Lost a star employee? Headhunters say you have yourself to blame
It’s called the war for talent for very good reason.
At a time when people are the most important factor in corporate success, and are in short supply, employers have had to adopt aggressive recruitment strategies to find them.
During the most frantic days of the high-tech boom, when the economy flourished, there were countless stories of people being stolen away from competing organizations.
And if the scramble for talent has been tempered by the economic downturn, it is only temporarily the case. Study after study shows long-lasting labour shortages are imminent and unavoidable as baby boomers retire.
Often after discovering employees have been coaxed away by a convincing recruiter, the HR department cries foul or feels as if they have been the victim of unethical tactics.
But if some people are uncomfortable about the idea of their employees being called at work by a recruiter fishing for prize talent, the message that emerges from most recruiters is get used to it: there is nothing unethical about it, it is the nature of the game and the tactic is unlikely to go away. For that matter the popular application of the practice and the hiring of recruiters to do the job for them would suggest employers only feel it is unfair when they are the poached and not the poachee.
While there are some legal issues to consider — around non-compete clauses and proprietary information — recruiters, and for that matter corporate ethicists, maintain there is nothing inherently wrong with taking an employee away from a competing organization. However they also say some of the specific tactics employed by recruiters are unethical. And that is where it gets a bit confusing. There is no clear consensus on what is and is not acceptable when it comes to luring people away from another organization, said David Nitkin, a corporate ethics expert with EthicScan Canada Ltd. What might be acceptable to one HR department or staffing agency may be unacceptable to another. Consequently, in the absence of clear laws or widely accepted morals, there is a certain level of confusion on the subject.
That said, there is little doubt that some behaviours and certain kinds of pirating of people are totally unacceptable, he said. For example, there have been a number of cases where an organization allegedly hires somebody away from a competitor, gets all of the information that is to be had about the competitor and then lets him go after a few months.
For a recruiter to call up and offer higher compensation, or a more attractive workplace, or an interesting work opportunity, those are all ethical approaches, agreed Len Brooks, executive director of the Clarkson Centre for Business Ethics at the University of Toronto. If there is misrepresentation or the employee is lured away to tap into proprietary information that is unethical, he said.
As for calling employees at work, that too is within bounds. It would be preferential if they called after hours or made the original contact at work to make arrangements to talk later. But the employee can always refuse to talk to them, he added.
Recruiters are also sometimes saddled with unethical stigmas because they are perceived to work for both employers and employees. That creates a certain amount of suspicion about what recruiters do, or are at least are capable of doing. However, Nitkin also said that unscrupulous recruiters are in the minority.
“I think that there are a number of bad apples in the bunch and that may tend to colour the public’s perception of the whole bushel,” said Nitkin.
Headhunters and recruiters have long since had a certain negative reputation because they are often accused of stealing employees, but the industry has come a long way in improving its professionalism and ethical integrity, said Bill Fretz, co-chair of the ethics committee for the Association of Canadian Search, Employment and Staffing Services (ACSESS).
To help improve that reputation and ensure a certain standard of behaviour, ACSESS created a code of ethics because figuring out what is and is not acceptable is a highly subjective issue, explained Fretz.
And last month ACSESS held a seminar on ethical business practices in the staffing industry at which employers shared some of their experiences about how they felt the staffing agency had acted inappropriately.
In one case, a headhunter called to try and lure away a manager with another job offer, leaving aside that the call was made on speakerphone in the presence of the head of HR, what was really disturbing to the manager and head of HR was that the firm was also supplying them with people, said Fretz.
“Short of a blatant lie, in my opinion that is about as bad a practice and an activity there is,” said Fretz. “I think it is a cardinal rule not to recruit from a client company.”
There are still a lot of recruiters calling employees at work, trying to talk them into leaving their employer, said Helen Jowett, CEO of Cambridge, Ont.-based McDonald Green Personnel Inc. She said she does not want her recruiters doing that. “Eventually you start to tick off all your customers,” she explained.
However she also said it isn’t a good idea for employers to steal employees because it sends a bad message to employees.
“If a company resorts to tactics like stealing stars from the competition, they why should they expect employees to conduct their activities with integrity,” she said.
Without question, taking employees from a client is completely unacceptable, said Chris Roach, also co-chair of the ACSESS ethics committee. It’s not unheard of for an employee at a client firm to contact the headhunter and asked to be placed, and turning down what could be a $20,000 fee is not easy but it has to be done. However, calling people at work is well within the bounds so long as the recruiter does not misrepresent himself or his client, he said.
From time to time, recruiters get calls from irate HR managers furious that the recruiter has been calling their employees and trying to convince them to leave the company, said Roach.
But in the final analysis, it is not about recruitment it is about retention, he said. If a company is poorly managed they should expect to lose employees to competitors.
“If I present somebody with an opportunity and if they choose to leave because they are unhappy, the problem is not me it is them (the employer). And they have to do something about it.”
Crocus Investment Fund hasn’t had any problems with employees being lured away, said Sidney Bennett, director of HR and management practice. He admits Crocus is in a unique situation in Winnipeg because many employees don’t want to leave since it would mean moving to Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver. He also credits concerted efforts to hang on to employees through retention programs that include, among other things, parental leave arrangements that top up salary to 95 per cent of regular income.
Bennett said he has no problem with recruiters calling employees and trying to lure them away. “I don’t think it is unethical, it’s business,” he said. They are sales people, it is up to employers to treat employees well enough so that they won’t want to leave.
“I don’t have a problem with it, let the recruiters come,” said Bennett. “In fact, I think I would be offended if they weren’t calling because if they aren’t knocking at the door from time to time it probably tells you, you don’t have very good people.”
