I’ve been in business 20+ years - starting alone for the first years. Built it up and now have 5 employees. Recently I have been talking to my employees about buying into the company as I am nearing retirement. I gave two of my employees raises one of them a percentage based on his production. after that I got total silence never a thank you or anything so that caused some concern right there. One of the employees was receiving over $1000 a month raise. Recently I got Covid-19’s bad and was out for 2 months. I I have cameras at work so me and my partner were reviewing the cameras and noticed they were talking a lot of shit about me and making plans to start their own business I’m presuming stealing all the high-end clients. The Reality is that is if you put employee in the responsibility of dealing with clients you have to deal with the prospect that he might steal them eventually. less people and less drama and possibly hiring subcontractors to handle the business that I pay these people a lot of the time to stand around and do nothing might be better. We have a established a business location and will probably be fine. previously I’ve been talking with my right hand man about my exit strategy but now I want to talk to him about his exit strategy, one of the employees is poison to the others I can hear him talking shit about me and the business. I’m sure a lot of you experience the same type of situation’s any advice on how you handled it and the outcomes thereof would be appreciated thanks guys
You probably don’t want to hear this but I am big on ownership and figuring out what YOU did to precipitate the situation devolving into what it is.
Without deep thought or knowing details, best case scenario, you hired and/or tolerated unacceptable behavior in employees and didn’t act on it quickly enough thus leaving you in this spot. Worst case scenario, you have some kind of blind spot and you did something to drive good employees to do something like this. Either way, at some point there was something you could have done to mitigate the situation.
Side note but a major red flag for me is that you’re using cameras to monitor employee conversations. Maybe given the circumstances it’s developed to a point where maybe you feel you have no choice but that is a real slippery slope. If that’s normal behavior for you, I’d assume there are other red flags that if I were an employee may contribute to doing what they did.
No one has the detail that you do and no one on Reddit can give you the best answer based on your situation. I’d advise you to really take a deep internal look at yourself as the leader and how you enabled this situation. That’s not to say take all of the blame for actions of others, but being honest with yourself now vs telling a story that fits your narrative will save you pain and heartache later.
Yeah in the end I own the situation your right. The cameras are not for employees. I had a customer try to say we damaged a car with bogus allegations so we as A team agreed we needed cameras in the shop for this reason.