An incentive scheme for technicians

At Exminster Garage, our staff contracts state that a monthly discretionary bonus scheme operates, providing the garage is in profit. The discretionary element means that if for some reason you do not wish to pay a member of staff a bonus there is no contractual necessity to do so.

Only paying out in profit is a self-protection mechanism so that if we fall on hard times we can limit our outgoings.

Our invoicing system has a different labour code for each member of staff, so at the push of a button we can see who has sold what over different periods. We also do monthly accounting so bonuses are paid on this span. Based on the month’s profit we put a percentage of the profit into a pot and then, using a pie chart principle, divide the pot into individual staff output segments.

To elaborate, if an individual member of staff achieved 20% of the total work carried out he would accordingly get 20% of the ‘pot’. Payouts vary from £20 to £400 or more depending on the garage labour sold.

• The technician is given a monthly performance sheet, which shows the number of days worked and how many hours it was theoretically possible to sell. This number is divided by the number of hours they actually sold to give a % efficiency.

• Holiday and training courses are deducted from the possible hours sold figure. However, sick days are not – so a few days sick a month makes it harder to achieve a high % efficiency.

• We have fine-tuned the scheme so a flat rate is awarded for MOTs, MOT assists, tyres and exhausts, along with an adjustment sheet so that if a member of staff ‘helps’ another member of staff they will not ‘lose’ the time.

“A business without an incentive scheme is at a serious disadvantage in today’s competitive world”

Recorded efficiency figures provide a good record of current and historical employee output, from which it is possible to chart staff output trends, increasing/decreasing statistics, etc.

Our CSI scheme logs the month’s problems, and what was done to fix them. If there was a cost involved, this would be recorded and acts as a negative on that employee’s bonus payment.

Problems are highlighted at our monthly staff meetings (first Wednesday of the month, morning tea break) where trends are assessed and how to avoid repetitions discussed. All staff partake in this often lively debate. This means those problems or quality issues are taken into bonus calculations.

All staff are able to interrogate the system, so they can see how the month is going. This is important as it can serve as a mid-month motivator, and does not take management time to produce.

There is no requirement for staff to reveal their performance efficiency % to others, although in a good month you will see staff proudly showing their sheets to colleagues!

 by Tim Milsom