Boss investigated my hours after I raised concerns about his conduct

[Ahhhwhattodo]

I’ve worked at my job for 6 years. I work in sales and each of my team have specific territories - we are not permitted to do business in each others areas. We quite literally have postcodes allocated to us. We have one exception which is that our manager has a long standing customer with branches in all our areas, which means occasionally with this one single customer he does business in all of our areas

Recently I discovered a number of sales my boss had done in my area. None are this one customer we accept he has - they are all from new separate customers. These have been new customers enquiring directly to my company and he has intercepted their enquiry via an inbox that myself and my team members do not have access to, without passing anything across to the sales person for that area. He has done this to all of my team members and we’ve found a number of sales he has done in their areas too. When I’ve calculated I am quite literally around £50k out of pocket in commission over just the last 2 years. God knows how much else he has taken. I’ve also discovered he has been meeting with some of my existing customers recently, which again is strictly not done between us unless we are covering sick leave, holidays etc

I highlighted some of these ‘stolen’ sales to him and he had zero explanation as to why he had done them. Not even so much as an apology

Less than a week after I highlighted this issue to him, he very suddenly had an ‘investigation’ into my working hours. I’m remote based. A lot of my work isn’t laptop based so is essentially ‘invisible’, but I did have a response to each date he highlighted, as his claim was that I’d had many many days ‘unauthorised leave’. He assured me he would come back to me with a conclusion of his investigation on a set date, which is now a week ago and I’ve heard literally nothing from him since. He has also ignored an email where I requested clarification from him on a work matter, not related to the investigation. He has definitely been in his inbox though as he’s responded to an annual leave request I put in! So he is definitely choosing to ignore me

I’ve reported him to HR for the stolen sales - HR are investigating him for it. I’ve done this purely to stop it happening. My team are behind me on this as they are too scared to raise the issue with him too.

Now being honest, I did up until now love my job. But I am feeling bullied by my boss - that because I’ve raised an issue, suddenly there was an investigation that, had I not been able to respond to adequately, I would have been considered as committing gross misconduct. I feel bullied into not raising any issues in future for fear of repercussions.

I can’t work like this. I could find another job, but I do otherwise love my existing job and my team, it’s just him that is the issue.

Does anyone have any advice?

Do HR know about his “investigation” into you? Might be worth saying to them you’re concerned about it, especially as you haven’t heard back. Don’t mention that you think it is retaliation, just see what they say.

Sit tight and wait. What he's doing is against company policy, and is basically fraud, isn't it? Let HR do their thing, and they should be checking all the commission he's received, and who all the customers have been allocated to. If staff in other areas have also been affected by him nicking their customers, are they prepared to report the matter?

Yes they do. The investigation included reports HR had gained from my laptop activity logs. So yes they were aware

I highlighted to HR that I felt the investigation had been prompted by my highlighting of the sales he had taken from my area and sent HR a list of a few of them with my explanation of why they should have been mine.

This week alone, he will end up with £2.4k that should have been my commission.

I'd be simultaneously raising a grievance that he's harassing you to make the complaint you raised go away. Are you in a union op?

No no union. Yes this is exactly what it is - harassment to put me back into ‘my place’

It might be worth speaking to a union for advice if there's one that specialises in the type of work you do especially. I had a difficult situation in work a while back and rang for advice and they were fab even though I wasn't a member, I just signed up immediately and they represented me really well from then forwards. Attended any meetings etc I had.