Two questions at once
When a stylist leaves and clients go with her, you are really asking two questions at the same time. The first is legal: is this allowed. The second is practical: how do I stop it happening with the next one.
They have different answers and different timescales. You answer the first with your contract in hand, and it usually yields less than people hope. You answer the second through how you set your business up, and that yields far more.
This guide sits on your side of the table. What a restrictive clause is, when it is valid under article 7:653 of the Dutch Civil Code and what a departing employee may do, is set out in the guide on going from employment to your own salon. Here it is about what you as the employer can record, what you can enforce, and what you are better off leaving alone.
Where the line runs
Start with the starting point, because it surprises most owners. A client belongs to nobody. Without a valid clause a former employee may stay in the trade, open up round the corner and serve clients who seek her out. That is not a loophole, it is the basic principle of free choice of work.
What does have a limit is the way it happens. The test comes from the Dutch Supreme Court ruling Boogaard/Vesta of 1955 and is still cited in almost every case about former employees. Competition only becomes unlawful where there are additional circumstances: systematically and substantially eroding the durable business base of the former employer, by taking away clients, suppliers or staff, using knowledge and data obtained in confidence at that employer.
Those three elements have to be present together, and you have to prove them. One client following along is not that. An employee who spends her last month transcribing phone numbers out of your system and then writes to fifty of your clients in a fortnight is getting close.
During employment it is different. Then the good employee standard of article 7:611 of the Civil Code applies, and actively recruiting clients for your own business while still employed conflicts with it. That is the moment when your position is strongest, and it is exactly the period in which most employers do nothing.
The clauses side by side
There are three clauses that do something here, plus a penalty clause that gives them teeth. All four do something different.
| Clause | What it forbids | Where it fails |
|---|---|---|
| Non compete clause | The work: joining a competitor or starting a competing business, often within a radius | Missing written form, a minor employee, or a radius and duration so wide that the court trims them (7:653 paragraph 3 Civil Code) |
| Non solicitation clause | The clients: contacting or working for clients of the salon | A vague definition of client. "Clients of the employer" is broader and therefore weaker than "clients the employee treated in the last 12 months" |
| Confidentiality clause | Using and sharing business data, the client administration included | Rarely. This is the least vulnerable clause and it is allowed in a fixed-term contract too |
| Penalty clause | Nothing on its own; it attaches an amount to breach of one of the other three | It falls with the underlying clause. Beyond that the court reduces a penalty out of proportion to the damage (7:650 Civil Code) |
Source: articles 7:611, 7:650 and 7:653 of the Dutch Civil Code on wetten.overheid.nl. Checked September 2026.
In practice the confidentiality clause is the most useful of the four and the least used. It does not forbid anyone from leaving, which is exactly why it almost always survives. What it does forbid is your client administration walking out of the door.
What the hairdressing CAO restricts further
This is where it goes wrong in this sector, because the CAO is stricter than the statute and it applies to everyone.
The CAO for the hairdressing sector runs from 1 July 2025 to 31 December 2026 and was declared universally binding on 25 November 2025 (Staatscourant 2025, no. 36597). That means it applies to every salon within its scope, including salons that belong to no trade body.
Article 2.1 sub c of that CAO sets three conditions for a non compete clause in an open-ended contract. The employee must be 18 or older, the clause must be recorded in writing, and it may stay in force for at most six months after the employment contract ends. Those six months are a CAO limit the statute does not have. A twelve or twenty-four month clause pasted out of a model contract therefore goes further than this sector allows.
Article 2.2 sub b goes one step further: a fixed-term employment contract may contain no non compete clause at all. If one is included anyway, it is void, and that voidness survives if the fixed-term contract rolls over silently into an open-ended one. The statute itself is softer and does allow it under article 7:653 paragraph 2 with a written justification of compelling business interests. In hairdressing you cannot lean on that exception.
There is also a bill in progress to modernise the non compete clause. The Council of Ministers approved it on 26 June 2026 and it was sent to the Council of State for advice on 30 June 2026. The direction is a maximum duration, a compulsory geographic scope and compensation where the employer invokes the clause. There is no commencement date yet. So write your contracts on today's rules, not on the bill.
This extra layer applies only within the scope of the hairdressing CAO. Run a nail studio, a beauty salon or a massage practice instead, and that six-month CAO cap does not apply to you, which is not necessarily a downside: the non compete and non solicitation clause themselves work the same way in law, through the same articles 7:653, 7:650 and 7:611 of the Civil Code. In a nail studio or a massage practice the client relationship often runs even more personal than in a hair salon: a regular books with the same practitioner for months and knows her directly, which if anything makes the Boogaard/Vesta elements easier to prove after a departure, not harder. Without a CAO ceiling your non compete clause may run longer than six months, provided you set out the compelling business interests in writing as article 7:653 paragraph 2 requires. Check with your own trade body whether a universally binding CAO applies to your trade that still caps the clause.
The client list: two questions at once
This is the part employers and employees alike run together. There are two separate questions inside it.
