More job offers and more careful hiring decisions and candidates
In our daily practice we can observe a trend we know from boom times, that candidates who sign a working contracts will not show up for work at the agreed date.
Due to the increasing number of job offers candidates are tempted to poker with several offers, sometimes just to improve their salary with current employer.
Unfortunately labor law doesn’t protect employers at all against such risk, and the company will have to bear burden of having to re-hire for the vacant position.
The search and selection costs of one new employee are between 15-50% of the yearly salary depending on the level of the position and doing that procedure twice is no fun.
Especially in critical positions which cannot stay vacant, such as the worker on the production line or the chief accountant who was supposed to take over an agenda, the damage to
the productivity of the company can be huge.
Legally the candidate should at least resign from the working contract in writing before the starting date.
But as the non-commencement of the working contract is always one-sided and there is no possibility to sanction the breach of the contract before it is fulfilled, employers are the only ones left to claim for damage in every single case.
I personally consider such behavior as inacceptable and very unprofessional, especially on a managerial level, since hiring and HR managers, as well as agencies and consultants will make their notes in the database and they will never hire or recommend such a candidate. It is also a cultural phenomenon of the young
CEE states as well as in southern European states, that a document with my signature on it still has to do with honor and
personal reputation.
written by Joerg Keplinger
CEO – Williams & Partner CEE