At a time when people are the most important factor in corporate success, and are in short supply, employers have had to adopt aggressive recruitment strategies to find them.
During the most frantic days of the high-tech boom, when the economy flourished, there were countless stories of people being stolen away from competing organizations.
And if the scramble for talent has been tempered by the economic downturn, it is only temporarily the case. Study after study shows long-lasting labour shortages are imminent and unavoidable as baby boomers retire.
Often after discovering employees have been coaxed away by a convincing recruiter, the HR department cries foul or feels as if they have been the victim of unethical tactics.
But if some people are uncomfortable about the idea of their employees being called at work by a recruiter fishing for prize talent, the message that emerges from most recruiters is get used to it: there is nothing unethical about it, it is the nature of the game and the tactic is unlikely to go away. For that matter the popular application of the practice and the hiring of recruiters to do the job for them would suggest employers only feel it is unfair when they are the poached and not the poachee.
While there are some legal issues to consider — around non-compete clauses and proprietary information — recruiters, and for that matter corporate ethicists, maintain there is nothing inherently wrong with taking an employee away from a competing organization. However they also say some of the specific tactics employed by recruiters are unethical. And that is where it gets a bit confusing. There is no clear consensus on what is and is not acceptable when it comes to luring people away from another organization, said David Nitkin, a corporate ethics expert with EthicScan Canada Ltd. What might be acceptable to one HR department or staffing agency may be unacceptable to another. Consequently, in the absence of clear laws or widely accepted morals, there is a certain level of confusion on the subject.
That said, there is little doubt that some behaviours and certain kinds of pirating of people are totally unacceptable, he said. For example, there have been a number of cases where an organization allegedly hires somebody away from a competitor, gets all of the information that is to be had about the competitor and then lets him go after a few months.
For a recruiter to call up and offer higher compensation, or a more attractive workplace, or an interesting work opportunity, those are all ethical approaches, agreed Len Brooks, executive director of the Clarkson Centre for Business Ethics at the University of Toronto. If there is misrepresentation or the employee is lured away to tap into proprietary information that is unethical, he said.
As for calling employees at work, that too is within bounds. It would be preferential if they called after hours or made the original contact at work to make arrangements to talk later. But the employee can always refuse to talk to them, he added.
Recruiters are also sometimes saddled with unethical stigmas because they are perceived to work for both employers and employees. That creates a certain amount of suspicion about what recruiters do, or are at least are capable of doing. However, Nitkin also said that unscrupulous recruiters are in the minority.
“I think that there are a number of bad apples in the bunch and that may tend to colour the public’s perception of the whole bushel,” said Nitkin.
Headhunters and recruiters have long since had a certain negative reputation because they are often accused of stealing employees, but the industry has come a long way in improving its professionalism and ethical integrity, said Bill Fretz, co-chair of the ethics committee for the Association of Canadian Search, Employment and Staffing Services (ACSESS).
To help improve that reputation and ensure a certain standard of behaviour, ACSESS created a code of ethics because figuring out what is and is not acceptable is a highly subjective issue, explained Fretz.
And last month ACSESS held a seminar on ethical business practices in the staffing industry at which employers shared some of their experiences about how they felt the staffing agency had acted inappropriately.
In one case, a headhunter called to try and lure away a manager with another job offer, leaving aside that the call was made on speakerphone in the presence of the head of HR, what was really disturbing to the manager and head of HR was that the firm was also supplying them with people, said Fretz.
“Short of a blatant lie, in my opinion that is about as bad a practice and an activity there is,” said Fretz. “I think it is a cardinal rule not to recruit from a client company.”
There are still a lot of recruiters calling employees at work, trying to talk them into leaving their employer, said Helen Jowett, CEO of Cambridge, Ont.-based McDonald Green Personnel Inc. She said she does not want her recruiters doing that. “Eventually you start to tick off all your customers,” she explained.
However she also said it isn’t a good idea for employers to steal employees because it sends a bad message to employees.
“If a company resorts to tactics like stealing stars from the competition, they why should they expect employees to conduct their activities with integrity,” she said.
Without question, taking employees from a client is completely unacceptable, said Chris Roach, also co-chair of the ACSESS ethics committee. It’s not unheard of for an employee at a client firm to contact the headhunter and asked to be placed, and turning down what could be a $20,000 fee is not easy but it has to be done. However, calling people at work is well within the bounds so long as the recruiter does not misrepresent himself or his client, he said.
From time to time, recruiters get calls from irate HR managers furious that the recruiter has been calling their employees and trying to convince them to leave the company, said Roach.
But in the final analysis, it is not about recruitment it is about retention, he said. If a company is poorly managed they should expect to lose employees to competitors.
“If I present somebody with an opportunity and if they choose to leave because they are unhappy, the problem is not me it is them (the employer). And they have to do something about it.”
Crocus Investment Fund hasn’t had any problems with employees being lured away, said Sidney Bennett, director of HR and management practice. He admits Crocus is in a unique situation in Winnipeg because many employees don’t want to leave since it would mean moving to Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver. He also credits concerted efforts to hang on to employees through retention programs that include, among other things, parental leave arrangements that top up salary to 95 per cent of regular income.
Bennett said he has no problem with recruiters calling employees and trying to lure them away. “I don’t think it is unethical, it’s business,” he said. They are sales people, it is up to employers to treat employees well enough so that they won’t want to leave.
“I don’t have a problem with it, let the recruiters come,” said Bennett. “In fact, I think I would be offended if they weren’t calling because if they aren’t knocking at the door from time to time it probably tells you, you don’t have very good people.”
