HR Underpants - Part 6 & Part 7

In the continuing Saga of HR Underpants – We present:

Questions #6 & #7:    jaundicejames.com

As I have "spotty" connectivity this week - thank you for understanding the double post - enjoy and have a great week!

Answer #6

You are right - Managers are looking for someone to buck the status quo when it suits their needs and agendas. A lot of “Managers and Above” love having a “stable” of great people to use for “show and tell” in Meetings.  Some love taking credit for “new and ground-breaking ideas.” (i.e. innovation - generated by their teams)  Great Managers give teams or individual contributors the credit; cretins hoard it themselves.  These “individual contributors” or as you put it, “mavericks” are cut loose when they begin to outshine the boss, or get just a little TOO independent in their thinking.

 
Often, though, a great new idea, like a sound piece of progressive legislation, dies in committee - precisely because it does not conform to how “The Company” has thought about things in the past.  Apparently the only “mavericks” allowed are those in banking who dreamed up derivatives and credit default swaps; but to your question - therein the paradox you alluded to.

Ideally, team players know their role and do their job.  Few of us enjoy a slacker co-worker. Even the most brilliant employee still needs to play nice with others some of the time. That’s just life.  I believe independent thinkers are good team players; they engage with the group because they want to - not because they “have to.”

In good companies individuals are placed, as Joe Collins says, in Good to Great on the right bus, and in the right seat on the bus.  In dysfunctional companies, you just trained your competition - perhaps your top competitor isn’t as married to the status quo as your company is!   

Answer #7

It seems to me, the more aggressive a non-compete, the more often it has been “tested” by employees fleeing to the competition.  A non-compete doesn’t affect compensation, per se, it may affect employees’ view of “staying put” rather than fleeing.  If an employee is “down sized” I believe these “agreements” should be null and void, not doing so is Dickensian.  I would ask those seeking to enforce a non-compete post-lay off this:  If the person is “so important” that he or she can’t work for someone else, aren’t they important enough to keep on staff?

  
You are also correct in realizing these things have risen to the level of the ridiculous.  An HR friend of mine likens them to “no-trade clauses” in professional athletics.  I have seen them negotiated, enforced, and ignored.  I have seen a few negotiated successfully before hand, but like a pre-nup, this tactic is suspect to senior management - why talk about the divorce before you’re married?

  
Many have been found to be unenforceable and the best negotiations are with the help of a labor attorney prior to separation; a really good outcome is where the non-compete time is “covered” by a severance package.   It seems to me that when the separation is amiable, there is less drama.

 
You are also correct on the customer-focused non-compete. Customers are more loyal to people than companies, and the fear that a former employee will take clients is quite real.
The non-competes became critical when employees knew too much about the inner workings of an organization to move to the competitor without seriously damaging the first employer.  The most acrimonious, however, seem to be those related to intellectual property versus client lists.  A few have made the news, and often the company who did the “enticing” is more liable than the individual employee.  In some cases, a departing employee has an iphone contact list to kill for!

I also wonder whether companies are partially to blame for “us” having their information. They issue “Crackberries,” demand we answer the phone 24/7, do work on weekends, and work from home on their strategic plans, designs, blue prints, logos, etc. even when we are on vacation or ill.  Maybe if they didn’t require us to “have” all this information, they wouldn’t be in the situation of damage control after separation.

On a side note: I’ve never seen a non-compete enforced against an employee a company was glad to be rid of, but I’m sure it’s happened. When there is no loyalty there are lawyers and legal documents.