. It would not be a "conflict of interest" if the employee took a role with a competitor unless he was also still working for you.

    3. If any of your employees have access to time-critical confidential information, you should look at introducing a Confidentiality Agreement for all your employees and, for relevant employees, adding a Restrictive Covenant to your contractual relationships, and potentially contractual garden leave clause as well.

    4. Your employee needs to have a new signed statement of Terms & Conditions unless you are counting their service as continuous. Otherwise, what record is there to say that they ever left and came back?

    5. I would encourage you and the manager involved to resist being pulled into conversations justifying yourselves to employees. By all means, communicate to the team as a whole to acknowledge that you've been asking too much of them and telling them what you're doing to address the issue, but when you start responding to individuals who are already fed up, you just come over as defensive.
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