Boss from hell! - Can I liberate my clients?

[glitznglamour]

Hello, i was not singling out anyone person on this thread, i am frustrated by the comments on this thread but its not personal.

I do not know of any law in the U.K. Which would allow an employee to take company records.

If an employee is upset at their working conditions then after raising it with the owner still get nowhere then it is their right to leave and also take legal action against said owner if employment law has been broken.

If after leaving the business struggles and goes under it is the fault of the owner not the employee who left, if then at that stage the ex clients of the business seek out a stylist/ therapist and find the ex employee then i have no issue with that.

However, advertising on Facebook, Twitter, other social media, advertising in a local paper, shop window etc for a period of time (as set in the employment contract) usually six month's will put you in breach of said contract even after you have left the employment.

If as an employee you do not agree with the contract then do not sign it! Start your own business or negotiate points in that contract?

All employers are not bad, all employees are not either, no one is perfect

But this Forum is for Professionals, and we should strive to be just that in our life wether employee or employer
Thank you Paul

 

[Melk]

Hello, i was not singling out anyone person on this thread, i am frustrated by the comments on this thread but its not personal.

I do not know of any law in the U.K. Which would allow an employee to take company records.

If an employee is upset at their working conditions then after raising it with the owner still get nowhere then it is their right to leave and also take legal action against said owner if employment law has been broken.

If after leaving the business struggles and goes under it is the fault of the owner not the employee who left, if then at that stage the ex clients of the business seek out a stylist/ therapist and find the ex employee then i have no issue with that.

However, advertising on Facebook, Twitter, other social media, advertising in a local paper, shop window etc for a period of time (as set in the employment contract) usually six month's will put you in breach of said contract even after you have left the employment.

If as an employee you do not agree with the contract then do not sign it! Start your own business or negotiate points in that contract?

All employers are not bad, all employees are not either, no one is perfect

But this Forum is for Professionals, and we should strive to be just that in our life wether employee or employer
Thank you Paul

I agree that if you have a contract you should follow it, I don't know if it's standard here to have them as most therapists pay for their own training which is expensive. But if the op has one they need to be careful not to breech the conditions of it.

 

[taggyboy]

can I just ask other employers do they draw it up themselves or get an employment solicitor to do it ?
Any advise greatly received !

JoJo x

We are registered with National Hair Federation and with your subscription you get contracts and handbooks. They can also be used for the beauty side of any business.

Lots of other free information as well and you also have legal cover for when you need it. There certainly are covenants covered and with a big organisation behind you with legal cover, we are thankful that should we need to take legal action we have their support.

I know there are other companies out there but NHF really gets you covered until you want to look into a more bespoke contract.

 

[glitznglamour]

You are Right TaggyBoy, the NHF are very good and we were members for many years, you can get Apprentice and stylist contracts free with membership, health & safety leaflets etc,,

I have now outsourced all my Employment Law business to Head office solicitors based in Wales, i get all contracts which are individual to each employee, full access to a downloadable library for employment templates( appraisals ' maternity etc) staff handbooks plus if any letter needs sending to any employee in case of disciplinary etc they write the letters for you , then you print and sign, this saves tripping yourself up by writing something wrong!

This has been a great debate on this forum and i am proud of the strong views people have about being Professional at all times, after all "Morals maketh the Man & Woman"

 

[Blue Rose]

I've only had a quick read through this thread but one thing that really jumps out at me is that you can tell who the business owners are!

 

[Beautygirl1977]

I know its quite obvious! Everyone has different views on things depending on their circumstances I guess. One thing for sure though I wouldn't be signing a contract like that and wouldn't want to work for someone who expected me to. I have spend a lot of time and money on Beauty for someone to put me on guarding leave etc just because I wanted to move on. To me this is totally unacceptable. I'm new to the beauty industry but I'm actually shocked people think this is ok. We do not "own" people!

 

[Lynne Baker]

This is standard practice across most industries, not just beauty.
I'm in business to stay in business, not to go under.
As a business owner I do whatever I have to to protect my business.
As an employee I went to work to earn money to pay the mortgage and the bills, and hopefully to have a bit of money left over to put aside for my dotage and for a bit of fun.
It's exactly the same as a business owner!
It's very easy to assume that business owners are grasping, conniving, greedy so and so's, whose modus operandi is to work their staff into an early grave and attempt to place unrealistic and unlawful restrictions on them. Indeed we know that there are some of those around, Gr8Nailz can testify to that! But on the whole, business owners are just trying to do the same as their staff; earn enough money to pay the bills, provide a great service for their customers and have a bit left over.
Also, not sure if it was autocorrect at fault but the term is "garden" leave. So called because the employee could spend the time in the garden, rather than potentially wrecking the business.
I was an IT manager for 15 years, often managing staff. It was like herding cats.
Immediately somebody handed in their notice we had no choice but to put them on garden leave for no other reason than to protect the business. The damage that can be done by staff is potentially enormous so to remove the temptation their access to company documents, IT equipment, hell, even the stationery cupboard was rescinded immediately. Everyone knew this, so they made sure they had nicked whatever post it notes and tea bags they felt they were owed (!), bade a fond farewell to their chums and spent a lovely month lounging around watching Judge Judy. There was no malice in this; it was purely to protect the business.

