Page last updated on Thursday, April 7 2005 at 1846 UK

Staff Poaching

Loss of highly skilled staff to competitors means additional costs in terms of recruitment and retraining

What is it all about?

Preventing the loss of valuable staff members and the skills they possess to competitors.

Why is it important?

Staff are the backbone of any organisation, small or large. As such they are a valuable commodity to any business both in terms of the labour they offer and the skills and knowledge they possess.

The Problem

Members of staff who offer a company more than just their labour - research skills, specialist knowledge, close client relationships and so on - are usually retained on contract whereby their usefulness to a competitor organisation is restricted either permanently or over a period of time. This reduces the potential for the staff member to move their labour to a competitor.

Nevertheless, successful approaches of staff by competitors do occur and are sometimes successful even with the tightest employment contracts in place.

The Symptoms

The grade of staff members usually involved in cases of poaching is such that they have relatively complex employment arrangements, possibly involving a range of benefits and incentives. Any move to a different employer means securing better employment terms and this usually requires discussion between the staff member and the potential new employer.

Much of this negotiation will typically be conducted in person and may necessitate the individual taking time away from the workplace. This 'holiday' time will often be arranged at short-notice and will be sporadic and distinct from more normal vacation time.

Other methods of communication will also be used and these might include e-mail and telephone. Uncharacteristic use of these facilities could indicate discussions with a third party and might be particularly suspicious if the employee is secretive or reacts with unusual sensitivity to polite queries.

Careful collation of research notes, client contact details and other valuable information is often a symptom of an impending move and this could have more serious implications in terms of the loss of intellectual property to the new employer.

The Solution

TKM can take an objective view of the actions and situation of a staff member and provide an assessment of the likelihood that a case of staff poaching exists.

Once this has been determined, we can conduct a thorough investigation of the staff member and their prospective new employer. We can examine trends in the company data accessed by the employee as well as taking steps to ensure the security of valuable intellectual property.

All of TKM's investigations in cases such as these are designed to be subtle and unobtrusive to avoid the risk of alienating the suspect employee in the event that there is no imminent danger.

Print page Print this article