Last Friday, I was confronted with a Sales Employee about when our President of our Company would start paying commissions again.  I am fairly new to the company and don't work in HR.  In fact we don't have a HR Department anymore.  This company went from 146 employees to 6 office employees and 10 crew members in 1 year due to the economy.  We work in Construction. 

There is not money for commissions anymore.  We barely financially squeeze by.  I have seen the reports. 

However, this employee who was in my opinion very unethical and very agressive when it came to describing his flustration.  He claimed that he signed an agreement that he was owed the money for his commissions last year and wants to start getting paid from them.

My problem is this same employee I believe has been feeding the competition very important documents and information about our company.  We are missing files and he is always the last person to leave the office.  And is the only person with friends of the competition.  And it seems with jobs we are always competiting with the same competitor.  No proof though. 

2 questions...Can this employee be fired if it is proved that he has been feeding the competition information about our company?  Even though, he is owed the commission. 

And #2 We are forecasting another 2 years before we are in anyway able to pay out on these commissions.  I feel that we should come up with a new agreement or perhaps a new job description that describes no commissions.

Any feedback would be much appreciated.   

jackie123:

2 questions...Can this employee be fired if it is proved that he has been feeding the competition information about our company?  Even though, he is owed the commission. 

And #2 We are forecasting another 2 years before we are in anyway able to pay out on these commissions.  I feel that we should come up with a new agreement or perhaps a new job description that describes no commissions.

Uno
You can fire this employee because the grass is green, the sky is blue, and the wind blows, unless you live in Montana.  However, wherever you live, that may sound odd and people will claim it's a pretext for some underlying issue that may be illegal, which will waste a lot of time and money.  You could also just fire him for being rude to staff, which should violate the code of conduct that you have on file.  You could also fire him for suspicion of feeding files to competitors.  He would get unemployment but who cares, at least he'd stop giving bid info to the bad guys.

Dos
Yes, you should do both.  The Company's failure to pay commissions that it has agreed to pay in signed documents will haunt it forever until it is caught up.  You can also probably hike quotas or otherwise massage the comp plan so that there are no commissions until overall sales levels bring the company into profitability.

(Note that the commissions could become a state agency issue for failure to meet pay date deadlines if the employee(s) file complaints)