🤥 How to protect your cleaning employees from stealing clients and your customers from stealing your employees?

A "Unfair Solicitation Agreement" can help protect cleaning businesses from clients, employees, or other loyal employees stealing them away.

Juan Chaparro

Co-Founder and CEO

min. read

September 10, 2020

When you have great employees which you have worked very hard to find, recruit and train, there's always some fear that a client will poach them and "steal" them from your payroll. Also on the backflip, this great employee could also be stealing clients from you and start their own cleaning business without you knowing it. And last but not least your own employees can also steal your other loyal employees so they can start their own cleaning company. What a mess? How can you protect your self and your business?

You should protect your cleaning businesses with a document called "Unfair Solicitation Agreement" this document protects you from clients stealing employees and there's also one that needs to be signed by the employees, both are below:

Unfair Solicitation Agreement for Cleaning Services Template (clients)

We value our Cleaning Techs and pour an enormous amount of time, energy and, expense into our screening, hiring, and training process. We are proud of the fact that "ABC CLEANING SERVICE, INC" has some the lowest turnover rate in our city. This agreement helps safeguard our success at providing only the best staff to our deserving customers. Sadly, some people want quality without paying for it and attempt to undercut our efforts by trying to “poach” our Cleaning Techs. It is for this reason that our customers and Cleaning Techs sign our “unfair solicitation agreement”. If breached, a fee of $________ (for damages) will be assessed. This helps to minimize the risk of unfair solicitation which undermines the good experience all our clients have come to expect. Please help us maintain our success by not soliciting our Cleaning Techs for hire directly.

I understand that I will be charged a $__________ finder's fee if I hire a Cleaning Tech from "ABC CLEANING SERVICE, INC" on an individual basis for private work.

I understand that "ABC CLEANING SERVICE, INC" Cleaning Techs are not allowed to engage in a work-relationship directly with me for one full year after termination.

Customer Name _______________________ Date _______________

Signature _____________________________

Disclaimer: The information provided on this website does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice; instead, all information, content, and materials available on this site are for general informational purposes only.

Unfair Solicitation Agreement for Cleaning Service Template (employee)

I ___________________________ understand and agree that if I breach this non-compete contract and clean houses or work for any "ABC CLEANING SERVICE, INC" clients on my own for direct payment cleaning houses during my employment or up to one year after my termination or up to one year of the client’s termination of our service, I will pay a referral fee of $2,500 per client to "ABC CLEANING SERVICE, INC"

I ________________________________ understand and agree that If I recruit/poach employees from "ABC CLEANING SERVICE, INC" to come and work for me, I will pay a referral fee of $1,500 per employee to "ABC CLEANING SERVICE, INC".

Employee Name _______________________ Date _______________

Signature _____________________________

What should be reasonable amount for the finders fee?

We recommend between $1,500 to $3,000 depending on your hiring costs.

How to implement this in your cleaning business?

Every time you onboard a recurring client and an employee have them sign it at the beginning of the process. You can use a e-signature system like HelloSign to send it their way. (Pipehire is working on a digital e-signature system for cleaning services)

Don't forget to add this document reminder to the employee onboarding (see image below)

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