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A customer comes into your hotel, sits down and orders a cocktail. While chatting with the bar assistant he lets slip that he too runs a business and wonders if she would be interested in a job. Before you know it, you have yet another vacancy to fill.

To some extent, stealing business is a normal commercial activity. For example, hoteliers will keep an eye on conferences being held at rival establishments and later try to persuade the client to change its arrangements.

But poaching staff is another matter and can leave owners and managers fuming, especially if they have forked out several thousand pounds to find and train the staff member in the first place.

Jonathan Raggett, managing director of Red Carnation Hotels, says: "We recently had a customer who said he needed a room for his parents. After being shown around by our sales manager he revealed that he himself owned several London properties and tried to recruit her."

On this occasion Raggett was lucky, and the manager stayed. But, he points out, in such a situation the employer may often have to enter into an auction, upping the employee's salary, or releasing them and starting again.

Raggett acknowledges that the only real weapon hoteliers and caterers have against poaching is to treat their staff fairly and ensure the idea of moving on never takes hold.

"Money is not the most important thing; the biggest single factor is the need to be respected and for them to enjoy their work," he comments.

Red Carnation, which has five hotels in the UK, follows a policy of promoting from within and providing training courses at all levels for staff to progress into more senior roles. That benefited Raggett himself, who was twice general manager before becoming managing director. The company also provides monetary incentives and ensures every member of staff is personally recognised, each receiving a wrapped gift at Christmas with a personal message.

Jeremy Rata, managing director of Devonshire Hotels and Restaurants, agrees. He says: "The core of the issue is the way you develop your staff by training and nurturing them. If you do that, it is unlikely they will be poached."

Rata was disappointed recently to lose a restaurant manager to a wine merchant, seduced by the lure of a nine-to-five job and a company car. But he is philosophical about this, saying: "He was interested in wine and wanted a new challenge, so there is nothing I could have done."

Rata does, however, resent poaching by recruitment agencies. "No matter what they say, their business is based on a rapid turnover of employees," he argues. "That means they live on hotels' inadequacies."

In many cases, poaching is done by proxy, Rata believes, with agencies following up tips given to them by their clients.

"I had a Michelin-starred head chef ring my chef direct, without telling me. I don't respect him for doing that, and we would never go down to his level," he says. "But what is just as bad is when other hoteliers or managers tell an agency about a chef they are interested in, asking them to call to see if the individual wants to move."

Rata absolves certain top agencies of this, saying they tend to behave fairly. But he blames much of the poaching problem on a proliferation of one-man bands, many of which are quite unscrupulous and check on the people they had placed as little as three months earlier.

"They [the agency] will ring up to ‘touch base', and if you indicate that things could be better in any way, suddenly the conversation becomes very specific, and bang, before you know it, you have moved job," he says.

One difficulty for private owners is that they can't compete with big organisations in terms of remuneration and working conditions. Craig Bancroft, joint managing director of Northcote Manor hotel, near Blackburn, Lancashire, says agencies trying to recruit for new hotels have continued badgering staff they originally supplied him with. "We are feeders for these businesses: every time a new bar or hotel opens in Manchester, we hold our breath," he says.

Bancroft concedes he can't match conditions offered by the likes of Forte or Marriott, who will offer a guaranteed 38-hour working week, private health care, pension and a car. "It's an easy poach: if you were earning £16,000 and were offered £24,000, you would be gone tomorrow," he says.

For all that, Bancroft says Northcote Manor has managed to hold its own, not least because staff discover the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence. Several staff members have returned to the hotel after being seduced to other businesses.

Bancroft's view is confirmed by Mike Bevans, managing director of Linthwaite House hotel, Windermere, who lost a young commis chef to a new restaurant starting in the South. Not only did it seem to offer a better deal, it insisted he start straightaway.

"It said if you aren't here next Tuesday, you aren't starting at all, which is unfair to a 19-year-old," says Bevans. "I told him it was a good opportunity, but warned him to be on his guard. In the event, he did three 18-hour days, standing up most of the time, then walked out and came back to us."

He adds: "That sort of thing tends not to happen between hotel managers, but chefs are so focused on what they are doing that in terms of management they have a lot to learn."

Unsurprisingly, recruitment agencies are unwilling to accept much of the blame for poaching. Some larger companies are aware of the problem, though, and have their own rules for dealing with it. For example, Berkeley Scott insists that it will handle only those individuals who approach it and will never go out of its way to solicit applications.

"We basically believe that everyone in the market is fair game unless they are currently working for a client business," explains chief executive Roddy Watt. "In executive search circles it is normal to provide a hands-off period of six to 12 months, during which time you guarantee not to poach."

In the more active middle market, the company also guarantees existing clients it will not approach staff on behalf of other clients. However, that does not extend to applications from candidates: it would handle any individual actively seeking employment, regardless of which company they are currently working for.

One problem for employers is that a candidate who has registered with several agencies remains on their books and is therefore exposed to approaches. However, Berkeley Scott claims to limit its use of this data.

If it failed to place an individual, it might call back in six months' time, Watt says. But if it learnt that the person had been promoted, or had found a new job, it would assume there was no opportunity and back off. In this case, the name would be removed from the database until such time as the person reapplied.

"What makes people especially angry is if they feel that a particular recruitment agency is pillaging their workforce," Watt concedes.

Berkeley Scott has never had a complaint, he says, but he knows of one agency that stripped an organisation of 10 of its senior managers in a space of three months.

Watt denies that there is any head-hunting for restaurant managers or others in the mid-range market, since the fees charged do not justify such action. He also argues that employers' worries about poaching are often stoked by staff using agencies as leverage, claiming they are being head-hunted when it is actually they who are making the approaches. "That makes them feel important and helps ratchet up their salary," he points out.

Clearly, as long as the labour market remains tight, poaching will be endemic. Many owners and managers are resigned to the problem, and some privately admit they are not above handing out a business card themselves when they come across someone with obvious skill.

But that's not the same as blatantly propositioning a competitor's staff on their own premises, a practice they argue no self-respecting employer should stoop to. n

Recruiting and retaining the right staff - see article, 21 June