 

[persianista]

What seems to get forgotten, is that if you are an employee, they are not "your" clients. They are the salon's clients and you are paid to do their hair.

This of course works both ways. If a salon doesnt wish to pay the costs associated with employing people, and has everyone self employed, then they have no comeback when the person moves on and tells the clients.

Employment law is pretty fierce on the subject of employees soliciting business from former employers. As an employee you are in a position of trust, and stealing clients is the same as stealing money/ goods in the eyes of the law. After all, what else you gonna nick?

If you are self employed, your clientele is your own. Something salon owners need to be aware of when deciding whether to employ or not.

So nobody is saying an employee is owned, but there is ownership of the business which employs the stylist.
Before salon owners get slated, I would like to point out that nobody forces anyone to work in a salon. Everyone is welcome to work in their back bedroom or mobile. Salons do however provide jobs, training, and a regular income by pooling the money generated by many people.

When you are mobile and have a quiet week you are skint. In a salon, you still get paid as there is every chance the salon owner has generated the money to pay you.

 

[WaxGirl]

I've only had a quick read through this thread but one thing that really jumps out at me is that you can tell who the business owners are!

Thats great!

Its good to see fellow business owners who are aware of the law and common business practises - I love professionalism in the industry.

 

[linzi]

I know its quite obvious! Everyone has different views on things depending on their circumstances I guess. One thing for sure though I wouldn't be signing a contract like that and wouldn't want to work for someone who expected me to. I have spend a lot of time and money on Beauty for someone to put me on guarding leave etc just because I wanted to move on. To me this is totally unacceptable. I'm new to the beauty industry but I'm actually shocked people think this is ok. We do not "own" people!

It's not just in the beauty industry, that's why I used the Nordenfelt case as an example - it couldn't be more unlike the beauty industry if it tried! To sell a company and then set up another near identical one tends to be frowned upon. As does poaching the clients of a former employer; it's just not fair.

I can see that we won't see eye-to-eye because I think that a salon owner protecting herself and her business is fair, you think that equates to 'owning' an employee, it's not. What it is owning is the intellectual property of the business.

I know someone who worked for a paint company, she was quite high up the ladder as well, and instrumental in the creation of a new type of paint. She was approached by another company and offered a better remuneration package and working conditions, etc and would've taken it had her current contract not prohibited her from doing so. And rightly so - she would've been able to take the knowledge of this new type of paint and give it to the competitor which would've 1) taken away the competitive advantage of the current employer, and 2) allowed the new company to manufacture the paint without the R&D costs.

Now, this is a slightly different issue as the R&D costs associated with the development of a new product are extremely high and you wouldn't have these in the course of running a salon; though of course the training courses that you can be sent on are definitely personal and professional development paid for by the salon owner and as such, some companies have it in their contracts that you cannot move on within a certain time-frame after training. Do you also see that as unfair on the employee? I actually see it as an amazing opportunity - to be trained and not have to pay for it? I'll have some of that!

It's like the GHD/cloud9 issue - as I understand it, the original owners of GHD sold the company, made a fortune and then used their knowledge of the business to start up again with a different name. The new owners of GHD mustn't have had a restrictive covenant written into their contract and, though they still have a good brand to their name, they do have competition in the form of their vendors. Vendors who have a complete working knowledge in how their former business works.

Employers are not monsters, they don't own their employees. They just want to protect their business and I don't see why that is difficult to understand?

 

[Beautygirl1977]

Ok first of all I don't think employers are monsters! That made me lol though. I totally agree with training someone then they leave bit. You would need some cover there. I don't think the employee should be allowed to take anything that isn't theirs but I don't think clients come under that. I also think if the salon is run well, good products etc they shouldn't have a problem. That's the bit I'm not getting. If you have a good salon it shouldn't sink because people have moved on. That girls didn't leave on mass exodus because of nothing. I went there twice before it happened and the salons owners are rude and the products are cheap. I wouldn't go back and I wouldn't want to work there.

 

[JoJo1980]

Ok first of all I don't think employers are monsters! That made me lol though. I totally agree with training someone then they leave bit. You would need some cover there. I don't think the employee should be allowed to take anything that isn't theirs but I don't think clients come under that. I also think if the salon is run well, good products etc they shouldn't have a problem. That's the bit I'm not getting. If you have a good salon it shouldn't sink because people have moved on. That girls didn't leave on mass exodus because of nothing. I went there twice before it happened and the salons owners are rude and the products are cheap. I wouldn't go back and I wouldn't want to work there.

