On 9 September 2025, the Competition and Markets Authority (the CMA) published guidance for HR professionals and anyone involved in recruiting and retaining workers to understand how competition law applies in this area.

As competition law authorities across Europe continue to investigate suspected anti-competitive HR and employment practices, we explain:

• two recent cases which highlight the types of conduct in this area which can infringe competition law
• the key takeaways from the CMA’s new guidance to keep your business compliant

An increased focus on collusion in labour markets

As we reported at the time, the CMA issued its first fines on businesses for anti-competitive behaviour in labour markets in March 2025 (see Competition and Markets Authority issues its first fines for illegal information exchange in labour markets – Walker Morris).  Five of the largest sports broadcast and production companies were found to have breached competition law by exchanging competitively sensitive information about fees for freelance workers, including camera operators and sound technicians. They were fined over £4.2 million.

Subsequently, in June 2025, the European Commission (the Commission) fined Delivery Hero and Glovo €329 million for participating in illegal no-poach agreements, alongside a mark-sharing agreement and exchanges of commercially sensitive information. In this case, the parties, two of the largest food delivery companies in Europe, entered into the agreements when Delivery Hero purchased a 15% non-controlling stake in Glovo. The share purchase agreement included reciprocal no-hire clauses for certain employees, which were then extended to a general agreement not to actively approach each other’s employees. The Commission rejected arguments that these clauses were necessary to protect Delivery Hero’s investment in Glovo.

The CMA’s latest guidance

Against this backdrop, the CMA’s guidance ‘Competing for Talent‘ provides a useful summary for businesses on how competition law applies in this area.

The guidance begins with a reminder that agreements between businesses regarding staff wages or conditions are not purely an HR issue and fall within the scope of competition law. Moreover, even businesses that do not compete for customers may compete for talent in labour markets so that agreements between them can fall foul of the rules.

The guidance highlights three key types of anti-competitive conduct that could land your business in trouble:

• No-poaching agreements
• Wage-fixing agreements
• Exchanges of competitively sensitive information

Finally, the guidance addresses collective negotiations between employers and workers regarding pay and working conditions.

No-poaching

No-poaching agreements include: no-hire agreements, ‘no-cold-calling’ agreements (i.e. agreements not to solicit another business’s employees by approaching them with a job opportunity) or agreements not to approach or hire another business’s employees without the other business’s consent. Such arrangements do not have to be mutual to be unlawful.

No-poaching agreements for these purposes are different from the no-solicitation clauses that might be included in certain types of commercial agreements, such as secondment or consultancy agreements or other agreements between service providers and their customers. Such clauses might not break competition law if they are necessary to enable the agreement to be carried out and are proportionate to the overall objectives of the agreement, and provided that the clause’s duration, subject matter and geographical scope do not go beyond what is reasonably required. This will require a careful assessment in each case.

Wage-fixing

Wage-fixing is when businesses that compete for the same type of employees agree to fix pay, benefits or other terms and conditions of employment. This includes for example agreeing the same wage increase rates or setting caps on pay. It may also include coordination on benefits and other terms of employment.

Exchanging competitively sensitive information

When businesses that compete for talent exchange competitively sensitive information, this can infringe competition law. Even if an exchange is one-way, both the provider and recipient of the information can be found to have infringed the rules.

Competitively sensitive information includes information that could influence the competitive strategy of other businesses, such as decisions relating to hiring workers or setting pay or benefits.

The CMA suggests that the types of information it is more likely to be problematic for businesses to exchange are:

• their future intentions regarding pay, bonuses or benefit packages (for example, how much a business is planning to increase wages by next year); and
• the current pay, bonuses or benefit packages they offer.

For example, in the sports broadcasting case mentioned above, the companies involved were found to have unlawfully shared sensitive information about pay with each other, including on day rates and pay rises. On one occasion a business told another they had ‘no intention of getting into a bidding war’ but ‘want[ed] to be aligned and benchmark the rates’.

The guidance explains that benchmarking exercises are less likely to be problematic if they:

• are carried out by a third party that ensures information is anonymised and sufficiently aggregated; or
• use public data.

However, the guidance does not provide any hard and fast rules as to, for example, how many parties’ data must be aggregated and anonymised for a benchmarking exercise not to fall foul of the rules. This is therefore an area where particular care must be taken.

Collective bargaining

Finally, the guidance explains that the CMA will not seek to enforce competition law where workers and companies buying their labour come together to reach a genuine collective bargain.

However, when gathering information to prepare for collective bargaining, employers should not exchange competitively sensitive information among themselves unless it is absolutely necessary, and only if the purpose of such an exchange can’t be achieved by other means (for example, by using an independent party to aggregate and anonymise the data as outlined above). The same is also true for self-employed workers and their organisation(s) on the worker side.

Competition law compliance: how can we support you?

Given the increased focus on the investigation of anti-competitive HR and employment practices, it’s now time for you to check whether your competition law compliance programme covers your HR team and anyone else involved in recruiting and retaining workers and the risks that they face.

You may also want to revisit any benchmarking activities in which you participate, and ensure that safeguards are in place to mitigate the competition law risks which may arise out of any professional networks and industry forums of which you are a member.

Our Competition team has extensive experience advising businesses on competition law compliance issues and mitigating the risks they face through tailored compliance programmes. Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you’d like to discuss any of the issues raised here.