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How do you pay your installers?

trimitbyrich

New Member
Our shop currently pays installers by the hour which I can see doesn't always work for every employee. I am considering switching to a more performance based way to pay such as per Square foot method. Just curious how other shops are doing it.
Also, how do you handle messing up panels or having to redo a job because it wasn't installed properly and had to be redone?
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Ask for a bid/quote to do the job as is. Get a total. Hourly rates and such can be altered, if you aren't there to make sure it's being conducted correctly. Also, if a competent person or not is on the job.

Get 3 bids and choose either by price, like most customers do, or choose by expertise. You must know what something realistically is worth.
 

jfiscus

Rap Master
Well. By the hour.
Without installers you are dead in the water as a wrap shop.
With happy, quality installers you are a successful shop.
 

HulkSmash

New Member
Employee you pay by the Hr. As an employee you can't "charge them" for mistakes. You just have to fire them and find/train a new installer, if the mistakes get out of hand. As an owner you take the risk of employees making mistakes.
 

trimitbyrich

New Member
Sorry for the confusion, I'm talking about in house employees. We have been around for a long time and have always paid our employees by the hour. Some employees reach a plateau and won't really advance past it it since they are going to get their paycheck weather they turn out 1 job a day or only half of one.

We considered paying them or incentivizing them by a square foot price perhaps as a bonus but just curious how other shops pay their employees and what works for you.
 

Solventinkjet

DIY Printer Fixing Guide
Your only obligation to in house employees is to pay them minimum wage. Anything on top of that is up to you and anything less is illegal. If they make a mistake, you eat the cost and decide to keep them around or not. Almost every book on this issue says that it is better to incentivize good behavior rather than use fear of losing their job as motivation to minimize mistakes. Make it a contest, those with the fewest mistakes at the end of the quarter get a bonus or something like that.
 

FatCat

New Member
Sorry for the confusion, I'm talking about in house employees. We have been around for a long time and have always paid our employees by the hour. Some employees reach a plateau and won't really advance past it it since they are going to get their paycheck weather they turn out 1 job a day or only half of one.

We considered paying them or incentivizing them by a square foot price perhaps as a bonus but just curious how other shops pay their employees and what works for you.

My employees are paid hourly. That said, I do offer bonuses like "free lunch" once in a while, as well as some extra $$ in their paycheck if we slam out a big rush job or something unique. People appreciate when you take notice when you work extra hard and therefore I feel this way keeps them going and interested in doing the best they can and hoping to get a perk for working hard.

That said, you should have a grasp on what it takes to produce most common items. Therefore, you set a basic "quota" for the work that needs to get done in an 8-hour day. The deal is they get the work done, and you pay them for that work. Never going to be a perfect solution to get 100% of your time/money out of an employee, it just doesn't happen. But you can minimize wasted time, make sure they aren't distracted by cell phones, non-work issues, etc... But in the end you should be able to give them a schedule of work that should be completed in a day and they should get it done, or come pretty close. If your employee is taking advantage of the situation, like taking all day to accomplish a list that should take 2-3 hours, time to have a sit-down and discuss your disappointment.
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
:Oops: read that wrong.

Then, you could go with Piece Work under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Now, you just tell the employee how much he/she will get when the job is finished and it's up to them how many hours they waste or gain. They must finish it with the results you expect..... or run the risk of having to do it over, which would probably result in losing their job. As far as I know, this is legal the whole country over.

Many years ago, I was getting 4 or 5 signs done an hour of a particular size. I did about 200 of these a week. I received $8.00 an hour. I got to a point my old boss put me on piece work for incentive. I got something like $1.80 each and knocked the signs out so fast, I was done in 2.5 days. After a year or so, he then put me back to an hourly rate, so I just slowed down. Mama didn't raise no fool.

Careful how you word it. :rolleyes:
 

Marlene

New Member
Our shop currently pays installers by the hour which I can see doesn't always work for every employee. I am considering switching to a more performance based way to pay such as per Square foot method. Just curious how other shops are doing it.
Also, how do you handle messing up panels or having to redo a job because it wasn't installed properly and had to be redone?

seems like a really bad idea as paying by the foot means they will push things thru to get paid, hence more mistakes or substandard work. then who is it that tracks and measures the materials? added work that must be tracked and verified. sounds like more trouble than it is worth.
 

ExecuPrintGS

New Member
My employees are paid hourly. That said, I do offer bonuses like "free lunch" once in a while, as well as some extra $$ in their paycheck if we slam out a big rush job or something unique. People appreciate when you take notice when you work extra hard and therefore I feel this way keeps them going and interested in doing the best they can and hoping to get a perk for working hard.

