Hey guys, i have a shop and we are going over a few different ways we could possibly change our pay structure, i dont know if this is a little too touchy of a subject but for all you owners out there, what is the most effective way you have seen to pay your help with getting the highest quality of a job in a consistant amount of time. Were tossing around the idea of more or less a flat rate structure, with someone who is salaried for a quality control position. Let me know what you think!
I don't own a shop with employees however I do ahve the occasional help come by. In thee cases I pay an hourly rate...but to answer your question, I think a "base" salary + performance commision would work well. Obviously depending on the volume of work your shop gets, I would do something like this: $100 weekly base salary + $300 performance commission which will rise or fall depending on performance. Staying on schedule/on par = $300 gets bumped to $400 Falling lightly behind, but remaining within 5% of target = $300 stays as is Falling behind more than 5% of target = $300 becomes $250 Doing above and beyond what is expected and scheduled = $300 becomes $500 *Note: all the work must be done to the highest quality possible, done faster must stay as good as done slower. I know that having this kind of pay scheme also involves having someone who can monitor the "production" like quality control, but it's one of the only ways to ensure that your employees will really work hard and try to perform their best every day. [/fantasy world] [reality] Hourly wages + bonus [/reality]
A good friend of mine owns a very large and profitable car wash (the kind we all hate) But he does offer detailing, and one of his guys is actually really good, just not the best line of products. But being profit driven that is expected. He has 75 people who work for him from 3 service writers, 5 tunnel guys, and the people who do the vacuuming etc plus his 3 guys who all they do is "detailing". And him his father and his brother are the "pit bosses" so to speak, always there monitoring from the line to the office where he has like 40 cameras set up with microphones, its a fairly good set up. He keeps it simple. starts his guys at minimum which is $8.75 in CA. Most are typical part time guys. They get tips plus hourly basically. Detail guys make $12.00 an hour, plus tips and bonus based on monthly production. and they guage that by the claim tags they collect, they are all time stamped from the time the car comes in, and stamped when they customer leaves, plus each worker has a ID number, so you can see who is working and who is not just based on ticket times. Service writers $10.00 an hour plus commission, one guy there makes about $2200.00 a month take home, he hustles and he sells alot of services. That is not bad considering he is 17 and lives at home. Yeah, its high production, and mediocre results but its a typical car wash. Not gonna speculate what he makes a year but one of the bigger chains in Fresno offered him 3 million for it last year to buy it, so obviously he is making good money and people see that. Keep it simple, don't micro manage, and honestly if you are going to micro manage might as well do the work yourself. Its very very hard to get 1,2 or 3 people who can match your skillset, let alone values. Try doing that with 5,10 or even more people. What you pay people is based on how much income you are bringing in and how good your results are. Start adding in all sorts of percentages and bonus systems based on time and productivity targets you will pay someone more just to manage that aspect. I ran a tire shop for 5 years, it was a flat rate shop. It works, but I cannot see that idea working for detailing. Unless the people selling the jobs are the ones working on it.
