ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area New Company Policy

HHmmmm, Is this guy my old business partner?
He insisted on doing something similar. An employee turned us in to the labor board. The labor guy was in our office for days and went back through all employee records from inseption......Your boss does NOT want that to happen.. It ended up costing a fortune in back pay over everything from travel pay to when an employee starts the work day when driving a company vehicle.

The employee gets paid for every minute he is on the clock including travel time. The 30 minutes travel time is just an estimate it can be adjusted if necessary. If it takes longer than 30 minutes then it can be increased. If it only takes the employee 15 minutes of travel time he would still get paid for 30 minutes. I cannot see how they would ever be owed any back pay as they are being paid for every minute they are on the clock. They would not be putting in any travel time for free. These bonus hours are simply extra hours they earn not hours they actually had to work. They could be paid out quarterly or even anually as a bonus if not paid out weekly. The employees current hourly rate of pay would not change with this plan. He would never lose any of his regular pay with this system. This is not peice work.
What's in it for the employer? Happy, motivated employees who are completing jobs on time or in less time and making more money for both the employee and empoyer. Seems to me both parties win with this.
If you don't like the term bonus hours you could call them value points or something like that. The employee could be paid out each quater for how many value points he has earned for the quater.
[This message has been edited by A-Line (edited 12-09-2004).]

[This message has been edited by A-Line (edited 12-09-2004).]

[This message has been edited by A-Line (edited 12-09-2004).]

It is not legal in Colorado, anyway, to bank hours.
(BTW, Aline I was referring to the original post not your post.)
Here was the situation.

It drove my partner nuts that guy's would turn in 44 hours one week and turn in 36 hours the next week causing O.T. pay one week and leaving us short handed the next. We ran on a two week pay period so he would average it for an 80 hour pay period in the above example and not pay the O.T. for the first week. Not legal.

My guy's would often ask if they could comp their time for their own benefit and work extra hours one week so they could take off work, say, early the next Friday. I would agree but insisted that they leveled the time card to show 40/40 and apply the time to the appropriate job...... That is not legal either but I did not know it at the time.

There are a million ways to provide incentive for quality work but I don't think messing with hours is the way to do it.

Hi,
I think the best way to address this is the following:

PROFIT SHARING or COMP TIME.

Comp time is extra time worked over what you would normally work. You can use the comp time for time off or cash it in when it hits a certain limit or period..do not allow it to go over 200 hours in a quarter or allow it to be carried over to the next year..

profit sharing is giving the employee a slice of the pie..pay dividends to the employees and recognize the ones that excell by providing incentives like tools or safety awards..

An employee must be compensated for his time so I do not see where you are giving anything away. If a guy works more than 40 hours then pay him for it unless he is on a salary.

-regards

Mustang

A-line,

That's an interesting idea. I think that most auto shops work on a similar basis. Everything is billed at shop rate, those who are fast and produce the most billable hours make the most money.

It does create a situation where certain jobs are more attractive than others. And if you have more than one tech keeping the "good" jobs and "bad" jobs even can be a problem.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

GJ

This is a profit sharing plan. The employee gets paid for all hours worked just like he always has nothing changes here. When I price a job I estimate how many hours it will take. If I estimate it will take 10 hours and the employee does it in 8 hours all the money for the 2 extra hours I figured the job would take would go to me and none would be given to the employee for completing the job quicker than I had estimated it would take. What incentive does the employee have for completing the job quicker? He is getting paid less for the same amount of work. If he worked slower he would get paid more for the same amount of work. With the system I am talking about I am simply giving him some of the money for the extra 2 hours that he din't use to complete the job. Instead of 2 hours you could call these points. The employee would then have 2 points included in his file. At the end of the quarter he would be paid for the points that accumulated in his file. These points could be included in his performance review.
These points in no way represent any hours that he worked. These points could be paid out in any way you wanted to. They could be paid out at $10.00 per point. They could be used to determine his pay raise for the year.
The more points the bigger the raise he gets.
They could be paid out as a bonus at the end of the year.
With this system an employee could work only 38 hours and still get paid for 40 hours. An employee would never work 40 hours and only get paid for 38.
This is not a system I made up myself. I think this system is used in the plumbing and HVAC industries to compensate their technicians. As far as I know plumbers and HVAC people are making more money than electricians. Why is this? Are our services less valuable? I don't think so.

[This message has been edited by A-Line (edited 12-09-2004).]

[This message has been edited by A-Line (edited 12-09-2004).]

Aline, your program is great in my eyes, i know i have worked at many companies that stiff you out of alot of money such as return travel time back to shop unpaid etc.

I know if i were near ya i would jump on working for you that is a amazing incentive program!!!!!!!!!!! Great Idea

Thanks for the feedback.

I don't currently have any employees. I just started my business. I'm just trying to get prepared for if or when I decide to hire. I thought maybe some business owners might already be using a system something like this and wanted to get some feedback. I'm not sure if this system will work or is even a good idea.

Thanks for your replies.

To the guy who started this thread, if you are not union you might want to contact the local hall in your area. In this area a few years ago a non union contractor did not pay scale to his employees on a city govt job. The union got wind of this and let the city know. The city witheld payment until the guys got all the back pay. Yes, the union will goto bat for non union at least around here. Besides I think we organized a couple of them.