When hiring a new employee

[bensurdi]

How do you pay that employee while he is in training? How long does training last?

Ways I have seen this being done is:

1. Paying the trainee hourly while the lead technician gets paid is normal 20% etc
2. Paying the trainee a percentage.. lets say... 10% and the lead tech 15% while in training.

I'd imagine that training would be a 2 week process for most. For those of you who have hired employees and have multiple trucks, how do you handle this?

In my experience the lead tech always gets upset about having his commission lowered while training someone else. Thanks

 

[davegillfishing]

Why lower his pay? I NEVER mess with my guys pay.
I pay hourly while training but my hiring and training people isn't my employees
Problem. That's a company expense I wouldn't be real happy to have my pay lowered to train
Someone. If anything it should be raised a bit. That's a lot of extra work.

 

[Jamesh921]

Ben, I'm not really sure if it's legal to lower someone's pay while they train YOUR new hire, but it sure is LOW.

I really hope you're just making this up to get a rise from the guys here and ad to the drama, but if you're serious...... WOW!!

 

[Kevin B]

Training is more work than not training. I would give a lead tech 5% bonus as extra if he can get the new hire "people"ready, carpet and synthetic furniture ready in 2-4 weeks.

Tech must pass a ride a long with me as final pass.

 

[bensurdi]

Personally I wouldn't lower the lead techs commission but I have heard of that being done at other companies. Just curious how everyone does it.

Personally I pay $12/hr while in training. They have a 10 page written exam after the training and once they past the test they go on a ride along with me to show real world skills etc. If they pass the real world test than they are hired on as a full time lead technician.

 

[Desk Jockey]

I agree there is no way you should lower the lead tech's pay, if anything he should be compensated for doing the training which is an addition stress level a long with possible longer days and harder work.

I think you're messing with fire, check your labor laws, is it even legal?

If it is, why would you even think of doing it?

 

[Shane Deubell]

You have it backwards....
Give that lead tech a big bonus for training and a personal thank you.

Depending on services you offer 2-4 weeks, pay now or pay later.
I would rather have training too long then too short.

 

[Joe Appleby]

Here's something we've done and been successful with:

Pay him an affordable trainee wage while in training. When he is trained to where you'd like him to be,
pay him retroactively for his training hours the difference of the wage he makes trained.

ex: he makes 10.00 per hr while in training. It takes 160 hrs to train him. You may not want him or you want to keep him on now at
20.00 per hr. He now gets 20.00 per plus his training hrs difference of $1,600.00.

Our Leads get bonuses for well trained Techs