Sales Terminations, Effort not Result Typically in the unemployment T.P.A. industry termination of commissioned sales positions has been considered a non-protestable claim, a “cost of doing business”. Looking at these types of terminations again from a different perspective may allow you the employer to protest these claims and have a positive success rate in not paying the former employee unemployment insurance benefits. The threshold for a disqualification is for the employer to establish willful and intentional behavior as it relates to an employees work. Willful, meaning that the employee knew that the actions were wrong. Intentional, meaning that the employee had control over his/her actions as it relates to the reason for termination. When terminating a commissioned sales person for lack of results, the willful piece may be able to be established, but not the intentional piece. The question for the state unemployment office would be “why would this former employee intentionally not produce results, because it only harms the employee”. We at UC Advantage recommend the following when reviewing the results of a commissioned sales position: • Always use a 90 day probationary period with documented reviews at each 30 day interval. At the 90 day mark, if the employee is not producing terminate within this period. Do not wait. The longer the employee works for you, the higher dollar value of the unemployment claim. • If it is time to terminate/discharge a commissioned sales person do not terminate for the result, or failure to meet a quota. Instead, focus on the efforts that are not being met that lead to the result. For example, not making a certain number of calls a day, not greeting every customer that comes in the store, not making call backs for customers that have expressed an interest, etc. • Do not categorize as the termination as: lack of effort, not meeting quota, can’t do the job, unsatisfactory performance, or poor fit for position. Instead categorize as: failure to follow job responsibilities, or violation of company policy. The latter terms tend to have state adjudicators more closely review the case. The above strategy is what separates UC Advantage from other service providers in our industry. This type of instruction to our clientele allows UC Advantage to enjoy the highest level of protestable claims win ratios in the country. For more information about UC Advantage, please visit us at ucadvantage.net.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 16:48:49 +0000