Paying your help.

Do you pay an hourly wage or commission to your employees/subs?

There are pros and cons to each.

I use a couple of guys now as helpers and pay a percentage on jobs we do togethe and 1099 themr.would like to put one in a seperate truck when busy or just to give me a day or two off. I don't understand the employment laws on this just yet. Can I insure a part timer that isn't paid a steady wage?

I'm sure there must by a pro to hourly wage ( Dave said so ) but I can't think of one right offhand. Not only is commission much better for the employer, knowing that his employee is making him a profit, but I worked in a factory for 23 years on a similar pay scale and it certainly beat any of my hourly jobs.

I realize that the janitor and the secretaries are going to have to be hourly, but Dave has even figured out an incentive for his secretaries. What sometimes is forgotten is that the technician in the field is the guy that is making the dollars that are paying for everyone and he's the guy that deserves the big bucks.

Hourly

If treating them as employees you need workman's comp, and payroll deductions for ss and unemployment, etc. They can be seasonal but you need to have enough work to make it worth while.

My guy has a wildlife degree from UT. He has trapped 14 years and trained with me for 6 months. He drives his truck and uses my equipment. He is set up as a vendor and gets $20 hr on exclsion work and 50% on trapping jobs.

I rarely need help but when I do I have one family member lend a hand, he's 6'4" 240# and can palm a basketball, yes he's white and can work circles around any of us. Because he's family he's on my Christian-Baker insurance for free. Now here's the easy, legal way to pay him, I run his hours through a local temp agency. I pay them, they pay him, he's their employee. Since he rarely works more than a 100 hours a year it pencils out for me, no workman's comp, unemployment or other annoying payroll deductions to worry about.

When I had them I paid them a % of what they made me.

While I never attempted to pay by the hour I figured by paying hourly there would be extra stops at the 7-11 between jobs and maybe a quick stop home to visit momma for lunch and decided I didn't want to be paying for windshield and screw off time. I also thought back to my days working for the cable company and the hours of down time waiting for customers to come home for appointments and such.

By paying for performance I know they took that extra 15 minutes to set that positive set vs. just throwing the trap on the ground by the tree. They knew that if they caught the animal in 24 hours it paid a lot more than if it took them 36 hours.

And the BIGGEST advantage was they sold add on services like crazy. I would give them a cut for the sale and then the percentage for doing it. They learned quick that was a way to double or even triple their pay.

Both systems can be gamed by cagey employees. I've seen some really s****y work that was obviously done by those being paid "by the piece".

Dave, since any sloppy work has to be redone free of charge, since they already got paid for the job, I'm betting it was one of those hourly guys.

Paul A. Is your guy insured under your liability to satisfy TWRA for his permit and to CYA or does he maintain his own ins?

This response may or may not be 100% relavant to the topic question. There are pros and cons of both means of compensation. I believe skill and experience of an individual is relevant to any good answer.

Commission based salaries can be a good motivating factor to promote sales and aggressive work behavior in some.Hourly can work well with trusted individuals but some will milk the system when and where they can to eat up time.

Where Paying part time or full time employees an hourly or a commission rate pay scale requirements can vary in different states.Learn where you stand with your responsibilities to be safe and protect yourself and your business.

In Pa. the only way you can pay an individual with a 1099 for tax purpose benefit is for that individual to be a verified sub contractor running their own viable business when not working for you basically.

Then you can get away with not going thru all the red tape and expense of having an employee on the books.If not, in time it will catch up to you.If you are making money off of an individual under your guidance and direction they are considered an employee of yours.I dont see any other legal way around it.

We know people useing temp and payroll services and the state still sees you as the owner operator paying an employee in our state.

If you teter on the line so to speak legally with trying to get away with not having to put an individual on the books, and it does catch up to you, the state will have a hearing and require copies of your employees workers comp and liability insurance to verify their business status.

Then they will determine how long this has been going on to determine the compensation you will have to pay the state for your pay roll practices.I never had a issue but I could see how it could get ugly real quick if caught up in such a situation.

I went thru this process one time many years ago so it was made clear to me verbally and in writing as to what the accepted requirements for employment were by the state.It can become a bit complicated when you have to carry them as a viable employee whether part time or fulltime. Unemployment compensation is needed and most likely an accountant to keep things running smoothly for your business.

I think we all walk a thin line at times when we begin to need help as we grow our business. You can just do so much as a one man show.Just be careful as to who it is and what could happen with respects to accidents etc.

Now in many states as is Pa and Ohio you must have all your employees whether part time or full time certified and licensed to work for you for any business related work. I dont agree with this for part time help, even though they should have some training in wildlife work which as with any new profession they will learn on the job, unless if they are doing carpenter type work only.

Things need some revision and in time I think we will see this with input from ADC operators to their states wildlife Mgt. folks.

You dont make a McDonalds employee become certified as a store manager as a requirement prior to allowing them to work as a part time clerk,floor scrubber or a cook. You have on the job training as you go and keep them under wing until they are ready to move up a level.That is always the best way to go with any field of hands on training especially a specialty field like we have.

Do what's best for employee and worrys go away

A good practice always.

Good post, Bob and Dave is right on. My oldest child, Stacy, works for us in the office and gets paid hourly. But she also has a number of pest control customers and has probably caught more skunks than any of us. Her pest control and wildlife jobs are paid at a percentage of the job.

We are very fortunate that we have five family members with dual licenses and four non-family employees. Everyone needs to be licensed, insured, and carried on our tax rolls.

Wink, I'm not referring to any particular company; more in general to new homebuilders, who only seem to want to "get'r done and get'r sold". I've seen (and I'm betting every hair on your head and mine, that you have too) lots of short cuts/lazy work that save a few minutes or a few cents.
As my wise brother would say (tongue in cheek) "quality cuts into profits". Unfortunately, it's a motto for some builders.

"quality cuts into profits".

This may be true if you didnt bid the job for quality work and materials. We have always made a good effort to provide good service with quality repairs/materials but we also charge accordingly for good quality work.

Some jobs we may not get as a result of a low bidder who will do just that in his work scope and bidding jobs.People usually recognize the differences, others it is just a matter of how cheaply it can be done and they are content with that.

Dave, unfortunately I know exactly what you are talking about. We have seen some of the most incredibly crappy construction on some very expensive homes. In one particular case, I could look right through the basement wall, above the brick, into the customer's backyard. In this case the mice were chewing on the front room rug while the owner was wintering in Arizona.

At least it taught me a lesson. When we built the home we are living in now, we asked the same builder that built our last home to build this one. I have never been known for intelligent decisions, but that was a good one!

we paid $15 an hour plus commissions...if they sold a job they would get 18% of the initial set up fee and then if it was moles they got the 18% of the set up and then if they caught 10 moles in a week on all the jobs they had they would get an extra $45 on their weekly check...20 moles $90, etc...i had one guy that averaged about 50 moles per week caught...he had some good checks too...he spent 4 days a week checking mole traps

Thanks for all the responses. I'm going to contact a small biz counselor and weigh my options.

Good thinking! I used to laugh at people who used counselors but the majority are worth every penny. We had a good one today. One of our customers called and told us that the very high winds recently had blown our very expensive chimney cap onto her lawn.

I was really upset but kept my cool and I'm really glad I did. The technician who put that "very expensive" cap up there, called to tell us that our cap was still in place but somebody else's cap was not! Kind of made my day.

Even the itty bitty town of Billings has a small business counselor and classes and it's free. Paul's favorite price.