Best Practices for Hiring from Competitors and Managing Employee Departures: Strategies and Tips to Minimize Your Legal Risk

Although the pandemic triggered workforce retraction and mass unemployment in many sectors, in others, especially technology and life sciences, hiring has boomed, and employee mobility has flourished like never before, including for workers pursuing optimal remote arrangements. In fact, millions of employees have quit their jobs in what has been dubbed the “Great Resignation,” which has created both opportunities and challenges for businesses across many industries. Now, more than ever, is the time for employers to ensure that their recruitment, hiring, onboarding, and offboarding practices are lawful and effective. Getting things right at the beginning of the employment relationship will not only minimize legal risk at the outset, but also significantly reduce risk during and at the end of the employment relationship.

Dan McCoy, Anna Suh, Matthew Damm and Reanne Swafford-Harris of Fenwick’s Employment Practices Group will discuss the most common mistakes employers make when recruiting, hiring and exiting, as well as share best practices for legal compliance. Topics include:

• Lawful hiring from, and employee departures to, competitors
• Managing and protecting your trade secrets
• Non-compete and non-solicitation compliance
• Common process and documentation mistakes by recruiters, HR People and hiring managers

A recording of the presentation can be accessed here, and the slides can be found here.