With two new recruits into the business, chats over restrictive covenants has become the latest spinning plate to take my attention.
I’m wondering if it’s right to punish somebody once they leave your business by impacting their ability to make money?
I’m wondering if it’s another historical defensive clause, that psychologically leaves the SMT thinking they are safe if somebody leaves, but then deprives them of being kept on their feet & being proactive, to ensure they are best placed to mitigate the risk of lost revenue following an employee out the business?
I’m wondering if it’s right that somebody with a partner, maybe children, who has made that former business a lot of money, worries about their financial livelihood whilst they traverse restrictive covenants?
I’m wondering if it’s right to punish clients and candidates, by not being able to work with that former employee, somebody that they trust, because of restrictive covenants?
In the recruitment world, restrictive covenants predominantly refers to candidates and clients.
For us at EA First, none of this sits well.
Today, for every employee, we are reissuing contracts taking out all restrictive covenants relating to candidates and clients.
We will not punish a person for leaving us, 6/9/12 months after they have left us.
We will not hinder their financial earnings when they leave us.
We will not have them sweating for 6/9/12 months worrying about who they can and cannot talk to.
In short we will not stop clients and candidates working with who they want to.
I appreciate one side of the coin could say we are naive, lacking commercial reality, will not be talking like this when somebody leaves us and takes a big account with them…
However the other side of the coin is that we do not want EA First to be a defensive orientated, negatively impacting business when somebody leaves.
You move on, you want to be forward thinking, we want to keep our employees happy, we want to keep them engaged, we want to remember they are the lifeblood of the business!
We are prepared to lose people, sometimes people just want a new scene, or to start their own business!
However, we are not prepared to build a business that needs restrictive covenants to be a pillar of what EA First will grow from.
Life is short, let us aspire to be better.
