To feel completely betrayed by staff member

[BurpeesAllTheWay]

I run a cleaning company, I started 6 years ago on my own and over the last 1.5 years have added in 6 more employees. The first lady I hired, Ann has been with me since October 23. I employed her daughter to work with us 2 and the pair of them work in a team and the daughter doesn’t drive. Everything was fine until this year, they’ve had 6/7 clients leave and they are calling in sick atleast one of them weekly.
Today, the daughter called in sick because she was too tired to work. I managed to cover her work and team up someone else with Ann for the day, I did ask Ann if she could work late and she said she had something on, which was fine. Then driving home from work today, I drove past one of their old clients houses, who left us a couple of months ago, to see Ann and her daughter loading up their car with all of their cleaning equipment (which is actually all of my cleaning equipment) I’ve had 2 more clients leave in the last 2 weeks, which I now suspect have been taken on privately by them too. Am I being unreasonable to feel really hurt by this dishonesty from someone who I trusted as a friend?! I’ve always subbed her wages early, helped her out when her husband left, we go out for drinks together and catch ups regularly! How would you go about confronting them?! I also now have to sack them, I’m so upset to lose them as members of staff.

What were the reasons your clients were giving you for leaving? Did you talk with them, did you return their keys to them?

It is very easy for the cleaner to say oh I can do the same job cheaper for you cash in hand and then it is up to the client. I don't think its the same as an employee accessing their data and using that.

Different story if the clients still think that your company is who their contract is with, verbal or written. It sounds like she is stealing your business by stealth.

You need to confront them unfortunately

Unfortunately cleaning business don't lend well to scale for this reason.

Its generally cheaper & more tax efficient for the customer to pay the cleaner directly and thats who their relationship is with. Also the "top" cleaner who started the business often isn't actually properly employing the staff themselves (eg doesn't have them on formal contracts, paying NICs & paid holiday etc), its more like a gangmaster subcontracting out work to other self employed women. It can be perceived by customers that the top woman doesn't add a lot and its not worth the pound or two she takes per hour.

This makes it very vulnerable to new cleaners simply taking the clients, especially any you haven't built up a reputation with directly yourself.

My cleaner has got around this to a degree by:

• rotating staff around so they don't always clean the same place & she sees all customers once every three weeks
• never sharing customer contact details with staff - she does all customer contact & billing herself

I’ve just had some clients pay and then never reply to any messages to confirm next cleans, some have cancelled because Ann and her daughter have been unreliable lately, one was made redundant, a couple have just said a change in circumstances. I’m not worried about getting back the lost clients, I just don’t want to lose anymore.
Some might have left for genuine reasons, I don’t know and I can’t prove it at the moment.

I’m pretty sure the clients don’t think it’s my company as they are cancelling with me.

I know this is the way the cleaning companies work and have wondered if it would ever happen to me.

I have been rotating staff around a lot more recently, but the problem with this is that certain clients like the way in which certain cleaners work.

Does your contract not have a do not compete clause or solicitation clause? If not not, it may be worth putting in going forward.

My work contact has about 5 sections of these in different ways.

Maybe when you confront Ann you could put the wind up her by asking her if she had insurance against damage or injury?

Or more to the point (I am assuming, of course, that you do have insurances) I would contact all your clients, past and present, and tell them that you have become aware that some "competitors" in the market are not properly insured etc., and you want to reassure them that you are an established business with insurance, fully paid up and declared taxes etc.

I would be furious. This is your business. What do their employment contracts say?
You need to take them to court for this. It’s not acceptable.
Sorry to hear you are going through this.

Call a meeting say you are doing an audit so they need to bring all keys and equipment - take it all and tell them they are fired for gross misconduct and you are considering legal action

OP, when you run a business this happens — particularly if you don't pay people well enough, or when you expect too much. Are these women actually employees with contracts, or are they self-employed on zero hours contracts? Check your contract to see what it says.

