Not sure if this is the right sub for this, but I know y’all here have some extensive understanding of different labor laws.
I work in a field that is customer facing and deals with ‘direct sales’. We are partnered with a few different websites that generate hot leads for us (customers place an inquiry regarding our service). Recently the management team has been looking for any way to increase our connected rate with these customers. One of their bright ideas is to have an automated text sent out to these leads as soon as the click the button to place the inquiry. These go out at any time, including off hours and weekends.
The result, customers sending texts, sometimes even calls (we use a 3rd party phone app, like RingCentral) that get routed to my personal cell phone. These come in at all random hours of the night and weekends. A few months ago they also said we are not allowed to work any overtime hours (salary non-exempt employees). Previously we were allowed at least 10 hours of overtime per week.
Part of our commission structure is based on our connectivity rate with these leads, which puts pressure to not just ignore these until regular business hours. It makes it impossible to fully ‘disconnect’ from the business, even during off hours.
We also in the past three months have went from over 100+ sales team members, now down to roughly 20 through downsizing. This month they have been putting employees, not meeting certain standards, on improvement plans. These are based on a number of metrics (some including our connectivity with our leads). If your numbers do not improve, this could result in termination.
Basically I am wondering if there Is anything here? Any sources I can look into about this? Or are they in the right to implement this?