Enforcement of no solicit policy

SMace

Do many of you have no solitication policies? They are generally designed to keep union solicitation out of the workplace. If you have one are you allowing girl scout cookie sales? If you are you are violating it and why have a policy if you are ignoring it. Just curious if anyone has approached the viability of that policy lately. Do you like them- and why. Do you not like them- and why? Speak o wise forumites!

Gillian

We don't have one because it doesn't fit our environment, but what I remember from the past is that the rule should be kept even though the cookies, football pools etc violate the policy. The theory is that you can obtain an injunction against the organizers because you have the policy, then you can use the time that it takes to get overturned (because you didn't follow the policy consistently) to plan your strategy.

AnneHa

We have a no solicitation policy and also a large number of employees who crave Girl Scout cookies. Our solution was to have the order form left on a break room table and anyone interested could sign up. We have 60 employees at this location and 147 boxes of cookies were ordered.

LisaMN

If only it were just Girl Scout cookies. How about Band Candy, soccer wrapping paper, the Spanish Club is going to Spain for the summer, there's fundraising for Model UN, for Boy Scouts, it just goes on and on. I say write a no solicitation policy and enforce it for everything. I may be as curmudgeonly as Don D on this particular subject......xx(

jimlegal

Like AnneHa, we too have a no solicitation policy. Our solution was to have the order form left on a break room table and anyone interested could sign up, purchase, etc. We have 70 employees at this location and this seems to work well for all types of items including girl scout cookies.

SMace

I am unsure of the rationale behind leaving the order form on the table and how that doesn't violate the no solicitation policy. Could someone not just leave union literature, cards, etc. on the break room table also?

jimlegal

Order forms are usually accompanied by the product for sale. We have not experienced alot of literature being placed on the table. Usually it is someone's child trying to sell something for school.

SMace

I still don't understand the rationale. Whether it is allowed once a year or once every five years it is still allowed. I would be wary to mirror what you and Anna are doing without the understanding of how just leaving it on the breakroom table bypasses the no-solicitation rule. Thanks for the input.

Parabeagle

You guys are lucky! I've been waiting for ages for SOMEONE in my office to offer to sell me Girl Scout cookies and there have been no connections!

Whatever

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 03-13-03 AT 08:00AM (CST)[/font][p]Years ago, we allowed solicitations for schools, the scouts etc. Activities the employees children were involved in. Then someone wanted to sell Avon. Another wanted to solicit for their church. I could go on. It became very quickly very clear that the only solution was to ban all solicitation and strictly enforce it. Management may seem like grinches, but there can not be any confusion on a policy that is uniformly, strictly adhered to.

mbeam

We have an "announcements" board where associates can post things for sale or looking to buy - sort of like a classified section of the paper. In addition we have a bulletin board in our lunchroom where they can post things for sale and where we have menus from local restaurants posted as well.

We allow this but do not allow e-mail solicitation directed to our associates as we had received complaints about that as well as loss of productivity.

This system seems to strike a happy balance as our culture is more family friendly.

Don D

We have a union, so I can dispense with that side of the equation as a factor. We have a policy that allows employees to post non-profit solicitation information such as cookies, bands, church, community drives for medical support, civic club bar-b-ques on friday and the like. We also allow, and encourage, the girls to walk the hall and actually 'sell' cookies rather than Dad post a sign up sheet and tell the child 'he' sold the cookies. (I tell the guy who posts his daughter's sheet that I never allowed my children to do that. Either they showed up and made sales or it didn't get done. So, I'll buy from the kids that come into my office and go to the trouble of making a sales presentation and I don't buy from the sign up sheet poster). We recently banned such things as Avon sales. We had a woman here who worked 75% of the time at that and another 20% of the time delivering what she had sold. That left her 10% for breaks. She's gone. We also allow the sale of personal items on the board, such as boats, cars, motorcycles, wigs, guitar amps.....whatever, as long as the ee is not taking up company time hawking his stuff. We do not allow people any longer to drag old boats and trucks up to the front of our porperties with for sale signs on them. Do that from home. We aren't in Nevada so our state does not allow the types of solicitation that state allows. I think it's a myth that this is largely about unions. It's much bigger than that. x:-)