Following up The LinkedIn Personal Trainer’s article on law enforcement with one 0n lawsuits – an ingenious way to get back into the mix;-)
Apparently LinkedIn activity has been brought up in a lawsuit alleging breach of a non-solicitation clause, and I thought you might enjoy having a look…
Non-solicit
This sort of clause is inserted into contracts to keep individuals from using their access to a company, employees, and clients to harm the company upon departure.
Imagine that you’ve established an up-and-coming enterprise. You hire a new employee and three months later that employee has raided your clients and employees for the benefit of someone else!
Clearly I’ve used inflammatory language to describe the situation, but I first want you to understand that it can be an issue, and in order to prevent it, parties can come to an agreement that upon departure, an employee or contractor will avoid such a thing.
Right to work
The other side of course is that if an employee of 23 years is suddenly let go by a company for no good reason, that company cannot deny the individual a means of supporting themselves – of working…
Breach of contract
And so – if an employee that is covered by one of these non-solicit agreements does appear to be crossing the bounds of that agreement, lawyers are going to get involved.
And lawyers are known to use all available resources – especially when those resources prove a point…
Contact is contact
So – a message through LinkedIn is just as much a solicitation as it is over the phone, email, IM, or twitter.
And if you ask employees to “come over to your new company” with a LinkedIn message, or probe clients to “check out your new offering” through LinkedIn, you may be in for a rude awakening…
But I think you and I both knew that already, right?-)
Good enough to honor such an agreement
If you’ve been recruited to a new company, you’ve got skills. I’d say those skills can work well enough that you wouldn’t have to do unethical things like raid the former employer, right?
Oh – here’s the article – read for yourself and drop a comment back here.
And – I am not a lawyer, and if anything I wrote here suggests to you that I’m giving you legal advice, please reconsider – I’m not!
To your continued success,
steve
—
Steven Tylock
http://www.linkedinpersonaltrainer.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetylock
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