Morning people. Heres our situation.
We have a well established round. There are three of us, 2 business partners and one employee. We work trad out of 2 vans, taking it in turns every 5 days to work alone. We pay him £8 per hour for 150 hours every 4 weeks. So no matter what the weather is he gets 37.5 hours pay per week. He is a very nice bloke, hard worker, never been off sick in 8 months, never been late. We have had no issues at all with him.
But its been hard paying him whilst the weather has been bad.
However, I have calculated that myself and my business partner could do 14 days as a 2 and 6 days as a 1 and a 1 out of 2 vans and based on the weather we should get 16-18 of these days done every month. So we'll always be a few days behind.
So, the question is do we keep our employee and just ride the bad weather or do we unfortunately let him go and go back to just the two of us ( that sounds gay !) and earn more money ?
I'ver never employed so may be speaking out of turn. It sounds to me like you have a rare gem there and should hold on to him if possible. I suppose the real question is whether he is profitable for you over a full year. If so, maybe consider carrying on and possibly trying to borrow a bit on a card to pay him. Short term pain for longer term gain. The money you make from him would soon make repaying possible once he gets working regularly. Not ideal but maybe once you've had him a while longer you will be able to put a bit aside to pay him in bad weather? Obviously I don't know the full situation but it sounds like it would be a great pity to lay off someone that good.