Recruitment

The issues

Is it permitted to poach employees from another employer?
Can one approach another's employee and ask if he is interested in working for another employer?
Are there any limits to inducements that you can offer a person to leave his present employment?
Does it make any difference if the target employee has expressed an interest in leaving his present employment?
Is there any responsibility to the original employer where the employee in question performs a key role without which the business in which he is employed will fail?

The Jewish Perspective

The recruitment of a person who is working for another employer is considered poaching and falls into the category of the oni hamahapech b'charoro (a poor person looking for bread and another person comes and takes it from him: the person who took it is referred to as a rosho, an evildoer). This is because he is poaching from the original employer. This principle applies if somebody is already in employment and there is an agreement between him and his employer. However, if an individual is looking for work and he has commenced negotiations which have not yet been concluded, he can also begin negotiations with another potential employer so long as he confirms that he has not committed himself to the first employment. Where a person has already been employed and is now in the process of renegotiating his contract, it would not be correct for a potential employer to offer him a post before the original negotiations are concluded.

It is wrong for an employer to offer a position to a person who is already employed elsewhere and may well be wrong for that employee to accept employment elsewhere before he has fulfilled the duties of the first employer. Nevertheless, should he change employment, neither he nor the subsequent employer are under any liability to the first employer, even if the first employer has suffered loss.

The advertisement of vacancies is not considered poaching. Accordingly there is no bar to an employee of another enterprise responding to an advertisement, or to the advertising business entering into negotiations with him. The prohibitions of Jewish law are aimed at the practice of targeting a specific individual for employment, thereby removing him from his present place of employment and depriving the present employer of that expertise.