Canadian HR Reporter

pM40065782 Ro9496 March 23, 2015 INSIDE THE BOOMERANG EMPLOYEE Sometimes, the best place to recruit talent is from that pile of former resignations HR insurance As damages rise, so too does the popularity of EPL page 5 Reviewing reviews Salvaging the unpopular performance review page 6 Executive Series The perfect time to boost board diversity is now page 8 page 11 poacHING > pg. 10 Workers prepare for the opening of an Apple store in China earlier this year. Apple is embroiled in a lawsuit after it was accused of poaching top engineers from Tesla and A123 Systems. better > pg. 7 educatIoN > pg. 2 Emplo y ment Law Today Canad a ian www.employmentlawtoday.com www.EmploymentLawToday.com Expert opinions from the best employment lawyers in Canada CELT1504-2015 ad.indd 1 2015-01-09 11:07 AM Credit: Chance Chan (Reuters) Luring talent or luring legal trouble? Employee poaching is generally legal but there are still rules, best practices to follow By LiZ BeRnieR IT'S RELATIVELY COmmOn in highly competitive industries such as tech or fi nancial services, but "poaching" employees from a competitor could get you more than you bargained for. If employ- ers aren't conscientious about it, snagging that high-potential talent might lead to a high-priced lawsuit. ere are plenty of examples; Apple, for one, is embroiled in a high-profi le lawsuit in the Unit- ed States after being accused of poaching top engineers from electric-car battery maker A123 Systems and Tesla. Poaching is a practice that's gone on for decades, said Walter Stasyshyn, a Toronto employ- ment lawyer — but the rationale has changed as technology and in- demand skills have changed. "What you fi nd is there are em- ployers who need skill sets (from) individuals who may be out in the marketplace… employment has very little to do with the position the person might hold in a com- pany, but rather the skill sets they might have," he said. at's a relatively innocent rea- son for poaching that doesn't usu- ally present much diffi culty, said Stasyshyn. " e diffi culty is where the em- ployers are poaching from compa- nies that are maybe competitors or similar-type companies. We're fi nding a lot of this type of thing, particularly in the tech fi eld, be- cause the need for highly skilled individuals is quite signifi cant," he said. "As we can see with tech wars going on out there, each company has a vested interested in protect- ing its proprietary interests. And that could be intellectual property, it could be trade secrets, it could be customer lists, it could be some of their other employees." Poaching doesn't have to come with legal headaches, said Hendrik Nieuwland, a partner at Shields O'Donnell MacKillop in Toronto. "Generally speaking, it's not il- legal. It's perfectly lawful in most circumstances to recruit an em- ployee and say, 'We want you to come work for us.'" However, there are circum- stances where poaching can be unlawful or open an organization up to legal action, he said. Legal risks One such instance is when the person doing the poaching is a former employee of the employer he's poaching people from, said Nieuwland. "Where this typically happens is if an employee leaves and joins an- other fi rm, and they worked with good people at their former em- ployer, sometimes they'll go and try to recruit those employees to the new shop. at's very typical. It's lawful unless the person do- ing the recruiting has a restrictive From the schoolyard to the offi ce New tools used in workplace bullying, cyberbullying include text, email By LiZ BeRnieR STICKS AnD STOnES — and nasty emails — may not actually break your bones, but they can lead to some pretty significant consequences in the workplace. Whether it's increased stress claims, a toxic work culture, high turnover or all of the above, the negative impacts of bullying can be challenging and costly for an organization. As our cultural awareness of bullying increases, we've begun to realize bullying doesn't stay in the schoolyard, according to Ruth Wright, director of leadership and HR research at the Conference Board of Canada in Ottawa. "It's a growing social issue. We're hearing about reports of cyberbullying in the schools, with some tragic consequences in some cases, we're hearing high-profi le instances of harassment and up the continuum to sexual assault. So I think that there's growing so- cial awareness and, from our per- spective, we know that, ultimately, the schoolyard bullying grows up and moves into the workplace." at was among the messages of the Conference Board's publi- cation Workplace Bullying Primer: What It Is and How to Manage It. "It's always been there — we're not saying that there's more Work-life balance a struggle for both men and women Less than one-half of women feel they've achieved balance: Study By LiZ BeRnieR IT'S nOT shocking but it is dis- concerting: More than one-half of Canadian women are struggling to achieve work-life balance. Just 47 per cent feel they've achieved that balance, according to a Bank of Montreal study of 1,002 people. "What I found really interest- ing is the diff erence between these women, and their feelings around being supported by their family versus being supported by their workplace," said Betsey Chung, chief marketing offi cer of personal and commercial banking Canada and global wealth management at BMO, speaking at an International Women's Day event in Toronto. "And it probably was the converse of what I would have thought: Of those women, one- third of them felt that they were supported by their family in terms of work-life balance and on the homefront, whereas two-thirds of those women felt that they were supported by their employer. "Interestingly, these women felt that they were more supported

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