Are you said employee?

I owned a business where we used in house and subs. We preferred to be in house when we could to control the process and expand our coverage, but would use subs if we didnt have the skill, timing, geography etc. This was very much understood amongst our employees. We had a code of conduct that all managers would annually disclose any relationship like this (family relations, business interests, etc ) and although our procurement process ?should? have caught, it sometimes did not.

If the employee made us aware of it when we implemented the code of conduct, we figured it out with them. If it was the other way around and afterwards, the employee was gone.

In my owner?s mind, that employee is stealing from me. They have made themselves a competitor.