Ex Employees Stealing Work

[dodsonish]

Has anyone ever had employees steal accounts from their company to start their own? If so, or even if not, how did or would you deal with the situation?

 

[Grant]

In California, we use anti-competition agreements drafted by our attorney before any work begins. We only had to use it legally once (so far) in hte last 10 years and it was well worth the expense of the attorney.
All of your documents that you use for hiring should be written or evaluated by an attorney that specializes in employment law.

 

[RustyACE]

I think what Josh is talking about is literally "stealing." The employees would go out on cash jobs, keep the money, put their own sticker up with scotch tape, and tell the boss that the customer had already gotten someone else to clean the hoods.

They then kept the cash (about $5000) and bought their own equipment and started their own business cleaning all of his accounts before they were due.

Prosecution for embezzlement should occur swiftly in my opinion.

Rusty

 

[Grant]

That is prosecutable in California.
How did it get to be 5k before the trend or patern was noticed? One big account? or a chain?

We contact every customer on turned away service and reschedule about 95% of them within 2 weeks.

 

[dodsonish]

The guy who owned the company put on the exhaust cleaning service to compliment his fire suppression. He has never cleaned a hood but partnered up with a guy who had. The hood cleaner turned out to be a joke and left the fire suppression guy with the business to run. He turned it over to one of his employees (trusted employee) to run. The guy did good for a while and then I guess he realized the crooked opportunity he had. To make a long story short, one of the FS guys noticed a current hood sticker on a supposed lost account. The guy and his partner got canned, but they have a list of all of the accounts. He's been doing the accounts for a few bucks less to get their business. He's been telling the customers that the company he worked for is out of business and he has started his own. A letter has been sent out to the customers to inform them of the problem, but some people would rather save $25 than stick with a legitamate company.

 

[Grant]

An anti competetion agreement helps in this instance, but you can always fall back on the business and profesions code which would open the bandits up to some serious civil litigation. Was there any formal WRITTEN agreement before? Find out if they have business licenses, liability insurance, workmans compensation insurance etc and go talk to an attorney. Then notify the local AHJ's if there is no licenses and insurances for these guys, that will put a damper on thier business.