Protecting yourself against multiple key resignations
If a number of key employees resign simultaneously in what appears to be an attempt to poach a team, you need to act fast to try to limit the impact on your business. Make sure that you speak to employees who have not yet resigned, as soon as possible. A team poaching exercise is usually only fully successful if the resignations take place simultaneously. If this does not happen, be sure to use the time to improve your position.
Consider the following:
- speak to employees individually and decide whether to offer them incentives to stay. Employees who choose to stay may provide valuable evidence of breaches by other employees and the prospective new employer
- remind employees in writing of applicable restrictive covenants (whether in contracts of employment, collective agreements or relevant incentive plans)
- find out how the junior employees have been recruited. If a recruitment agency has been used to recruit junior employees – in order to protect senior employees from breaking their duty of fidelity – you should consider making a pre-action application for disclosure as the recruitment agent may have valuable evidence about who was involved in poaching the team and what the plans were
