policies and procedures

cwrtcoed

If an ex employee of mine started up a business same as mine, could I request to see his policies and procedures etc. I'm thinking, could he just copy a different company logo onto all of my policies and use them? I spoke to a m8 I know down the gym who was thinking of setting up his own business in health and safety. He said that most companies copy and paste from other companies and if it is under the same type of business there are only a limited number of words you can use to describe the same sentence. Can this ex employee tell me where to go, if I ask him for his policies and procedures??

Annisele

You can certainly ask him to show you his policies - but as you suggest, if he doesn't want to tell you he can indeed tell you where to go.

I'd be more bothered about an ex-employee poaching my clients than my policies.

cwrtcoed

Yes, I've thought of that also, but that goes on everywhere and cannot be controlled, thanks for the advice

Savvy_Sue

cwrtcoed wrote: »

Yes, I've thought of that also, but that goes on everywhere and cannot be controlled, thanks for the advice

I'd have said that could be more easily controlled. You need robust data protection policies in place, and a clause in your contract about not nicking personal data, also a 'no compete clause' could be worthwhile but you do need to take legal advice about that because it has to be 'reasonable'.

Mistral001

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

I'd have said that could be more easily controlled. You need robust data protection policies in place, and a clause in your contract about not nicking personal data, also a 'no compete clause' could be worthwhile but you do need to take legal advice about that because it has to be 'reasonable'.

Yes I agree, use this as a learning experience to improve your own polices and procedures. Remember it is likely that your own documents are probably a cobbled together collection of clauses from various sources.

Savvy_Sue

Mistral001 wrote: »

Remember it is likely that your own documents are probably a cobbled together collection of clauses from various sources.

Absolutely, and sometimes that will be done with agreement. We've quite happily passed our policies on to similar organisations, and asked others if we can see theirs.

However, sharing (or taking!) personal data is quite another matter, and as a customer I'd be fairly unhappy if someone left the OP's organisation and took my details with them to a rival.

cwrtcoed

Yes, but if I put those in place what power would I have for me to look at his policies and procedures, it would mean going to court and could cost thousands

Johnandabby

If he is an ex-employee, then you have no chance if you didn't have a 'no compete' clause in his contract when he was working for you. And even then this would only be relevant for a few months after he left, and costly to try to enforce.

You can copyright your documents, but pretty meaningless in reality...

Like most industries, you just have to try and be better than your competitors and make sure people come to you instead. I think you're wasting your time going down this route.

Mistral001

cwrtcoed wrote: »

Yes, but if I put those in place what power would I have for me to look at his policies and procedures, it would mean going to court and could cost thousands

I am not sure if you mean just the written terms and conditions on the back of invoices and staff contracts etc or the actual way you do things. The latter I do not think can be protected unless they were patentable procedures which is very unlikely unless the related to a physical process.


I use many policies and procedures of my last employers. Some I have improved on (I think) others I do not use, but even if I did things in exactly the same way, I think my last employers would be flattered rather than annoyed.

cwrtcoed

Yes I suppose your both right, I should concentrate more on raising my level on being better than others, and not concentrate on other things that are beyond my control.