Just curious to see how my fellow contractors are handling call backs and do you track them?

Say, you send a guy out, he spends an hour or two, tells the customer it's fixed, charges the customer and then leaves. Next day the customer calls back, it's not working.

How many times do you pay a guy to fix something? I suppose if he finds another problem that's billable, you're ok. If it's a wire popped out of a wire nut - that's just sloppy work.

If it's just poor work or lack of attention, the guy should fix it off the clock. Many years ago, I belonged to the largest electricians organization (that doesn't need mentioning here) that required you to fix your own problems on your own time. It was spelled out in the collective bargaining agreement.

After all, how many times can you pay someone for the same job?

Anyone can miss something or just plain mess up now and then.


If there is a repeating nature or pattern to it however...
Write him up for the later 'with cause' dismissal, but in the mean time it is illegal to NOT pay an employee for their time.

But you already knew all this, right?

Well aware of the legal issues with paying for hours worked, but I'm also aware of interns/trainees in many fields who work for free (well, in exchange for 'training').
In the union agreement, if you didn't do it right you did it again on your time.

I've also heard of getting another sparky to fix it and back charge the employee.

I know it's hard - but somebody has to be accountable.

As much as we hate paperwork, document, document, document. If it does come down to disiplinary action, you have ammo. It he or she tries to fight it, you have back up. When I made an occasional mistake, I ate it not my employer. I do not like pay for someone elses mistakes so why should any one pay for mine. I like that agreement of of fixing your mistakes of your time. That will learn you and makes for better electricians.

Companies who try to back charge employees or make them fix problems on their own time do it at their peril. It is a violation of the labor laws in most states.
You really need to have a formal warning program in place and simply let the worker go when they get their three strikes. Sparky is right you need to document the whole process. Nobody likes to get fired but if you went through the whole process, signing the warnings along the way it shouldn't be shocking to you.

I can tell you this, if you make an employee think he/she may be liable financially for mistakes, you will create a double edged sword. One problem would be an employee taking less initiative to do work they have not done before. If my company said for me to personally go fix something that inadvirtantly got left out,on my time I'd tell them to you know what. If I willfully dropped the ball there would definately be a written warning, as stated in our handbook. Neglagence, and mistakes are two very different things, and who's to say which. You need to get it in writing, warnings signed by employee.
Another thing would be as stated in the original post, a wirenut falling off is poor workmanship. If you send the same employee to trouble shoot his own work, and he reports back to you(the boss) that his work was the reason for the call back, said employee is too honest, and too stupid. if said employee finds loose wire connection and fixes it, I'd hope he could cover his own ass, and "find" another problem. Thats just my honest 2cents

Employers need to be ensure that their employees like them. An employee takes the employer's truck and material and goes for a drive. They are trusted to look after those things, to work efficiently and to bill time honestly. When an employee feels short-changed, he will balance the account, himself.

I worked for an employer who discovered that the Labour Standards Act didn't require coffee breaks. It was surprising the number of times that employees would take a little breather because they didn't know when the next break would be.

If you have call backs, suck it up. At least you know who the problem is.

Had a EC here in town that was having a problem with one of his men with call backs, he wrote up every call, then warned him in writing, as it turned out it was good he did the guy was a drug user, and after checking jobs he did with a good look, poor craftsman work, and many dangerous violations, the guy was always in a hurry to get his next fix, no time for work.

Most drug/alcohol users actually get caught that way. If you are watching a guy work it doesn't take long to figure out he is either stoned or just the dumbest guy on the planet. In either case, you should have him "seek other opportunities".
The only good thing about a drunk/druggie is you can fire him on the spot, a dumb guy needs to follow the process and that might be a long and winding road if you don't want to eat the unemployment and potential lawsuit.

FWIW ...

A plumbing contractor I know has a rather complicated accounting system ...

Apart from the base wage, there are bonuses for work developed, as well as several special accounts. One of these accounts is used to offset call-backs. Monies not 'spent' on call-backs are, at certain set points, paid to the worker.

There is a real need for the worker to have direct feedback on his performance. You can't improve without it.

Naturally, I would say that it's ONE call-back for a job ... if there's a second, it's time for management to get out from behind the desk, and go see what is really going on!

A wage can't be cut. But a persons bounus can. You can pay a daily/weakly/hourly bounus and then cut the bounus for things like being late, neglectfull damage, missing tools, customer complaints, slow production, & callbacks.

Sounds good. Allow $100.00 budget for each service guy every quarter, take away $50.00 for each call back.

No call backs and the guy earns $100.00 on a separate check or a $100 reimbursement for tools required for the job?

Enough to make it worth the effort but not enuff to break the bank.

That's a mighty dishonest two cents........

Are you kidding me? You actually condone theft in the effort to CYA? So you are encouraging people to lie to their employer about their mistake? That's nothing short of theft. This equates to either stealing from the company or stealing from the customer by charging them for the callback. Either way, I'd fire anyone on the spot for that line of thinking. I am surprised that any member here would think like that. I must say that I am disappointed to say the least.

My employee gets me call backs at times he is honest if he made the mistake and i try to have call backs covered in my overhead costs.

