Compiled by :

Anand. Mahesh. Jisha. Samsara. Shalieni. Vinitha.

INTRODUCTION
The term 'employee poaching' can be defined as an act of

enticing key employees to move from one firm to a competitor. It has emerged as the biggest HR challenge for enterprises, both big and small, across all industry verticals. High Energy Employees: Prey for Poaching?

Poaching talent is the practice of proactively targeting and hiring top talent away from a competitor or top firm.

INTENTION

Securing skills or capabilities faster than if you were to

attempt to develop talent internally through training and development efforts

Securing expanded capacity (i.e. more bodies) that will

require less ramp up time

Mitigating high-level talent losses due to attrition Damaging your competitors' ability to achieve their

strategic objectives

Poaching activities largely fall into one of three categories

1. Direct sourcing: Firms use new data-mining techniques and tools, combined with age-old recruiter phone techniques, to mine the organizational structure, employee identities, and employee performance indicators of talent and product competitors. This competitive intelligence is later used to determine who specifically should be targeted for poaching. All work is carried out internally.

2.THIRD-PARTY POACHING
This strategy relies on using a vendor or series of vendors to identify everything from which firms to target to what individuals to go after based on your strategic objectives. (It is also by far the most common way organizations that find poaching unethical actually practice it themselves. In their minds, poaching is perceived as unethical only if you do it yourself.)

3.ATTRACT THEM WITH "HONEY"

This approach utilizes six different channels to drive candidates to your organization from other specific organizations, much like product firms steer you to their products in grocery stores. The "honey" strategy is powered by a number of channels that drive candidates into your recruiting process.
Employment branding Employee referrals

Event recruiting
Magnet hiring Boomerang hiring Internet

The Employment Branding Channel

Many firms that have made an attempt to manage their employer brand do so with no particular goals other than to develop either "Best Place to Work" or "Employer of Choice" status (note that both of those terms are registered trademarks!).

Employer Branding Relies On : External recognition as a leader in providing specific employer

attributes, such as a value on diversity, innovation, or talent development
Consistent messaging that continuously communicates who and

what the firm is and what value it provides to prospective employees

A story inventory that provides specific examples of how

management programs and practices deliver value to employees

A specific and differentiated theme (slogan) that competitors cannot

easily mimic or assert

Recognition for functional excellence Lots of lots of press coverage in very specific publications that

reach into the targeted audience

The Employee Referral Channel

Just as most firms approach employment branding with no specific goal or outcome in mind, they often develop employee referral programs that meander and produce mediocre results at best.
A targeted employee referral program, on the other hand, utilizes the employee population to do all of the competitive intelligence mining that enables targeted poaching, with an added benefit: It gets employees to utilize their personal networks to initiate the recruiting process.

Employee Referral Channel Relies On:

Active referrals: An approach that goes to employees with a specific set of

questions that prime them to remember who they know in specific roles, organizations, etc.
Top performer referral prioritization: An approach that acts on all referrals

coming in from proven top performers before acting on those from other employees
Reference referrals: An approach that contacts references of past hires that

proved to be top performers and asks who else they know

Stakeholder referrals: An approach that leverages non employees who have a

vested interest in the success of the company to generate referrals, such as consultants, suppliers, stock holders, etc.

The Events Channel

Nearly every organization that recruits will attend at least one event a year, be it a recruiting event, an industry trade show, or a vendor exposition. But few select events to participate in based on their probability of attracting employees from specific competitors. Utilizing events as a poaching channel relies on:
Identifying and participating in specific industry trade shows

or association events that have a proven attraction to employees of targeted competitors

Hosting onsite seminars and certification courses that are

attractive to the competition

Participating in non-industry/non-professional events that

attract a target audience, such as a beer and wine or arts festival.

The Magnet Hire Channel

The magnet hire channel is quite possibly the easiest one to understand. It simply relies on polling top performers to identify the most respected or most visible professional who they would be interested in working with, and then working to hire that person in hopes that they would attract others to your organization.

The Boomerang Channel

At some point in time, nearly every employee decides to make a change and severs an employment relationship.
The boomerang channel is used in poaching by identifying former employees that are currently employed by a competitor and developing specific strategies to lure them back which brings the added benefit of lots of competitive intelligence about organizational structure and management practices, but not trade secrets or product information.

The Internet Channel

The final major channel that is used to power the "honey"

approach to poaching is the Internet channel. Unlike job posting and data mining, these approaches use the Internet to develop resources that employees of competing organizations are drawn to.

POACHING PREVENTION STRATEGY

Reward managers for keeping good people and if possible

reward entire teams. Train managers that employees leave when they' re not rewarded, thanked or given opportunities to learn. Keep tabs on people who have a pattern of leaving.

 Know who is at risk and work to keep them

Figure out who the targets are Block online poaching Block phone poaching Protect trade secrets Reward retention

PROTECTING YOUR BUSINESS

Using your confidential information (e.g. client contact lists/databases). Providing services to your customers or clients, irrespective of whether the former employee initiated the approach. Working for a competing business. Recruiting former-colleagues

IMPACT ON BUSINESS
It slows down your business. Lose the smartest and most experienced people in

organization. It adds to the salary burden of the company.

ETHICS
The ethics of lateral hiring Vanderbilt a professor

who specializes in strategic management suggest that the practice of poaching other companies employees should be an accepted or encouraged from of business competition.

Although not specific to the IT industry there have been some landmark judgement on the issue of employee poaching. Here are a few of them:

Pepsi was refused injunction to restrain its employees from joining Coke. The rights of an employee arising out of an employment contract have been elaborately detailed in the judgment.

Non-solicitation agreement in vendor/ agency relationships were held valid and enforceable. It was held that employees of either company could not be 'poached' by the other company for a specified period of time.