Protect your business from losing customers when an employee moves on to a competitor: Yorkshire lawyer, Ben Palmer explains howSolicitors Ltd works with most, if not all, of the major estate agents across the region. As such we know that it is common place for staff to move between different estate agency firms throughout their careers, often taking loyal customers with them.
‘You [the Employee] will not for 6 months following the Termination of your employment be involved in any Capacity with a competitor within a 5 mile radius of your normal place of work.’ However, with on-line services such as Rightmove, Purplebricks, Facebook and LinkedIn, estate agents do not need to be located near to the Housing Stock that makes up their client base and nor do customers that had previously received good service from an ex-employee, or built up a good relationship with them, need to scour local estate agency branches to locate former employees as this information is at everyone’s’ finger tips.
To circumvent the type of restrictive covenants mentioned above, a new employer can simply locate the member of staff at a different branch for a six month period, or permanently, and if this is the only restrictive covenants that the former employer has then there is not much the former employer can do to prevent the rival business, and former employee, targeting its customers.