Employees

[David M. Porritt]

I would think that hiring a contract tech would be the way to go.  No
insurance or benefits, they just get a percentage of the tuning fee.  I did
that the first 5 years I was in business here.  If you pay 60% as Wim
suggested, you can be sure they will keep a list of your customers, and when
they have a list big enough, they'll quit and work the list on their own for
100%.

If you pay 75% or so, and make the appointments (keeping contact with your
customers) and also do the book keeping on billed customers, the tech might
be willing to settle for loosing some of the fee in exchange for the book
keeping and scheduling.

If you hire someone as an employee, you'll be paying benefits, taxes,
insurance etc. and they'll still want to keep the customer list and go
independent.  I don't think most employees understand how valuable the
benefits package is and only see how much less money they take home than the
tuning fee.

dave

_______________________________
David M. Porritt, RPT
dporritt@swbell.net <mailto:dporritt@swbell.net>
Meadows School of the Arts
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, TX 75275
_______________________________


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pianotech@ptg.org [mailto:owner-pianotech@ptg.org]On Behalf
Of ANRPiano@AOL.COM
Sent: Sunday, August 01, 1999 5:05 PM
To: pianotech@ptg.org
Subject: Employees


Dear list,

Having built a rather sizable business without ever working at a store or
someone else's shop I am at a loss as to how to work out certain aspects of
my employee's compensation.  I am not looking for anything which will get us
into trouble, just some general guidelines or examples of other's
experience.

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