piecemeal pay, anyone have experience paying piecemeal? Options

[Jim]

Hi everyone,
does anyone have experience in paying employees piecemeal? I'm wondering if this will help us be much more competitive in pricing, while retaining employees during a slow period.

And a very Happy New Year to all!!!!!!!1

[Steve Hobson]

Hi Jim

I think the proper term is "Piece Work". I do that sometimes on a real competive project. I have a job now, my lead men and crew members know the hours (open book) They can accept or decline to do the project, if they accept I have them sign a paper. If they beat the hours they get that too as a perk or bonus. I do stress to them that this will not forego quality and customer service. If there is call backs, they have to take care of it.

They get motivated, and they make it happen. It can be a win, win. They seem to find another gear when there is an opportunity to make more money.

All the best!

Hob

[Paul Burns]

Hi everyone,
does anyone have experience in paying employees piecemeal? I'm wondering if this will help us be much more competitive in pricing, while retaining employees during a slow period.

And a very Happy New Year to all!!!!!!!1

Jim, we've paid painters on a piecework basis for many years. We never really used it to be "competitive" but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

EXCEPT that the only way that I have found piecework NOT to work is if the pieces/estimated times per piece are too low. IOW, piecework has always worked great for us but our painters have always been able to make great money by working harder, better, faster.

If the incentive is taken away...IOW, they have to work harder, faster, better on piece pay to earn the same amount as they would on hourly pay....then they would rather be paid by the hour......and a piecwork pay system may backfire.

Having said the above, it has been our experience that piecework paid painters will MOST of the time earn double and/or do twice as much work as if they were paid hourly. Since that is the case with us, you may be able to lower prices and your painters might still make good money if they earn say 30-50% more than they could with hourly pay. Hope this makes sense.

Umm, in our company we give employees a guaranteed hourly amount. IOW, we'll do something like they are guaranteed to earn at least 17.00 per hour, but if they make more than that on the piecework system that we use, then they get paid the extra......which is just normal for us. This is usually only an issue when they are first hired. If they don't make more money with our piecework system than the guaranteed hourly rate, then we don't want them working for us. OR somebody sold a job for less than it should have been sold. Then we have a problem elsewhere.

IMO, I think it can work for you but you have to be careful. I don't think there is any better way to pay people than a properly implemented piecework system. I also believe that there is not much worse if not implemented properly. So give it a LOT of thought before you approach your employees with it.

Hope it works for you and would love to hear how it goes!

Good Luck,
Paul

[Jim]

Thanks men,

i appreciate your thoughts. I'll let you know what happens once i figure out how to implement! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Any more thoughts out there?

[SNLPainting]

Those with this experience - how do you handle situations where many painters are painting the same piece? Such as a house with only fascia boards, but 4 guys are working on it? Some work the tall peaks, others may not, do they need to measure the "quantity of pieces" they did?

If three guys are painting a huge greatroom, 1 guy may do more prep, one guy more brushwork, one guy more rolling. Worst case - they all do a various amount of all three.

How do you simplify these issues so there is no bad blood?

Thanks,
Art

[Dirk]

I was a painter in Denmark for 5 years (the hardest part of the work was learning a new language on the job....and they were real Vikings and might beat you up). The top level of paint work in DK was called "Accord", which was this kind of piecework. Since it was a social democracy where labor hours, vacations and all were so set in the country, this became a great way for a laborer to make big money in a country with a 50% tax rate. We lived on jobsites in quality trailers, worked 10 to 14 hours a day for 4 days on and 3 off. The way the accord worked was great for the company and the workers. The company could set the payment allotment for the job, and the job boss controlled the number of workers. You were paid and unknown accord months later at the end of a job and only a base wage of 100 kroner, the project (usually industrial and offshore) would pay out in the 250 range with a standard painter getting 110 at that time by the hour.
We got tax breaks for living on jobsites...I now see how this might not apply to America; anyhow the way you made money was getting hours in on a job. The job boss was the important factor as he could put you on early in a project and suddenly cut you at the end to add hours to the existing team. This is good for the company to keep the job moving. If you got lazy, the group would insist on getting you off the job. That was the peer pressure that made the whole thing work. It was not friendly at all but most things on the North Atlantic are not. In an American residential painting company I think it could only work if you were running over 20 men (at Ernst Hansen Malerfirma we had 120 workers), so you could still give work to the ones that are taken off the job "Survivor" style. Actually that TV show came first out of Sweden.
I've long thought of this idea for my company, but I don't have enough workers to make it work.

[Paul Burns]

Those with this experience - how do you handle situations where many painters are painting the same piece? Such as a house with only fascia boards, but 4 guys are working on it? Some work the tall peaks, others may not, do they need to measure the "quantity of pieces" they did?

If three guys are painting a huge greatroom, 1 guy may do more prep, one guy more brushwork, one guy more rolling. Worst case - they all do a various amount of all three.

How do you simplify these issues so there is no bad blood?

Thanks,
Art

Art, the piecework pay can benefit all workers regardless of skill level, prior hourly pay level, difficulty of work, etc if the jobs are properly estimated and sold in the first place. One way is with simple algebra but we rarely ever get to that point. Like you say. those are worst case scenarios and for us piecework has always been an easier and more fair way for all than tracking hours, raises, etc..

Good Luck,
Paul

[Steve Hobson]

Jim

Did you figure it out yet? If so how did it go? What did you do? Is it working? Lets hear about it.
Hob