That said, you should have a grasp on what it takes to produce most common items. Therefore, you set a basic "quota" for the work that needs to get done in an 8-hour day. The deal is they get the work done, and you pay them for that work. Never going to be a perfect solution to get 100% of your time/money out of an employee, it just doesn't happen. But you can minimize wasted time, make sure they aren't distracted by cell phones, non-work issues, etc... But in the end you should be able to give them a schedule of work that should be completed in a day and they should get it done, or come pretty close. If your employee is taking advantage of the situation, like taking all day to accomplish a list that should take 2-3 hours, time to have a sit-down and discuss your disappointment.

THIS, as an employee/ the only sign/ vehicle graphics design, production and installer at our shop (we do paper and apparel printing also) I get paid hourly, slammed or slow its the same pay.
That said a "good job" and incentives like bonuses or added paid days off when you are slow goes a long way to happy employees. Also, everyone is different. I have goals, goals drive me and make me work harder. I have a weekly, monthly and yearly target that i set for myself and that drives me. But i know i'm a goals driven personality.
Figure out what drives your employees and use that.
 

equippaint

Active Member
Piece work pay comes with its own set of issues too, a lot of auto body shops are moving away from book time and going back to hourly for various reasons. Ive fought the production issue for a long time and my personal take away from it was to adjust my pricing to account for varying speeds and motivation of different employees then pay the few core guys more than the others. Bonuses are nice but its a slippery slope also. Keep new hires away from the slacker guys as much as you can also, they will drag down a potentially good person in no time at all. Were currently restructuring our shop loosely using 5S methods which has seemed to help. Make a production board and hold people accountable when a 2 hour job takes 4 but tell them upfront this job is 2 hours. Make sure the goal time is attainable by the lowest person on their best day and also beatable by your best guy. Another production killer is constantly placing the wrong employee in the wrong task, if theyre just bad at it or dont like it it will be reflected in their work but they may be the best person you have in a different role that theyre more confident at. For us Id say the majority of the production speed problems that we have seem to be from employees not actually knowing how long something should take and having no set goal to complete it which rests 100% on me. No pay structure will ever fix that.
 

Kentucky Wraps

Kentucky Wraps
Why not make a tiered scale of Installer levels with correlating pay grades.
Installer class Pro rarely makes mistakes, is awesome quality and speed and can train others. $50 per hour.
(they can knock out a van in one work day by themselves...well worth their $400 day) Is also Certified
Installer class A makes very few mistakes, wraps with greater speed and quality and thus is worth (gets paid) $40 per hour. Is Probably Certified.
Installer class B makes few mistakes, wraps with good quality but isn't too fast. $30
Installer class C makes few mistakes, wraps with acceptable quality but isn't too fast $20
Installer class D makes mistakes, is fairly competent on simple surfaces and is pretty slow $10
Installer in Training makes minimum wage, needs help on a lot of stuff and make mistakes often.
They are on thin ice until they get to class D. (trial to see if they're cut out for the work basically)

They can be moved up or down as needed. If they make too many mistakes or slow down, demote them to a different "job description" lower class.
If they start kicking butt, move 'em up. It is both an incentive and punishment without actually being a "penalty" per se because you aren't docking their paycheck of money they've already earned. It is also (thanks to ego) a competition.
Their own egos along with a desire to make more money will get them serious in no time...If they stay at a low level for too long, they aren't sapping your cash flow
and maybe need to be reassigned to "sweeper, bathroom cleaner, weeder, etc) minimum wage.

Just a thought.
 

mmblarg

New Member
At my shop, there are only two of us who install, myself as hourly and my manager boss-man on salary. In my experience, the best way to loose long-time workers and completely alienate them is to change how they are paid. I can guarantee you (because I have worked many jobs from corporate drone to mom and pop shop and have seen first hand what a drastic policy change does) if you switch the pay style from hourly to per job, you are going to be faced with a lot of resistance and layoffs. One company I worked for intentionally did something similar - they had a stagnant workforce that had been there for 10+ years, new management felt they were beyond retraining so they instead implemented new extreme policies (intended to improve productivity) knowing full well that there would be a massive upheaval between people quitting and being fired which would allow them to hire new blood under the new policies.

If you value your workers, I would instead focus on training and pay raises. I would also come to terms with the fact that in this line of work, a plateau is inevitable. Unless you want your workers cutting corners to meet unrealistic time frames, you need to accept that a job well done will take a fairly fixed amount of time.

