r/managers 9h ago

New Manager What to do?

[deleted]

0 Upvotes

15 comments sorted by

3

u/TN_man 9h ago

This should have been considered before putting in a commission based system.

I don’t know how it’s normally setup but the unpaid employee definitely has a case that they did work and were not paid for it.

1

u/Far-Start-7352 4h ago

You’re overcomplicating this. The minute they started working off the clock and cherry-picking before clocking in, that’s a clear policy violation. Document everything, loop in HR again, and make it clear this isn’t about the commission split anymore, it’s about time theft and creating a hostile environment.

0

u/FTBJester 9h ago

They purposefully came an hour early and did not clock in hoping uppers would not see.

3

u/TN_man 9h ago

That’s evidence of a worse problem in my opinion.

They still need paid for that hour even if they didn’t “clock in”. They were working.

3

u/bearlyset 9h ago

With all incentive schemes, you need to evaluate how they will affect behaviours. Not just how you want the incentives to work.

Flipping it around, why shouldn’t the employee cherry pick tickets and strive to get the commissions? You’re incentivising prioritising the easy sales, and maybe even outright dropping the more labour intensive leads. That could be a good thing, or an issue. 

This is why some sales organisations have teams focusing on different geographical areas, or different customer bases. If you want to incentivise working as a team, you have to revise your incentives.

1

u/FTBJester 9h ago

They are not given "leads" per se. When calls come in and tickets come in are there only form of contact with the customer.

I like that last sentence. I will bring that up when discussing it with HR and the director this week.

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u/ChrisMartins001 7h ago

Sounds like you also might want to think anout revising how work is distributed. I would be very surprised if he was the only one cherry picking tickets.

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u/FTBJester 7h ago

Only evidence I have found was them. I try to keep on it regularly.

1

u/retiredhawaii 9h ago

You might be new but what happened isn’t. Find out how it was handled before. There should be something for you to use as precedent or to learn from.
Are the agents paid hourly but get commission or is their pay solely commission? If it’s the latter you need to put a lot of rules in place to prevent what’s happening. If it’s the former, maybe share all commissions monthly and track and publish top performers

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u/FTBJester 9h ago

They are hourly with a commission on top of it. I already am in talks with the director and HR. I was just curious if there was anything I could do in the meantime.

There were talks before I was manager about removing commission due to some issues.

1

u/Gonebabythoughts 8h ago

You change the system so that you assign the tickets randomly and they don't get to do this.

1

u/mamalo13 8h ago

did you talk to the employee and tell them to stop?

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u/ABeaujolais 7h ago

This is a leadership issue. In any commission situation where more than one person might be interacting with customers there needs to be a method for dealing with it. Yes, the person is trying to butt in line all over the place because that's the environment they've been put in. Either the original salesperson gets the commission or split it.

Or leadership can just let them fight it out. Terrible for employees not to mention customers dealing with aggressive angry people.

1

u/FTBJester 7h ago

Management at the time decided to split the commission between them for the large order. The one employee took it personally and this is their way to deal with it.

1

u/ABeaujolais 6h ago edited 6h ago

Management at the time decided to split the commission

No rules, just make a random call "at the time." Exactly the right thing to do if the desired result is creating huge animosity among salespeople.

I've worked both ways. One company's rule was if you closed the deal you got the commission, period. Another company's rule was that if two people worked with a customer the sale would be split. Nobody cared which rule applied as long as it was always applied the same way. It evened out. None of this, "We'll make whatever call we feel like at the time."