A recent commercial kitchen job resulted in a poor relationship between the 'hood guy' and I. Amazingly enough, after the inspection, the hood lights stopped working.

I found the wires had been disconnected .... presumably in spite, by the other guy. Everyone believed me when I said this had happened.

Why? Simply because I have never been shy about accepting my mistakes. Loose wire nut, oversight, whatever .... no effort is spent to create some fancy excuse.

No credibility = no faith = no business.

Ed,
If you are telling me that you personally have never covered up a mistake. I cannot believe that. I never said to go on a call back , and change a service to cover up a wire nut falling off, or the like. The point I was making was if you have a problem with technician A, getting callbacks. Why would you send the same technician to fix it.

OK, that makes more sense. Sorry for jumping off half-cocked, but since I am now an employer, callbacks are a sensitive subject with me. It's been really bad lately with my technicians. Work has been mighty slow for the past few months, so I almost think that they are intentionally "making mistakes" to ensure more service work. Phone company people used to do that years ago and they got away with it. Fix one thing but break another.

Yes, I probably did fudge the cause for a callback once or twice or....... when I was working for a contractor. I also got my pay check docked when I admitted fault. I tend to think that I made it up on other jobs where I made them a ton of extra profit, but that's still not how it should be done.

I am a firm believer that we should send a different tech. out for callbacks, but we have two problems with that. One is geographics. We need to send the nearest technician on callbacks and since we try to work regions, there's a good chance that the callback will be handled by the original technician.

The second problem: The technicians work together on a daily basis, so they tend to cover each other. Unless they just don't get along, they come up with some miraculous reason why the callback wasn't the technician's responsibility.

"He replaced the defective wire nut on the hot side, but the one on the neutral failed after the fact". We know that's probably not the truth, but hard to argue

I agree with that.

When an employee finds a way to cut a few thousand off a job, does he get a bonus cheque?

When an employee brings scrap copper back, does he get a bonus cheque?

When an employee picks up material before his paid start time, does he get a bonus cheque? How about cleaning out your truck?

If an employee starts early or works late, does he get a bonus cheque?

If you don't share in the profits, and expect to share the losses, who will work for you, or, are you describing those people, already?

To be clear, I just spent two hours of my own time going over job specs to charge out extras, and I don't expect to be paid at all. However, my employer doesn't expect it to be free and has already made it up to me. We work together to make money.

What incentives do you provide? Are they reasonable?

While I do treat my employees with respect and dignity, "extra" money for doing the normal requirements is not in my business plan. We have incentives for going above and beyond the required workload.

1. share in the copper $$? Didn't I pay for it the first time? I've been on jobs where the GF ordered extra wire just to have scrap. Wouldn't you be a little loose on the footage if you know that you will get $3.50 a pound for any "extra" wire, even though it cost the contractor $8 a foot? All scrap comes back to the shop!

2. An employee should be paid for every minute that they work, and should work for every minute that they are paid. Who do you think loses out most of the time?

3. It is part of the requirements when issued a truck to keep it clean inside and out. It is especially beneficial to an employee of a construction based company to have a vehicle because it is very expensive (at least $6-$8/hr)for a contractor to have a vehicle sitting at a jobsite for 8 hours a day to basically be a taxi for an employee. I can have material delivered to that jobsite every single day of the week, so a truck is not particuarly necessary. In a service based business, it is a little different if they take after hours calls.

4. ...share in the losses? You must be joking! I've had jobs that lost money, not one employee ever stepped up and asked to share in my pain. And of course it was never their fault. I always bid them wrong. Yes, although the employee failed at his job, it is ultimately my responsibility to make the job profitable, so I wouldn't actually expect the employees to share in any losses.

It is great to have an incentive plan, but the things you described seem to fall in the normal everyday activities of electricians, and would not be a basis for giving money away.

REW, I've worked for several contractors and the one I'm working for now gets more out of his men. I want to explain the difference between this one and the previous ones.

I know that when the customer has the money, it is out of my reach. If my employer and I work together, we can get the money into his hands. I get paid better and treated better with this employer than any other employer.

I don't share in the profits or copper, nor in the losses. He doesn't get mean about call-backs or "underbid" jobs, because we both know which direction we are going.

Compare that to the employer who cut everyone's pay and fired anyone who objected (me). The guys who were left started taking scrap copper home. I know it for a fact, because I was invited to the profit-sharing barbecue.

If your employees think that you are too hard, they will give themselves an incentive bonus. When that happens, you will lose big.

Just my humble opinion,

If the company is a fast pace construction based shop, and you threaten to fine or penilize the employees for mistakes made that cause a call back, you may find the production fall off a bit.

If speed is the essence of your shop, and your bids, you may be caught with current jobs going over bid times due to the men trying all that much harder not to make a mistake. This could cost quite a bit in the long run.

On the other hand, if you are a service based company that charges T&M, this should not have been an issue to begin with. The tec should be paying attention.

In support of the employee, anyone who has been in this trade for any amount of time knows that after you have worked on a job, everything that goes wrong in that building for the next six months is automaticly your fault.

Jon Niemeyer