So, If you worked in a lovely salon, with regular training, lovely products, professional environment, and your boss regularly marketed and PR'd to get a constant flow of new clientele for you to work on (using her time and money of course) then you decided to leave and branch out on your own, are you saying you wouldnt have a moral issue with telling all your clients from the salon with you, and that you would also take issue if your boss was wise to this fact and put you on garden leave as soon as you handed your notice in?
You say contracts that stipulate how employee's cannot take business with them is unfair - but to be honest, Im finding it very hard to see how the above situation would be fair myself.....

 

[glitznglamour]

Well said JoJo1980 and Persianista, i am still flummoxed by some people defending immoral actions!

PROFESSIONALISM is not something to switch on & off in life!

 

[Lynne Baker]

Seemingly it is thought so, probably by those who don't really get it. Some people think that they ought to act professionally because everyone keeps saying they should, but if they thought they could get away with it they wouldn't bother.
Professionalism isn't something I even have to think about; it's in every fibre of my being.

 

[Beautygirl1977]

I said I totally agree with what you are saying about training someone then them leaving. An employer would need some cover! Think you have picked me up wrong! I have plenty morals and I am very professional!

 

[Beautygirl1977]

The only person I have heard of in my town that did have some kind of agreement was a salon owner. When she sold on her business she couldn't do any clients for 2 years.
Anyway like I say I am new to this. I don't think employers are bad and employees are great. I've had my home salon for a year and I have a lot of regular clients. If I took a job and my clients came there and then I moved on again at some point I would be disappointed I wouldn't be allowed to tell them. I think it's totally different if the employee had been put through training etc by the employer. Then I think there should be something in place.

 

[BABSann]

Ok first of all I don't think employers are monsters! That made me lol though. I totally agree with training someone then they leave bit. You would need some cover there. I don't think the employee should be allowed to take anything that isn't theirs but I don't think clients come under that. I also think if the salon is run well, good products etc they shouldn't have a problem. That's the bit I'm not getting. If you have a good salon it shouldn't sink because people have moved on. That girls didn't leave on mass exodus because of nothing. I went there twice before it happened and the salons owners are rude and the products are cheap. I wouldn't go back and I wouldn't want to work there.

If you had 3 therapists that left the same salon, within a month, then of course the business could sink.

The therapists are part of what makes the salon run well. It's about team work, some owners don't even work on the shop floor so clients wouldn't just stay because it sells good products or because it appears to be run well. A good therapist wouldn't let her clients know her boss was a nasty, rude slave driver.

The salon that I worked in for 9 years was a lovely salon, I managed it and had many clients ask me where I was going and could I let them know where I would be so they could come to me in the future.

The temptation is there because they had been coming to me for years and we had built up a relationship BUT I wouldn't and couldn't do it. It felt wrong and it is wrong. Without the business I wouldn't have had the clients. I have morals and I didn't have a contract( but that's another story)
The clients are part of the business, ive had many a client over the years who have heard other therapists or hairdressers telling their clients where they are moving and who have thought it wrong.

Clients will find us if they really want to and how lovely it is to know deep down that you haven't crossed any boundaries by telling anyone where you're moving to or that you're starting up your own business, when they spot you in the street or happen to come into the new salon you're working in and then go on to book in with you.

 

[SillyBilly]

How come some people are happy to think that they can sign a contract yet feel that is is perfectly OK not have to fulfil their side by complying with the bit that says that they can't steal clients but they would want the employer to keep to their side of the contract and fulfil obligations by paying the agreed amount for wages and paid holidays etc?

 

[JoJo1980]

From a clients point of view, often they feel obligated to stick with a stylist/therapist. I have had many new clients come to me saying that their previous stylist left the salon or went on maternity and this gave them the opportunity they wanted to try someone or somewhere new. It puts the client in an awkward situation if you tell them you are going and where you are going, they then feel obliged to follow.
In my salon, we operate a "free roam policy" and have signs up stipulating this. This basically means we see the client as a client of the SALON not of the STYLIST and they are free to pick and choose a stylist on each visit, or indeed stick with the same one should they wish. Many of our clients enjoy trying us all outr at different times - some having colours with one stylist and cuts with another, then hair ups, blow drys or perms with someone else! They love this and often comment on how noce it is that we dont tie them down to any particular stylist.

Then ususally if a stylist leaves, the client wants to stay with us anyway, as they enjoy the salon, and are used to the other therapists...... works well for us so maybe a tip for other salon owners....???

xxx

 

[Beautygirl1977]

She is rude to the clients! What's the therapist supposed to do? Lock her in a cupboard?! Im done with this thread. To the op. You do what you thinks right! Good luck! X