Employee looking for new job, where do we stand.

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. 

  • Kerry

    Be careful not to have a "witch hunt" against this employee because he may be looking to leave. I am amazed at the number of times "evidence" emerges against someone who for whatever reason is out of favour. This only emerges when they are out of favour and never before.

    So by all means monitor and manage their performance and if it really is dipping compared to other employees and agreed standards then take action (but its a performance management challenge and not necessarily quick) but make sure you step back first to ensure it really is warranted.

    Best regards
  • Completely understand you can start seeing things differently when you know there is a problem and can look too much into something. The problems that have occurred after have been reported by another employee who does not know what has happened. Could be just a case the employee mind is not in the game at the mo especially today. All staff know the measures that we are taking to try and manage workload however January is always busy. We have had a lot of input from employees including the mentioned one and actions were started a while ago. Without explaining exactly what that employee does its hard to explain the enormity of their job role (not just them that does this role so not all on them) and its importance.

    A nice easy dilemma to deal with when i have just started this.
    Thanks for all your input a lot to look into and take on board.
  • Hello Kerry
    I just wanted to add to my previous post to say that there is a very useful (& brief) piece in People Management this week with practical suggestions for mitigating risk

    www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/.../mitigating-the-risk-when-employee-leaves
    Deborah