What to do when an employee is trying to steal your client?

In today’s competitive environment, also the startup environment, everybody wants to steal the client of other organizations because everybody needs business and those clients, So if your business is getting lots of clients then beware there can be some employees in your organization which are indulging stealing your client so that they can start-up. Well technologically having a robust firewall IT framework can prevent date theft, but what to do with an employee who has been caught red handed stealing your client data, what you can do to that employee, most of us will fire that employee immediately, but do not do that as legally errant employee may sue your organization for illegal removing so here are somethings you can do-:

1. Professional misconduct clause in your service agreement- Just be sure to add professional misconduct clause in your agreement, which states you have a power to immediately fire an employee without any notice in case he is found of professional misconduct and stealing vital client information qualifies in this category.

2. Let employee sign a severance agreement-if an employee is found stealing information red handed tell him to sign a severance agreement in which he will be agreeing to make full and final settlement of dues with your organization and the agreement bars him to approach and labor court.

3. Non compete and non disclosure agreement- Although it is part of service agreement but if it is not part of service agreement a non compete agreement should be signed, so that the employee may not be able to disclose or compete your information to other people.

4. Criminal breach of trust complaint-Under the Indian penal code a criminal breach of trust complaint can be lodged against an employee, i.e under IPC 406, if he has stolen the information and disclosed it to your competitor.This is also the provisions which which will help you to prevent your trade secrets.

5. Protection under the copyright act-if the information stolen is protected under the copyright act, such as software and databases are covered under section 63 of the copyright act, and civil proceedings are also maintainable.

These are the some ways to mitigate the risk in relation to stolen data.

Advocate Nitish Banka

E-mail-Nitish@lexspeak.in