The Brain Drain

Recruitment is all about who you know and what you know. That ‘database’ in your consultants head can be a tough asset to protect – is putting your recruitment consultant on garden leave for a month your only protection when one of your staff decide to decamp to a competitor? And does it work? Anyone currently ‘gardening’ like to comment?

In most organisations good staff are your primary asset but in recruitment they often hold the keys to particular client and candidate relationships – so losing staff can directly affect your working relationship with both candidates and clients alike. Protecting your business from that loss – which for some senior consultants could be significant – is tough and needs to be carefully considered.

Contracts of employment are crucial

First of all you are entirely scuppered if you don’t have a contract of employment for your staff. Sounds obvious but its amazing how many organisations conduct themselves in this respect on the ‘never never’, even given your specialism. In your contracts with your staff, you can include restrictive covenants to protect your confidential information, client lists, candidate lists and trade secrets – these are all technical legal terms and therefore it is essential that you take advice from a good employment lawyer about your attempts to restrict your employees during their notice period and beyond. If you get it wrong – over egg that pudding and place unreasonable restrictions - they will be unenforceable. Make it too weak and effectively you have no protection at all.

Make sure you have a contract, a notice period with the option to put your employee on garden leave, and well drawn restrictions about future client and candidate contact going forward – my advice is don’t download a standard set of clauses from the internet - its fatal.

For more information on this subject, please contact dispute resolution specialist Heather Stanford or join the debate on in our eForum on Linkedin