[Kevin R]

I have taken on my first member of staff for commercial and residential window cleaning . I have been using sub-contractors for a while now but I feel its time to take the leap. I have done my homework so I am happy with the law - payments, NI etc etc.

What I need advice on is;

To start with my employee will work with me than after 6-8 weeks he will be on his own is a supplied vehicle.  Do I tell him the prices (residential only of course) and let him collect or supply sealed envelopes with invoices and sae's inside? ( I use service CEO so producing the invoices is easy)

If I choose not to tell him my prices how will he pick up new work for me?  Or do I just get him to collect a telephone number and quote myself?  Canvassing - If I dont tell him the prices I wont be able to use him for canvassing either I guess?

Also I am keen to pay bonuses for work completed , no complaints, turning up etc etc. Any advice on this would be great.

Thanks

Kevin

[williamx]

Kevin

When you employ anyone, trust is a very important, so I would tell him the prices including the commercial contracts, if you don't, and he wants to find out what you are charging, then he only has to ask the customer who will tell him even if you have asked them not to.

If you are afraid that he might poach them by starting his own cleaning company, then you can write up a legally binding contract of employment that he cannot approach or clean any of you customers for 2 years after he has left you employment.  You can get this made up by a solictor who knows employment law.

As for bonuses, it is always a good idea to pay your staff well, money is one of the main factors in your staff happyness, and un-happy staff are crap workers.

I would pay your staff the minimum wage plus a percentage on all the completed work that they do in the week, any complaints from customers, then send them back to do the re-clean but on their own time.

[Chris Galloway]

As for bonuses, it is always a good idea to pay your staff well, money is one of the main factors in your staff happyness, and un-happy staff are crap workers.

I would pay your staff the minimum wage plus a percentage on all the completed work that they do in the week, any complaints from customers, then send them back to do the re-clean but on their own time.

Paying your staff well, including bonus' will hopefully have them less likely to start up on their own.

Show how time consuming and exhaustive it is to run your own business and highlight how good they have it, just turning up, doing the work and taking good money home..

Perhaps eventually they may decide to do it (go it alone), thats the best time to say to them, "be your own boss, but work under my name" as a franchise! You can provide all the equipment etc, and take a cut of their end of year profits.

[*frank cannon]

Kev

I,ve had 15 yrs exp of employing and on cash work..putting it bluntly unless you are with the person or the team they will rip you off...

Can,t you go with them,then break off for gutterwork?

[Martin-Swinscoe]

i had a lad work for  with me whilst i was working elsewhere now we both work together.
what i did with him was if a new custy approached him for work, he could price the job up and do it. Now here is the interesting bit i told him he could pocket the money as a bonus but make sure to put the new custy on the list for next month. thats when i benefitted.
by doing it this way the lad had no reason to lie/steal and it taught him to price high

[*frank cannon]

i had a lad work for  with me whilst i was working elsewhere now we both work together.
what i did with him was if a new custy approached him for work, he could price the job up and do it. Now here is the interesting bit i told him he could pocket the money as a bonus but make sure to put the new custy on the list for next month. thats when i benefitted.
by doing it this way the lad had no reason to lie/steal and it taught him to price high
[/qu

Left alone Martin they do get greedy,I adopted a system similar to yrself but over a period of time it will get abused,if yr not there to overlook it....

Also there may be a problem if the lad left after a couple of years and Kev had to return to the round the new customers would not know him....left alone rounds will cause you hassle be aware

[Steve CM]

some good posts there. pay well and have a good bonus scheme in place. worked well for me so far

[Steve CM]

i had a lad work for  with me whilst i was working elsewhere now we both work together.
what i did with him was if a new custy approached him for work, he could price the job up and do it. Now here is the interesting bit i told him he could pocket the money as a bonus but make sure to put the new custy on the list for next month. thats when i benefitted.
by doing it this way the lad had no reason to lie/steal and it taught him to price high

same way i do it. they get the first clean so they feel i'm not ripping them off. I make it clear that if i find out there doing anything on the sly they will be gone!!

my moto is "respect your job and it will respect you!"

[MSTAV]

how does paying bonuses work though?? if paying a min wage how much extra in bonus if all work gets done on time etc is the average. if I was to do it id prob pay for a day rate of £60 which is £300 per week then a £100 bonus for work done on time reliable. does this sound right or would you pay more.


mike

[Dean Taberner]

how does paying bonuses work though?? if paying a min wage how much extra in bonus if all work gets done on time etc is the average. if I was to do it id prob pay for a day rate of £60 which is £300 per week then a £100 bonus for work done on time reliable. does this sound right or would you pay more.


mike

that sounds good to me mate. Maybe abit too much up in my neck of the woods.

I know many of my mates who are tradesman who would ditch their jobs for 400 a week.

Dean

[Chris Galloway]

Do u need a hand?

[williamx]

Kevin

It depends what you charge per house, but if you charge £10, you can easily clean 3 every hour, which makes you £210 per day, times by 5 days = £1050.

I would pay him £5.75 per hour as his basic salary, this is also what he will get for holiday pay.

If he does this amount of work I would then pay him at a  percentage of 39% on all work that he has done minus the basic salary.

So on a weekly turnover of £1050 he would get £399.

On new work, I always charge double price for a 1st clean, so I would pay the cleaner half of this.

You can also fit a tracker device to his vechicle which will give you a printout of where the vechicle has been all week including the time of day, so by looking at this printout it will tell you how long he was parked on one street and if the time is too long for the amount of work he was surpose to do, you know that he is doing work on the sly.

I would also tell him that you have fitted 2 tracking devices and what they do.  You only fit 1 so if searches for them he will only ever find 1 but he will be aware that there is still the other one that is watching his movements.

On commercial work I would pay him at a higher rate per hour rather than a percentage.

[williamx]

SSP