The first is a privacy question. Under the GDPR your salon is the controller of the client data: you decide for what purpose and by what means it is processed. Your employee processes it on your behalf and has no say of her own over it. If she takes a copy and uses it for her own business, she is processing personal data without a legal basis of her own. That is a breach for which you, as controller, are also answerable to your clients.
The second is a liability question. Taking data is one of the three elements from Boogaard/Vesta: knowledge and data obtained in confidence at the employer. So it is both a GDPR matter and the building block for a claim in tort under article 6:162 of the Civil Code.
| Situation | Is it allowed |
|---|---|
| A client seeks out your former employee herself and books there | Yes, unless a valid non solicitation clause forbids it |
| Your employee tells clients in the salon where she is going, while still employed | No, that conflicts with the good employee standard of article 7:611 Civil Code |
| Your former employee exports or transcribes the client list from your system | No, whether or not there is a clause |
| Your former employee uses her own phone holding numbers of clients she brought in herself | Grey area, and precisely why client contact belongs with the business |
| Your former employee posts publicly that she is starting somewhere else | Yes, unless she targets your clients in it and a non solicitation clause forbids that |
Source: the guidance on controllers and legal bases at autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl, plus articles 7:611 and 6:162 of the Dutch Civil Code on wetten.overheid.nl. Checked September 2026.
That fourth row is where it truly goes wrong in salons. If your clients live in your employee's personal phone because that was simply the easy option, you have a problem in legal terms and you have already lost in practical terms.
What you can arrange now without a conflict
The hard truth: clauses do not hold back anyone who really wants to leave. They give you a position in a conversation and sometimes a settlement. What does work is client contact running through the business instead of through a person. Four things you can do this month.
Put client records and the diary in a system owned by the business. A diary that sits on the front desk or lives in a group chat is gone the moment someone leaves. A system whose account you own stays.
Give every staff member their own account with a role. Then you can see who did what, and when someone leaves you switch an account off instead of relying on a handover.
Move your bookings onto a channel of the business. If clients book through a page in your name and confirmations come from your business, the relationship is visibly with the salon and not only with a person.
Write it into the contract. A short, clear provision that client records and the diary belong to the business, that no copies are kept outside the system and that everything is handed back when employment ends. Pair it with a confidentiality clause, which is allowed in a fixed-term contract too. Build it in when you hire your first employee, because adding it later needs consent.
Have a clause checked before you hang a ten thousand euro penalty under it. Article 7:650 paragraph 5 of the Civil Code caps combined penalties in any one week at half a day's wage, and says no single penalty may exceed that either. Departure runs only through paragraph 6: in writing, and solely for staff earning above the minimum wage per hour. That same paragraph keeps the court free to reduce it.
Then there is paragraph 3, which salon model contracts almost always miss. The agreement must state precisely what the penalty is earmarked for, and that purpose may not, directly or indirectly, serve your own personal benefit. A penalty that simply drops into the business till does not meet that. An amount that looks threatening and does not hold costs you credibility in proceedings.
What you say in the week after a departure
This part is not legal and it often decides more than everything above.
Your clients will hear about it anyway. So tell them yourself, briefly and without tone. Who is taking the clients over, from when, and what stays the same. Put the new name in the confirmation for the next appointment, so nobody is surprised at the basin.
Call or message personally with the clients who sat with that employee most often. Not to talk them into staying, but to offer them a concrete appointment with somebody else, at a time they are used to. A client who is hesitating and hears nothing almost always goes with the familiar person.
And do not run your departing employee down in public. Clients pick a side in a situation like this, and rarely the side that complains. An angry group chat also makes it practically impossible to reach a reasonable settlement later if something really did go wrong with your client list.
What to go through in your contracts now
Set aside an afternoon for this, in this order.
Step 1: pull out the contracts of your current staff. For each one, check whether there is a non compete clause, whether the contract is fixed-term or open-ended, and whether the duration stays within the six months from the CAO. A clause in a fixed-term contract is void in this sector and creates nothing but a false sense of security.
Step 2: find out where your client records live. If the answer is "in the diary on the front desk" or "in Sanne's phone", that is your biggest risk and at the same time the easiest one to fix.
Step 3: prepare a short provision on client records and confidentiality for the next contract you sign. Have it checked once by a lawyer or your trade body. That costs a few hundred euros and then applies to everyone you hire afterwards.
Step 4: agree with yourself what you will do when it happens. Do not respond the same day, establish first what factually took place, and only send a letter once you can substantiate the three elements from Boogaard/Vesta. The burden of proof is yours.
For step 2 you do not need a subscription that does not match your volume. CelerBook charges per appointment: the first 5 appointments each month are free, after that you pay 0.25 EUR excluding VAT per completed appointment, with a maximum of 30 EUR per month for a solo business and 5 EUR per additional active staff member. No contract, and no usage means no cost. Your clients sit in the business account, with notes and full visit history. Every staff member works under their own account with a role, from owner to manager to staff, and when someone leaves you switch that account off while the diary and the client history stay put. Bookings run through your own booking page on your own subdomain, and confirmation and reminder emails go out in your salon's name. Try CelerBook for free.