Back in 2008 I worked for one of the first companies that started installing solar PV panels on ordinary houses. We were really ground-breaking at that time. The owners recruited people, trained them up to install the systems and paid and treated them well, but gradually as the market expanded all those employees started to see that they could make more money by starting their own companies, and off they went — and some of them took clients with them. This is how things work. It's business.

You've used your initiative to start your own business. Why shouldn't they? You should, in your business, always be recruiting and always be training — and never taking anyone for granted. If you regularly ask them to work longer hours or do extra at short notice you might want to think again about that. Have they been feeling exploited?

Do not just sack them! You must do an investigation which involves a meeting with each of them.
They are not your friends they are horrible people, using you to find business then undercutting you.

And then, if they take you to an ET, they will win as you've not done things legally.

@BurpeesAllTheWay can you take all the cleaning equipment back including marigolds etc and say that she has to come to your house to collect them on day of scheduled cleans and return immediately after.

These are certainly staff she doesn't need! Stealing clients for themselves? Noone needs that

So sorry @BurpeesAllTheWay , that’s really crappy behaviour.

Just wanted to say that I agree with a PP - I would get legal advice about your position before communicating with Ann and daughter. Are they actually employees and do they have written contracts of employment?

Speak to your business insurance company, they will guide you in how to deal with it. Some people just take the piss.

I do agree that any dismissal should be done with caution, but they have less than two years employment, so unfair dismissal is unlikely to fly.

It really depends on how formal your employment of them has been.
Do you have a contract with them? This will always happen if you don’t have a good contract that prevents them doing this as they will always undercut you price wise.
if you don’t have a contract covering this then you haven’t a leg to stand on.
Sack them and get your equipment back and go to a solicitor to draft you a contract.

I can understand your feeling of betrayal by your staff member - but don't forget your former clients are also to blame here.

For the 10 years or so before retiring I worked through an agency as a registered nurse, looking after private patients in their own homes.

About 75% of these clients or their families would offer me a private arrangement, cutting out the agency, which was actually against their written contract between them and the agency.

I always declined on a point of principle, plus I preferred the 'buffer zone' of an agency between me and the patient/family.

The contract i had with my cleaning company had this, there was a three month period where the cleaner couldn't work directly for me.

They have to be reasonable in law to be enforceable, but something to look at going forward for you.

I can understand your feeling of betrayal by your staff member - but don't forget your former clients are also to blame here.

They’re really not “to blame”. The clients pay for a service - unless they’re somehow locked into a contract to use the OP for a certain period of time, they can simply decide they no longer want to use the service. That’s very different from someone who is employed by the OP faking sickness and then using those supposed sick days to work directly for those same clients.

This is sensible. You want all your clients' keys and your equipment. Think strategically rather than emotionally. You want to get PAT testing done, check the state of equipment, etc. and see what needs replacing. Say the terms of your insurance have changed, keys need to be kept in a locked box with you a d only given out on the day of a clean. Think logically.

They have essentially stolen your business. It is wrong, but I can understand why, if you're earning so much less as an employee of a company than an independently paid cleaner.

I have to admit we did this years ago. We had a cleaner who was getting less than 10 pounds an hour out of the 25 pounds per hour paid to the agency. She had left a country in Eastern Europe, her husband who was actually a doctor could only get work as an orderly in the UK and we didn't like the fact they were living crammed in a bedsit, earning peanuts and wanted them to benefit from their hard work. We had no loyalty to the cleaning company because as far as we could tell they were doing very little for their fees.

Hearing it from your point of view makes me realize that your income and livelihood is also at stake when this happens to this scale. I would try and get some legal advice on it, to start.

Its not a police matter, its a civil matter, and one not worth pursuing, it would cost thousands for nothing.

Not the case, as in this scenario the cleaner would come to know the client in the course of their work - therefore they wouldn't be breaching any data protection regulations.
It could be in the contract, but that would require legal action, and quite frankly for a few cleaning jobs its not worth it.
OP these people are not your friends, they are building up their own rounds going direct to your customers - businesses are built this way, those of us in business win contracts by being the best service at best cost - but they are doing so whilst pinching your clients and taking the piss. Sack them, simples.