Before I started, my company had been established for 25 years and they had standards for how long a job should take. If you are anything like us, your installs are completely custom and can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 3 days. We charge our clients per hour and bid how long we think the job should take starting from a 1 hour minimum. Since I'm the newbie in my company (been here 5 years, ha) I'll use me as the example: If I don't finish the job within the time that was bid, we reassess what I'm doing and retrain if I need improvement or reevaluate the amount of time we bid if we were unrealistically low. If I make a mistake - say, I ruin part of a graphic and need to reprint - that does not come out of my check or the client's, but it is a dock when it comes time for a raise (enough mistakes, coachings, retrainings and no improvement = no raise.)

There are days when I seem like the slickest person in the shop because all I do are one banner orders or small weeding jobs, then there are the days when it seems like all I did was one order because it took all day to outfit a fleet of service vehicles. The fairest way you can pay your workers is hourly - just be involved with them: shadow them, train them, set them up with mentors who work faster so they can learn how to be more efficient. A job well done and a steady paycheck is incentive enough as long as the environment is a nurturing one. Throwing them a competitive reward without training them on how to get it will only entice the lazy to be lazier by cutting corners while the hard working and dedicated sit and suffer under your objections to their working speed.

Hope that helps.
 

myront

CorelDRAW is best
Hourly. Might I also add that many times our installers have been tipped very generously by customers. Not us designers or the sales staff.

btw, We have an exceptionally generous employer. This my career not just a job.
 

mmblarg

New Member
Hourly. Might I also add that many times our installers have been tipped very generously by customers. Not us designers or the sales staff.

btw, We have an exceptionally generous employer. This my career not just a job.

Lucky! I work in a small sign shop and do every part of the job from sales and design, to production and install - only ever been tipped once. Compliments come cheap and easy though! :p
 

rossmosh

New Member
There have been a number of studies and the following is true:

1. Pay someone a fair wage and you'll get a happier, better employee. There's a reason why the employees at Costco are decent and the employees at Walmart are not. One pays a living wage and treats you with respect. The other treats you poorly and pays minimum wage.

2. People work as hard as necessary. Around Europe they've adopted a "get the work done and if there's nothing else, you can leave" philosophy. They've also adopted a 4 day work week, as long as your work is all done and productivity stays high. In the US it's common for the opposite to occur. If you work fast, you're just given more work or you're sent home early and not paid for a full day. This results in employees making sure they get their 40+ hours no matter what.

3. People love to be recognized for a job well done but don't insult the person. If they're doing a killer job and making $12/hr. Don't give them a $.50/hr bump or a $100 at the end of the month. I've been there and done that. By the third raise in 18 months, I was still making low wages because I started off too low. If you have a $20/hr employee, pay them $20/hr.
 

equippaint

Active Member
There have been a number of studies and the following is true:

1. Pay someone a fair wage and you'll get a happier, better employee. There's a reason why the employees at Costco are decent and the employees at Walmart are not. One pays a living wage and treats you with respect. The other treats you poorly and pays minimum wage.

2. People work as hard as necessary. Around Europe they've adopted a "get the work done and if there's nothing else, you can leave" philosophy. They've also adopted a 4 day work week, as long as your work is all done and productivity stays high. In the US it's common for the opposite to occur. If you work fast, you're just given more work or you're sent home early and not paid for a full day. This results in employees making sure they get their 40+ hours no matter what.

3. People love to be recognized for a job well done but don't insult the person. If they're doing a killer job and making $12/hr. Don't give them a $.50/hr bump or a $100 at the end of the month. I've been there and done that. By the third raise in 18 months, I was still making low wages because I started off too low. If you have a $20/hr employee, pay them $20/hr.

So true. Ive seen the same with my employees in terms of working at a pace to fill the work week. Theyre so conditioned to being sent home early (I dont do it) that they keep their eyes on the amount of incoming work and pace themselves. It drives me nuts because when were slow I like to blow the work out and be ready to turn anything new quickly and also gives us time to clean and do general shop maintenance.

I do agree with your first point but theres a missing aspect to it thats also been studied alot. Wages, when they are inline with other similar industries, are not near as important as peoples feeling of self worth. Employees need to feel important and empowered, if you arent able to provide this, it will never matter how much you pay them. That is where the majority of big box retailers and fast food places fail.

Involve them in your thought process on increasing production, your next equipment purchase, materials you use etc. I let my employees, as a group, decide if they want to work 7-5 or 8-6, they decide what days they want off around a holiday, they delegate work tasks in the shop between each other, we always discuss new ideas before they're implemented (if they dont like it they get persuaded) and if they want to leave early they know what needs to be finished for that to happen. Sometimes I get walked on but its rare, rarely do people quit and when someone needs to hit the road they tell me right away (or run them off themselves) because its a threat to their autonomy. The people that always ask for more money are usually the slack guys and Ive found that hiring a $20 guy over a $10 guy is no guarantee of a better employee.
 
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