Employee poaching

In business, employee raiding is the practice of unlawfully inducing an employee to leave one employer and take up employment with another employer.

The purpose of employee raiding is usually to gain access to unique or rare knowledge or skills which the employee may possess. Taking the employee gives the raider an unfair competitive advantage.

Ethical and legal dilemmas over employee raiding arise from the conflict of interests between an employee's right to free access to the labour market, and an employer's right to protect knowledge and skills which it regards as company property.

Employers may attempt to protect themselves against the most damaging effects of employee raiding by inserting non-compete clauses into employment contracts.

With increasing competition between companies sharing the same field of business, there have been non-disclosure forms for employees to sign, preventing employee raiding. The extreme difficulty in verifying this is a major example of how it poses a threat to all companies.

See also

• unfair competition
• trade secrets