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.

Next time you employ staff don’t go out socialising with them. We all know what familiarity breeds .

These are separate issues

(1) staff are not friends. Don't mix business with pleasure

(2) if they're off work claiming sick when not sick, that's gross misconduct

(3) are they employees of yours, or subcontractors?

(4) is there a clause in your contract with staff which says they can't poach your clients?

(5) does your contract with clients say they can't instruct your cleaners directly?

(6) agree with a PP, tell your former clients. Do it professionally and keep it factual. As a customer, I'm cautious about who comes into my house and honesty of cleaners is v important. So, I wouldn't want to think I was employing someone who was working for me whilst claiming to be off sick. But, unless your contracts prohibit it, clients are entitled to do business with whoever they want

I'd tell them legally they need to return the keys to you. I'd dismiss them both effective immediately. She isn't your friend, she stole from you. If it was just 1 or 2 clients, I'd understand but it's not, it's far more than that.

These are all great points.
You need to be strategic here and not let emotion play out (easier said than done).

1. You need to GATHER EVIDENCE, take photos, jot down times and dates where they've rang in sick and you have proof of seeing them with YOUR cleaning equipment on cash in hand jobs.
2. You need to LOOK OVER THEIR CONTRACTS you had them sign.
3. You need ALL YOUR CLEANING EQUIPMENT back, to do PAT testing (as one PP said) and with you, then keep it under lock and key.
4. You need ALL CLIENTS KEYS BACK and store them in a locked safe/box due to GDPR.
5. You need to password- protect and RESTRICT ALL CLIENT INFO (if they have access to a database on laptop/ work phone or a phone book of contacts).
6. You need to SEEK OUT ADVICE (possibly CAB citizens' advice bureau) on where you stand with possible dismissal.
7. You need to have a sit down MEETING with them. Make sure a neutral party is there as a WITNESS and as a NOTE-TAKE and do everything by the book, so you have a paper trail and they cannot sue you. Present them with your evidence and say you are investigating and you want their side of the story.
8. Do not let their crocodile tears get to you. Be very cold and say very little. Be factual and let them talk and hang themselves. When a manager behaves like this the employees bottle goes and they brick it.
9. Tell them you may need to take LEGAL ACTION going forward, as this is very serious. They have poached your contacts, used your cleaning equipment on their own time, while claiming sickness, and doing tax-free labour without their own insurance.
10. You need to INFORM.YOUR CLIENTS that you have had company restructuring, and have let two employees go for dishonesty, and possible fraud.
11. You will need to look IMPLEMENTING YOUR OWN policies and procedures to avoid this in future.

Edited to say, friends don't do this. They are two cheeky bastard employees, who have showed hard faced twatty behaviour like a couple of smiling assassin's. Nice to your face, but stabbed you in the back.
Fuck them both. Pair of Twats.
Hugs to you 🫂

I think I’d say to them they owe me the pay for all the sick days they were actually working with my stolen clients, but if they return all the equipment in good condition and 20 sets of keys by Monday I won’t take them to court and we can just move on.

It’s really not fraud. Not is it a police matter.

I think the issue is they may be still under the assumption Ann is working for OP, so they're paying Ann directly and OP is paying Ann as an employee. Which is disgraceful tbh.

Don't be so stupid a police matter, yes ann has nicked her clients which is out of order but it's not fraud fgs!!
It should be worked in their contract no stealing clients

The snakes. I haven't rtft.
If you haven't got stipulations in your contracts, do it now.

Unfortunately, unless they're completely stupid they'll probably see straight through that, but claiming the insurers have insisted that all keys should stay with the employer might just work

This kind of thing happens all the time, and though the present cleaners will have to go there's every chance new ones will do the same, so I agree with PPs that it's best not to blur the boundaries between employer and friend. Apart from anything else it makes things easier to deal with when the inevitable happens

Oh, and I wouldn't bother telling clients about their dishonesty since they already know that, are having been party to it they'll certainly blame you for "trying to tell them what they can do"

It is stealing data because they only know that person exists and they are only in their house because they are under OP's employment. I just can't believe that isn't illegal use of company data?

If the op has been paying the staff and the non paying Customer (for whom op has asked for keys back) has also been paying Ann then there is fraud there - not huge fraud i grant you but that is theft.

Do u think the clients approached anne and her daughter and said would you work direct for me for cheaper? Just a thought.
Also re sacking them are the on paye and been with u longer than 2 years. If so there is strict procedure to go through before you just bin them off

You have to be very careful in this situation.

I’m guessing that being a very small company, doing everything yourself on a tight budget, you don’t have water-tight employment contracts (maybe even only verbal contacts with your employees especially if they were friends you trusted)
I’m guessing you can’t afford legal advice either and don’t want to go down that route anyway.

