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I've had the experience of having company contact data stolen via a Linkedin account. I hired a salesman for one of my businesses. He had limited sales experi

I've had the experience of having company contact data stolen via a Linkedin account. I hired a salesman for one of my businesses. He had limited sales experience but I was willing to train. His Linkedin account had maybe on or two dozen contacts. I watched as he systematically added contacts to the account over a year. Nearly all of these contacts came out of our business activities. By the end of the year he was in the hundreds of contacts. The relationship wasn't working out and I had to let him go. He went to work for a competitor. Not only was he armed with the knowledge from this one year "training program" but now he had a who's-who of the industry in his LinkedIn account. Business can really suck sometimes. Some of these contacts were developed after non-trivial financial and monetary investments. For example, we were spending about $250K per year going to tradeshows. Some of these contacts came from relationships built over making contact with people repeated times at various tradeshows spread over several years. In some cases the tradeshow activity was followed-up by in-person visits at the customer site. One could easily argue that some of the contacts easily cost tens of thousands of dollars to develop. Who owns these contacts and relationships? I think it is very clear that the business does. I also understand that this is not a trivial problem. These days it is nearly impossible to control the exodus of internal data, be it contacts, code or design data (electronics, mechanical). One personal Dropbox account and an employee can move hard drives worth of data out of your business. Agreements not to do so are only worth the paper they are on. In the end it might just be a matter of personal morals and ethics.

sk5t 15y ago
Why do you think it's "clear" that the business owns the contacts and relationships? Contacts and relationships form the basis of a salesman's job, much as language and API expertise are the basis of a programmer's job. You may invest considerably in a programmer's training, only to watch him leave for a competitor, but you will have a difficult time claiming ownership of his knowledge and experience. I think the lesson is that, from a business perspective, you need to guard access to key contacts and companies where possible, if the likely departure of an employee who knows them will cause the business undue hardship. How else would you propose to structure a job where the employee forfeits relationships upon separation? (And how would you get any decent salesperson to accept such a job?)
- lukejduncan 15y ago
  IMHO: relationships are personally unless explicitly called out in a contract. If I met someone, I met them, you can't take that back. If a relationship is that vital to the company then safe guards of some sort need to be in place.
- algoshift 15y ago
  Your analogy is incomplete. Imagine that you spent $250K having a programmer write code for you only to see him take the code with him to a competitor and actually use it. Opportunity acquisition isn't free. If a company invests hundreds of thousands of dollars developing contacts and relationships they belong to the business, not the employee. I gave the example of the trade show. Think of it this way: you spend $120K at a trade show in four days. At the end of four days you have, say, 2,000 prospects and 50 great quality VIPs. Now imagine that your sales guy goes to work for your direct competitor and hands over the list. Sorry, non-compete agreements are not legal in California. And, yes, we used Salesforce extensively. It doesn't fix the problem.
loceng 15y ago
Thanks for sharing to remind us all. A non-compete for a minimum of X years clause might have helped the sting a bit.
- chollida1 15y ago
  Probably not. The OP said that he let the person go. I doubt very much that a business can fire/lay off a person and then also say that they can't work in the same industry for some period of time.
  - mjwalshe 15y ago
    Yep for non competes to be valid you have to have some recompense for signing the non compete and excessively long or broad non competes are very very hard to enforce.
  - FuzzyDunlop 15y ago
    Garden leave clauses, and any similar contractual obligation, come into effect on the termination of a contract. A termination can be through dismissal or resignation. Otherwise, if you wanted to leave and take some clients with you, or work with a direct competitor, all you'd need to do is find a way to get yourself sacked.
- ndefinite 15y ago
  My employer has a non-compete clause. It's not specific to the industry, I'm permitted to leave and work in the field. What I'm not permitted to do within the two year term is work with the same clients. I can keep my linked in Rolodex but I have to look for new leads for the first two years. In the industry I'm in, the clause is boilerplate at this point. As an employee I don't like it, as a potential employer I'll be including the clause
nknight 15y ago
Your employees are not robots, nor are the contacts they make, please don't treat them as if they are. You don't get to reach into their minds and wipe or edit relationships as you see fit simply because they were developed on company time.
biot 15y ago
Next time, hopefully you'll watch as he systematically adds leads and contacts to your company's Salesforce account. You can't control what knowledge he gains on the job, but you can establish proper procedures for recording on-the-job data which could include a prohibition on recording that data into personally owned systems, perhaps through trade secrets claims. Thus, future employees are free to take themselves and their knowledge to their next employment but (enforeceability issues aside) they can't take the company's data.

sk5t 15y ago

Why do you think it's "clear" that the business owns the contacts and relationships? Contacts and relationships form the basis of a salesman's job, much as language and API expertise are the basis of a programmer's job. You may invest considerably in a programmer's training, only to watch him leave for a competitor, but you will have a difficult time claiming ownership of his knowledge and experience. I think the lesson is that, from a business perspective, you need to guard access to key contacts and companies where possible, if the likely departure of an employee who knows them will cause the business undue hardship. How else would you propose to structure a job where the employee forfeits relationships upon separation? (And how would you get any decent salesperson to accept such a job?)

lukejduncan 15y ago
IMHO: relationships are personally unless explicitly called out in a contract. If I met someone, I met them, you can't take that back. If a relationship is that vital to the company then safe guards of some sort need to be in place.
algoshift 15y ago
Your analogy is incomplete. Imagine that you spent $250K having a programmer write code for you only to see him take the code with him to a competitor and actually use it. Opportunity acquisition isn't free. If a company invests hundreds of thousands of dollars developing contacts and relationships they belong to the business, not the employee. I gave the example of the trade show. Think of it this way: you spend $120K at a trade show in four days. At the end of four days you have, say, 2,000 prospects and 50 great quality VIPs. Now imagine that your sales guy goes to work for your direct competitor and hands over the list. Sorry, non-compete agreements are not legal in California. And, yes, we used Salesforce extensively. It doesn't fix the problem.

loceng 15y ago

Thanks for sharing to remind us all. A non-compete for a minimum of X years clause might have helped the sting a bit.

chollida1 15y ago
Probably not. The OP said that he let the person go. I doubt very much that a business can fire/lay off a person and then also say that they can't work in the same industry for some period of time.
- mjwalshe 15y ago
  Yep for non competes to be valid you have to have some recompense for signing the non compete and excessively long or broad non competes are very very hard to enforce.
- FuzzyDunlop 15y ago
  Garden leave clauses, and any similar contractual obligation, come into effect on the termination of a contract. A termination can be through dismissal or resignation. Otherwise, if you wanted to leave and take some clients with you, or work with a direct competitor, all you'd need to do is find a way to get yourself sacked.
ndefinite 15y ago
My employer has a non-compete clause. It's not specific to the industry, I'm permitted to leave and work in the field. What I'm not permitted to do within the two year term is work with the same clients. I can keep my linked in Rolodex but I have to look for new leads for the first two years. In the industry I'm in, the clause is boilerplate at this point. As an employee I don't like it, as a potential employer I'll be including the clause

nknight 15y ago

Your employees are not robots, nor are the contacts they make, please don't treat them as if they are. You don't get to reach into their minds and wipe or edit relationships as you see fit simply because they were developed on company time.

biot 15y ago

Next time, hopefully you'll watch as he systematically adds leads and contacts to your company's Salesforce account. You can't control what knowledge he gains on the job, but you can establish proper procedures for recording on-the-job data which could include a prohibition on recording that data into personally owned systems, perhaps through trade secrets claims. Thus, future employees are free to take themselves and their knowledge to their next employment but (enforeceability issues aside) they can't take the company's data.