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| Subject - Motivation and compensation | |
| John A. Peters |
Have you found a way to increase the total sales dollars on service calls for more profits without bending your ethics? How do you reward your Tec's when they "sell up" i.e. when they take the time to find out what else the client needs but the client may not have mentioned to him or the CSR, or things that the client may not know abut would be good for them? Have you seen how commission-only compensation can distort the motivation and tempt the tech to sell unneeded items from a flat rate book, or even to sell new panel guts when only a breaker needs to be replaced? I am looking for some thing to augment hourly pay. Yes I know if you have great, well trained, honest, educated, smart Tec's, they are good at all this, but I think a good compensation plan on top of basic hourly pay will help get from here to there. |
| wilkie | John, I just gave my a tech an unexpected $1 per hour raise. He was very excited and motivated. The next week I gave him praise and recognition verbally. I set aside a little time one afternoon specifically to talk to him about the positive direction he was taking. I thanked him for putting his best foot forward and helping make my life easier. I also told him how important he was to our business. That conversation was more like a $10 an hour raise. His hot button is recognition and responsibility. To him, money somewhat represents that, but it doesn't fully address what he needs from me as a manager. I was very similar when I was a tech. What I am trying to say is, I do not think there is one magic bullet to your question. I would say, look at each tech as an individual, and try to determine what you need to do to turn their outlook from just having a job, to being presented with an opportunity. It is then your responsibility to help them attain their personal and professional goals in order to maximize the opportunity in front of them. It is not a carrot. It is a way for an electrician to have a career and a life. |
| kbsparky | quote: I've worked for a company that did the carrot thing. One gets tired of something being offered all the time, when there is no real possibility of ever obtaining the reward. It may start out as a motivator, but ends up doing the exact opposite after the guys all realized that they were being used. No matter how hard we worked, how much we put extra effort into getting the jobs done right, making the customer feel special, etc. the company owners ended up raiding the till, and they never showed a decent profit from which to pay us the promised "bonus" and benefits. The carrot became a laughing stock that turned everyone sour. So if anyone wants to use the carrot technique, make sure that you make it possible for the techs and the company to reach the goals you set. Otherwise, it will be to your detriment 
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| aline | I was wondering about using a point system based on book time. If a tech completes a job in 4 hours but the book time shows 6 hours the tech would earn 2 points. At the end of the month a tech could be awarded these points either with cash, extra time off or something like this. If a tech had 15 points accumulated and the next job he did took 8 hours but the book time showed 6 then 2 points would be deducted from the 15 so he would now have 13 points. What do you guys think about something like this. Call backs would also deduct from his points. |
| MONOLITH | Interesting concept aline. My thought is it may be better without the deduction for the 'extra time'. I'm just thinking that including a 'penalty' changes the image of the program somewhat. If the tech doesn't finish the job in less than book time, he simply doesn't get the reward. The reward should be incentive enough to move faster. I agree that call backs could deduct the points he earned for that job though, as long as it wasn't because of a defective part or such, of course. |
| aline | I was also wondering about awarding points for other things such as truck being organized and clean, exceeding sales goals etc. Something like having a check list for the tech's truck and awarding a point for each item on the check list. I've heard of companies using a score board to track sales goals. Mr.Sparky talks about this in an article in this months EC&M magazine.http://ecmweb.com/mag/electric_old_habits_new/ |
| John A. Peters | I think there are tried and true ways that are better than points I am in the middle of thinking about how to change the compensation plan for my service technician. I think may have gotten myself into a bit of the problem here. I have been paying 33% of the labor sales and no percent of the material sales. No problem with those numbers. The problem is that I have been paying a lower rate that might be equal to 22% of the rate that my service calls are based on, which is admittedly about half of what it should be since we can only achieved about four hours and productive work per day. In other words in service calls can only get build out for about four hours a day we need to double the rate that use for your normal contract jobs where you can allow eight hours a day, this I understand. Paying hourly pay for non billable time, when the electrician is not out in the field face-to-face with a client, but instead he is in the office or restocking the truck or various things like that encourages that kind of non productive work bit more than I wish. I think the compensation plan at other full-service companies is to only pay a percent of the sales, nothing hourly but with added bonuses keyed into the amount of gross sales made per week and per month. They offer a small lump sum to pay for each service agreement sold. Some flat rate looks seem to indicate a certain amount to be paid to the electrician for each task performed, but I cannot find any sample of that right now. In one example of merit pay, there might be a required minimum of about $3,000 of sales per week with $100.00 bonus paid if the electrician reaches the first target of sales of $5,000 a week and a further $150 bonus if the electrician reaches the target of $6,000.00 sales in a month. Finally there's $1,000 bonus if the electrician sells $30,000 of work per month. This last one makes me a little bit nervous, because it might tend to have the electrician overpricing or pushing too hard, but maybe that doesn't happen in the real world. I cannot be the judge since obviously I am trying to learn here. Last week the total sales from my service technician was only $2,098.58 which is not even high enough to be the minimum if I were to follow the above plan. Remember, last week I was shocked to find out that we are only able to bill about four hours out of the eight hours worked. Another reason not to pay hourly for the dead time, is I'm told other companies have their technician available on call from 7 AM to 7 PM which is more than eight hours but if he is only paid for the time actually worked then it's more than likely that overtime will not be a problem. Right now my electrician tends to go home and 4:30 because it's been 8 hours. |