I think the best way to deal with this situation is from the point of view of friendships, rather than of being her employer.

Yes, Ann has betrayed you big time and isn’t a friend at all. But expect no recourse to her betrayal, from a business point of view. Slowly drop her as a friend.
She was able to betray you easily because you paid more attention to making sure cleaning needs were met properly rather than to your admin side of the business.
This is a steep learning curve for you OP, and now you know you have to have watertight admin in case this happens again. Don’t let it deter you though. Instead, let it spur you on. You have done well to get this far with your sheer hard work.

1. Get your equipment back telling Ann and anybody else you suspect, that you want to replace/upgrade it.
2. Create a new policy and procedure for key holding. Do your research on that first.
3. And then simply don’t give her more work through your company. If she asks and I doubt she will be so hard faced, tell her that you are looking for new clients and will get back to her when you have work for her.
4. And obviously don’t hold on to the friendship. But don’t accuse her of anything either. Keep it light.
5. invoice each of your clients as normal and ask them for a feed back review of cleaning and of admin ..that is to make sure they understand the process of payment going to you and not direct to the cleaner. See if that throws anything up for you to improve your admi and also of course about what may have been going on so that you can be better prepared.
6. Hold as much evidence as you can glean, but don’t do anything with it. Just bide your time and hopefully Ann will disappear from your radar. You will only need it, if she kicks off (out of guilt)

Good honest cleaners are hard to source and you have a chance to make a go of it again. So onwards and upwards.
Good luck!

@BurpeesAllTheWay make sure you report them to HMRC as well for the backdated period when all this began.

In future, also don’t mix business with pleasure. They’re not your colleagues after all, you’re their boss. There’s a certain type of person that interprets kindness as weakness and harbours resentment at having to work for someone else - and I think those two CFs had those traits!

Do u think the clients approached anne and her daughter and said would you work direct for me for cheaper? Just a thought

IME, @CleaningAngel, it's equally likely that the cleaner - hoping for the slot for herself - spun some story about how awful OP is and that she was only getting paid a tenner an hour, and that a "private" arrangement would work better for them both

The "greedy bastard boss" trope is a popular one, as countless threads on here show, so while actually being dishonest this would have enabled both to convince themselves they were striking a blow for justice and sticking it to someone who was just taking advantage

Are they on a zero hours contract?
Have you got a non-compete clause in their contract?
Have you paid them any sick pay?

Their behaviour is gross misconduct.

I’m self-employed (totally different industry) and some agencies I subcontract with have it as part of the contract that I will not work with their client directly for a period of X years after I’ve been booked through their agency.

Do you have anti-poaching measures built into your employee contracts, @BurpeesAllTheWay ?

Talk to a solicitor, could be classed as industrial espionage. Also, when you sack them, charge for the supplies they have been using and advise those clients that what the ex employees have done is illegal

@BurpeesAllTheWay I have to wonder if Ann's friendliness was a way to pump you for information and stay on your good side while she and her DD take you for a ride.

I hope you can get it worked out. I would call the clients that have cancelled to ask why so you can better your business. Get the keys back with the "insurance reason" and figure out a way to get the cleaning stuff back. Do they have keys to the business? If so, could they have taken other cleaning supplies to use on their private clients?

Good luck, OP. I feel for you.

Some good advice here OP, YANBU & good luck 👍

In summary, gather as much evidence as possible, limit the damage, get your equipment returned, confront them with a witness (& record it on your phone), and subsequently communicate with clients keeping things factual but do alert clients to their dishonest behaviour (assuming & only if you have proof of same!! ).

I would hold the threat of legal action over them rather than doing it. The return ing of keys by dishonest employees may be a police matter if they refuse, inform them of this at the meeting & threaten to call the police if they refuse.

P.s. lastly I would possibly consider the hmrc thing but I'd leave that for now and how they manage returning keys, equipment & clients, and also bear in mind you might get a visit yourself. So that could also be reserved as a threat to illicit full co-operation from these prize Cs.

Yep. And your clients are your Intellectual Property - your IP.

Thank you. It wouldn't go down in some big city law firm, so why should it be OK for the owner of a cleaning company to have her private client list pinched?

They were only there because they were her employees. If they sent flyers out to the entire town and some of those who responded happened to be OPs clients then so be it.

But she deliberately targeted someone already using the service in order to poach them.

Ann is bitch. Hope karma bites them on the backside. I'd be sending a letter to the households that Ann cleans to say they may be getting another cleaner as you are juggling things around. That will let the householders know that you are the boss and not Ann.