Max Lamas said: Do you have employee contracts for your assistants? To late now but you could add a clause for the future. Here is a clause from one of my previous employers.
"Non-Solicitation
17. Any attempt on the part of the Employee to induce others to leave the Employer's
employ, or any effort by the Employee to interfere with the Employer's
relationship with its other employees and contractors would be harmful and
damaging to the Employer. The Employee agrees that during the term of his
employment with the Employer and for a period of three (3) years after the end of
that term, the Employee will not in any way, directly or indirectly:
a. induce or attempt to induce any employee or contractor of the Employer to
quit employment or retainer with the Employer;
b. otherwise interfere with or disrupt the Employer's relationship with its
employees and contractors;
c. discuss employment opportunities or provide information about
competitive employment to any of the Employer's employees or
contractors; or
d. solicit, entice, or hire away any employee or contractor of the Employer.
18. This obligation will be limited to those that were employees or contractors of the
Employer when the Employee was employed by the Employer."
For your current situation? First I would sit back and ask myself; why are people leaving me? If its a simply a small bump in pay, is my management style off? Am I an !%@*x& to work for?
If you are a great person to work for; I wouldn't do anything. It means your employees are just not happy and you don't need unhappy employees working for you.
Max,
That verbiage in the contract is pretty interesting. Do you know if that would hold up in court? And if so, would it be worth the costs of paying a lawyer? Would you have to include that verbiage in your regular crew's contracts? (like they have one) For regular staff members I could see it not even worth it, (and it seems un-American, to deny someone to go take another job for better pay?) but could see it an issue with say a contractor working on a renovation or some similar project, although I would suspect the contract signed for that work being done would protect the course from a contractor leaving? But what do I know, I'm not a lawyer.
I can concur, I lost a seasonal to another course in season a few years ago due to pay difference, of course working for the city, we are pretty set in policies to where I couldn't have offered him anymore anyway, but even so, I wouldn't have offered more in season, it wouldn't have been fair to others, so instead of 1 unhappy crew member I let leave, I would have had about 6 unhappy because he got a raise and they didn't.
But I can see the way it was hard to get help this year, how loosing anyone is tough. (resist entering a political comment here)
Mel