Employees in the wintertime - how do you keep 'em busy?

[Jeff Madsen]

As I sit here getting ready for snow day number 2 for my business I'm wondering what I'll do with my employee next year this time. I've been an owner-op for ten years now - haven't had to worry about what to do with an employee when we're snow-bound or just plain slow. How do you keep your guys and gals busy when there isn't much going on? Do you pay them for days that get wiped out by the weather?

 

[Jamesh921]

Depends on how financially sound you are. If you have the cash there are a few things you could do like:

a) pay them a "guaranteed" weekly rate so they can pay their bills and feed the family

b) have them perform other task (that you hate to do like) clean out the garage, do repairs on the house, etc..

c) do inventory on equipment, clean out the vans/shop, rotate tires, service and clean all equipment, etc...

d) find them work with friends or family doing whatever needs to be done (they pay them, not you).

e) pay them a percentage to go out and find commercial jobs.

I'm sure others will be along to give more ideas.

Good luck.

 

[Chris A]

Snow plowing? You have the database, probably wouldn't be to hard to get going?

 

[Steve Toburen]

As I sit here getting ready for snow day number 2 for my business I'm wondering what I'll do with my employee next year this time. I've been an owner-op for ten years now - haven't had to worry about what to do with an employee when we're snow-bound or just plain slow. How do you keep your guys and gals busy when there isn't much going on? Do you pay them for days that get wiped out by the weather?

Been there- done that. Good ideas above. (Even though I always worried about the liability of my employee skyrocketing through parking lots pushing snow.)

Other ideas:
1. Diversify into fire and (especially) water damage. (Be aware this is a totally different business model, not something you cna just dip your toe into once in awhile.) The advantage is for many of us fire and water losses are up dramatically with freezing temps.

2. Develop an "encap" route that will keep people busy year round. Use part time oncall people to run it when your FT time people are busy. FT employees handle the contract commercial when things are slow.

http://sfs.jondon.com/6994/resources/sp ... tes-part-1

Steve Toburen
www.SFS.JonDon.com

PS OR just have them do all of your "honey do" projects. (The IRS frowns on this.) I had a tech whose father was a plumber and knew the trade but just didn't have his plumber's license. So one slow winter when I didn't have a full work week for him I had him totally replumb a house I had bought. He was grateful for the 40 hours and I saved a ton of money over hiring his dad!

 

[XTREME1]

whatever you do, do not wait until it is too late to make tough decisions

 

[Mike Draper]

I tell my guys that it gets waaaaayyyy slow in the winter. You had better hope you win the lottery or your gonna be a bdcc employee this winter. shiteatinggrin

 

[Steve Toburen]

Jeff,

Another thing we did that helped a lot with the "Winter Blues" was implement a pre-paid residential maintenance program with the carpets being cleaned every six months. Given that we cleaned a LOT of carpet in May/ June/ July this automatically meant we had at least SOME work lined up six months later in December/ January/ February. At the risk of offending the "link police" this is how we set up our residential maintenance program:

http://sfs.jondon.com/932/resources/spe ... -beautiful

Steve Toburen
http://www.SFS.JonDon.com

PS In addition to helping keep my employees busy the Stay Beautiful program also gave us about 7K per month in predictable cash flow with work that we didn't even need to do for another six months!

 

[Jeff Madsen]

Thanks for the great thoughts folks!

 

[Bjorn]

FOOK cleaning carpet buy them lift tickets

f]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzvCbRGmB-If]

 

[glenboy]

send em lookin for a job

 

[handdi]

clean the shop

 

[Steve in Omaha]

FOOK cleaning carpet buy them lift tickets

r]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzvCbRGmB-Ir]

Ditto
On the last weekend of a three week run in Colorado. Have a HUGE backoad waiting for me that should keep me busy unit I head to the Tetons in March. Need to get back to work to rest up!?????