A high-flying saleswoman known as the ‘royal rat catcher’ at the pest control firm she worked at has won a tribunal over changes that sabotaged her £105,000 commission.
Dawn Piper had to quit her job at Rentokil Initial Ltd after bosses refused to change a new scheme which threatened to take away her commissions which made up the vast majority of her income.
As a veteran sales manager, she personally netted her company up to £850,000 a year for three decades, an employment tribunal heard.
Ms Piper would usually make around £150,000 a year with her commissions, so she complained to her bosses that she would be left on her £45,000 salary without them, but the company refused to change.
After quitting, she took Rentokil Initial Ltd to an employment tribunal and has now won a claim for constructive unfair dismissal.
It found that the new scheme made employees at the firm jump through strict hoops in order to unlock their commission from August 2024.
Consultants had to fill out paperwork, reach certain quotas and complete monthly actions to claim their money.
Failing to do these tasks – known as ‘Gateways’ – would mean commission would be docked.
Dawn Piper, the ‘royal rat catcher’, won a tribunal over her former employer Rentokil Initial Ltd after they changed the commission scheme, threatening the vast majority of her income
Ms Piper complained three times to her boss about the changes, saying she could lose up to three quarters of her income.
But her boss, Mr McLuckie did not listen and instead offered her a £2,500 raise on her base salary.
A month after the new commission scheme was introduced in September, Ms Piper was already told that she had failed to complete all her monthly Gateways to access her commission.
This was because not all of her team had been to the monthly review meeting – despite the fact that the team member had not even been employed yet.
Mr McLuckie appealed on her behalf and upon reconsideration the company paid Ms Piper her August commissions, calling the incident ‘teething problems’.
However, she also discovered that £450 had been deducted from her July commissions because a single email had bounced back.
Mr McLuckie admitted that the calculations for wrong emails would ‘inflate’ single mistakes because Ms Piper had written over 100 emails that month.
It was paid back, but it confirmed the sales manager’s suspicions that mistakes would arise from the new system and that she would have to spot them to get paid properly.
She was also unable to directly access the commissions spreadsheets as she had previously which made this much harder, as well as having to juggle it with 60-hour weeks.
Rentokil had also incorrectly assessed her job band so she overpaid for a company car by around £1,320 and had to be reimbursed.
On September 20, Ms Piper tendered her resignation.
The tribunal heard: ‘[She] said she resigned because: her personal commission, approximately 70 per cent of her income, was placed at risk.
‘[Rentokil] insisted on retaining the gateways; [Rentokil’s] data systems were inaccurate and unreliable.
‘She had lost trust and confidence due to deductions, delayed payments and lack of transparency; and she faced the prospect of repeated monthly appeals while working 60-hour weeks.’
Rentokil maintained that she had quit voluntarily and not because of a breach.
Ms Piper took the company to London South Employment Tribunal in Croydon, alleging that breaches by it had forced her to resign.
Employment Judge Francesca Yardley ultimately agreed with the sales manager.
Judge Yardley said: ‘When viewed cumulatively, [Ms Piper] experienced the introduction of a commission scheme which fundamentally altered the financial basis of her employment and exposed approximately 70-75 per cent of her income to loss through criteria not wholly within her control.
‘Within weeks of the scheme’s introduction she was informed that she had failed the gateways and would not receive commission for August, a decision which was subsequently reversed after challenge.
‘At the same time [Ms Piper] encountered a substantial commission deduction from her July commission which she could not readily verify due to restricted data access, together with a prolonged delay in correcting an admitted payroll error relating to car deductions.
‘The Tribunal finds that [Ms Piper] resigned in response to the cumulative breach of the implied term identified above.
‘For those reasons, the Tribunal concludes that [Rentokil] committed a fundamental breach of the implied term of mutual trust and confidence.
‘The complaint of constructive unfair dismissal is accordingly well-founded.’
