Salesman wins $25k after being sacked for failing to hit targets

A furniture salesman who was abruptly dismissed over the phone has secured a payout after the Fair Work Commission found his employer failed to follow proper process and denied him any opportunity to address concerns about his performance.

The Fair Work Commission has ruled that a Victorian sales manager was unfairly dismissed after his employer abruptly terminated him over the phone, blaming slipping performance and missed targets as the basis for his dismissal.

The worker, who joined Vivin Imports in early 2024, was responsible for selling the furniture company’s products to retailers across regional Victoria, Tasmania, several South Australian accounts, and key metropolitan clients.

While the worker shone during the spring sales period – exceeding 188 per cent of his target – his overall quarterly performance lagged, reaching just 47.7 per cent of his $2.8 million sales target, which had been reduced from the original $4 million.

By comparison, his Victorian colleagues achieved between 76 per cent and 112 per cent of their targets over the same period.

The commission heard the company’s director argue that their performance was “insufficient to justify” his role as a full-time sales manager, noting that he “compared unfavourably” to other regional managers who were achieving 90–100 per cent of their targets under the same market conditions.

After the company’s director raised concerns that the worker had achieved only 58 per cent of his first-quarter sales, the senior business manager formally addressed the issue in an email to him in December 2024.

The company’s director also accused the worker of misconduct, pointing to instances where he offered customers prices below the approved level indicated in the “Special Pricing Offer” and allegedly duplicated call records on consecutive days.

However, they acknowledged that the pricing issue did not recur once addressed, and the director conceded the incidents “were not considered sufficiently serious at the time to warrant any kind of warning and did not constitute misconduct”.

As recounted to the commission, on the day of his termination, the worker received a phone call at 2pm asking him to attend a meeting at 3pm.

During the call, the new manager informed him that he was being dismissed, citing “failure to meet your budget targets” as the reason.

The company then followed up with a brief email confirming that his employment had been “terminated effective[ly]”.

While deputy president Ian Masson acknowledged that the workers’ dismissal was “supported by a valid reason”, he criticised the handling of the process, describing it as deeply flawed and marked by “significant procedural failures”.

While Vivin Imports contended that the worker was “on notice” regarding his underwhelming sales performance and should have understood that termination was a possibility, Masson countered, noting that “he was at no stage advised that the respondent was considering the termination of his employment because of that sales performance”.

Masson also concluded that the worker was not given the opportunity to respond to the reasons for his dismissal before the decision was communicated to him over the phone.

As recounted to the commission, the worker attributed his declining performance to several factors, claiming that “the targets were unrealistic, were not agreed to by him and there were multiple factors that acted to prevent him from achieving his sales targets”.

However, Masson noted that he was not “satisfied” with the worker’s argument that the sales targets were unrealistic, pointing out that the targets – and the performance of his peers – suggested otherwise.

The worker told the commission that, at 65, he has been unable to find work since his dismissal, has applied for Centrelink benefits, and has been further constrained by post-employment clauses preventing him from working in competition with the company for up to a year.

Ruling that reinstatement was “inappropriate” due to the breakdown in the employment relationship, Masson ordered Vivin Imports to pay the worker $25,380 in compensation, equivalent to 12 weeks’ pay.

This reflects the commission’s estimate of how long his employment would likely have continued had he been given a proper warning and an opportunity to improve.