Employees

[Wimblees@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 8/1/99 10:11:55 PM !!!First Boot!!!, ANRPiano@aol.com 
writes:

<< As my shop work has grown I have hired people to fill whatever my needs 
were 
 there, but I no longer have the time to adequately service even a fraction 
of 
 my tuning customers.  I don't want to lose contact with all these people 
 because they are a great source of work for the shop.  I have been 
 considering hiring a full time tuner for quite some time but cannot figure 
 out a compensation package.  Should I pay them a straight hourly rate or a 
 commission or combination?  What kind of commission should I pay taking into 
 consideration the cost of scheduling, advertising, insurance, taxes, good 
 will, the risk of losing a customer? 
 
  I have never been involved in such a situation nor have I ever talked to 
 anyone who has and have really no idea what to do.  I would appreciate any 
 input.
 
 
 Andrew Remillard >>


Andrew:

There are two ways you can go on this. Hire a tech to work in the shop, so 
that you can continue serving the customers. Or hire someone to start doing 
the tunings, so that you can spend more time in the shop. So you need to ask 
yourself this question. What is more important, keeping in touch with your 
customers, who keep sending you shop work, or getting the work done in the 
shop, while someone else is working your customers?

Personally, I want to be out there working my customers, and have a tech 
working in the shop.  If you have too many tuning customers, hire a third 
person part time to handle the overload, but pick and chose which customers 
you want that person to tune for. 

For the shop technician, I pay anywhere from $10 - $15 per hour, depending on 
experience. The tech who are looking for work who want to spend all of their 
time in the shop are probably not as experienced as you. So you do have to 
plan on spending some time teaching them. As they get more experienced, they 
can do more and more on their own, and thus should be compensated 
accordingly. 

For field tuners, there are two ways you can do this. Give them half of your 
tuning fee, plus mileage. Or 60% of the tuning fee, and they pay their own 
mileage.  You want to control who they tune. You also want to make sure they 
do not keep the customers you give them. Although there is no way you can 
keep them from taking your customers, you should be able to trust the person 
you hire to keep it that way. 

Willem Blees