[Bruce Allentuck]

I am working on our policies regardng salaried employees. If you have salaraied employees, how many hours do you expect them to work a week? Year. Do you even trackt he hours or feel that if the work is getting done they are doing their job?How do you handle absences, holidays. Are your foreman on salary? Please give me input. Thanks.

[dan deutekom]

I think a salaried employees pay would be based on a 40 hour week. I would expect to have to pay that for 52 weeks a year (no winter layoff). I would expect the employee to work all the required hours when busy and to not have to work a full week in the winter when not busy. That would mean that as a boss you don't create a make work project just because you are paying the employee, because when you were busy you didn' pay for the extra hours put in. Salary usually is for people in management positions. A salaried employee usually has some leeway for days sick, or other time off within reason.

[jwholden]

At a place I used to work I spoke with a guy who was on salary for one year. The guy worked 40 plus hours a week all year and got the job done. When the snow came he got his pink slip just like all the hourly guys. That had to suck!

People wonder why it is hard to find and keep good help. I don't think we should blame it just on them.

[Stonehenge]

I chatted a bit with my attorney about paying employees a salary. There are some hurdles one has to overcome in order for a person to even be eligible for a salary, including being involved in certain business decisions. And there are different forms of 'salaried employees'. Your best bet is talk to an attorney about those disctinctions.

I'm considering having my foreman on salary, but if I do, it won't be with comp time. The salaried jobs I had, you worked what you had to work to get the job done. If that meant 80 hours, 80 is what you worked. If it was 30, same deal. But you didn't keep score, so that you could take comp time everytime you worked more than 40, and just got to keep the extra $$ when you worked less than 40/wk.

But if I do it, they will have a large chunk of the winter off, to collect their pay for sleeping late and hunting.

As a side note, I would probably keep track of them as hourly employees for a year or two before you consider making them salaried, so you know what you're getting yourself into.

[CountyMaterials]

Definitely check with an attorney or some professional advisor becasue I know that there are some strict guidelines as far as having to work in the field a certain amount of time or be in the office a certain amount of time...depending upon what position this person has. There seem to be a lot more restrictions than we would think, so I have heard.

[Nebraska]

Last year was the first year where I explored this option....keeping at least one employee on over the winter.

It was the best decision that I could have ever made. He was and still is paid a salary.

When we have overtime he is also paid overtime....In 99% of cases if we are working overtime the business is making more money and as such so should he. Legally last season he did not qualify as exempt from overtime... toward the end of this season he now has serious decision making capability and may qualify as exempt from overtime laws.

This year we now have two on "salary". The most recent one could really be considered a "retainer salary" since his pay structure is based upon up to 25 hours per week even if he is not used for those amount of hours....some weeks it snows and other weeks it doesn't.

Both of these guys are paid to sleep in during the winter...to go hunting during the winter...even to have a second job during the winter to further supplement their income. At the same time both of these employees have prooven themselves to be of extreme value to our business during the "growing" season as well as during the "snowing" season. When it snows they both are on properties within 15 minutes of dispatch from a deep sleep. I wish I could say the same for the seasonal employees and even some of the subcontractors that we have to round up for each snow event.

This system of salary and "retainer salary" has worked out extraordinarly well.

I treat this business as any other business that operates 52 weeks out of the year...the only complication is that revenue is not constantly generated all 52 weeks out of the year. This complication or 'twist' should not affect the quality of employee that you hire.

The obvious for me is that you are going to attract a higher caliber employee when you offer a full year of pay versus a seasonal position. The old saying holds true: "You get what you pay for."
We demand high margins with our quality work...Why not provide the same to the most important aspects of our business.

How can you provide higher margin quality work if those delivering that work are not of the same level?

[Nebraska]

Bruce...

To answer your questions

They are expected to work the hours necessary to complete the work.....In the season this could include evenings and weekends because of weather delays. For snow the hours of availability are 24 / 7...even holidays (yet we are flexible for family time should it snow on Christmas and New Years)

The hours are tracked....for our records. It helps with future planning as well as documentation.

We offer a combination of sick and vacation that accrues with each week worked. They must give a 2 week notice for vacation. If they are sick it counts against their 'hour bank'. If they have no hours that time is deducted from that week of pay. If sick time becomes an issue I reserve the right to request a Doctor verification of the problem. No abuse happens here since we all have high deductible insurance with MSA's...basically means that doctor visit costs come out of their pocket... Another way to look at it is if your calling in sick it will cost you about $85 to visit the doctor and get that "note".

We have certain paid holidays....which for the salaried person are just days that we do not work. Yet that work still has to be completed and it results in some long days for the rest of the week.

[agla]

I have worked on salary and by the hour. Working on salary in a business that has high fluctuations in demand for your time makes for an uncomfortable situation. The amount of time worked is always out of balance with the pay in one direction or another. As the season of hiring is usually the beginning of the busy season, as an employee, you are the one falling behind in that balance. It is not a very attractive situation in an employees market.

As an employee you feel like you have to get through the following winter in order to collect the money that you have essentially already earned. To sum it up, you are resenting extending credit to your employer and dreading what you might be having to do to get through the year to collect that.

As an employer, you are most likely not hiring someone in the winter and front loading their pay, as they might jump ship when the job market heats up.

I think salaried positions do not make for a comfortable relationship between employer and employee in most aspects of the green industry. If the intent is to bring in and retain a better quality of help, I don't think it will work. People collecting a pay check, whether it is the NFL or landscaping, view their paycheck as how much you value them. Most ambitious people need a positive assessment of their value minute by minute. A bonus is nice, but not as a part of the justly earned pay (or it is not a bonus).

Putting in long hours in busy times and less in slow times is harder than doing an even 40 throughout the year. It is much easier to put out a higher effort for longer hours and be highly productive when you are getting time and a half. The employer is asking you to bear a heavier burden and you should be compensated. That is an incentive program in its own. Limit overtime to those that are being productive and that will keep them on their toes.

Salary? Thanks, but no thanks. I'm working for your competition.

[Dale Wiley]

Interesting topic and one I can relate to. I worked on salary as an "operations manager" for a company. Glorified foreman's position...worked a lot of hours.. no OT.. no bonus.. total BS. comapny is now out of business.

Salary's are just a way to get more work out of production personell without paying them any overtime. Unless the expectations and ground rules are clearly defined and WRITTEN there will be abuse on both sides. Employers will have a tendency to work those employees a LOT of hours without rightfully comepnsating them.

In a lot of the company's I have worked with in consulting and training process's, the only ones on salary are administrative and office personell, owners, sales types. Everyone elses is on hourly.

By keeping all production personell on hourly, you are able to create a culture of completeing the work in a 40 hour work week, and creating an amosphere of working as efficently and properly as possible.

By having a group of employees on salary, it is a crutch for managment to rely on the salaried mule labor for getting the job done, and not to constantly be looking for new and more efficent ways to get the job done with hourly employees.

In a company that has systems for proper estimating, operations and job execution, and field production managers and forepersons, who are paid hourly, restricted to a 40 hour work week and tasked with making sure that the field production is done within that 40 hours by correctly managing the field employee's, your overall efficency will be higher and so will the profits when you HAVE to manage by time, rather than managing by a percieved unlimited amount of fixed rate labor in salaried employees. Bonus pools can be established to provide additional cash through winter time layoffs to supplment any UE benifits the employee may recieve.

When employers track time of salaried employees for WC reporting, or "off time" pool reason, I have invariably found that these employer record reflect that the employee never has worked more than 45 hours per week. Now the employee most likely is tracking that time as well and their time usually reflects the true amount worked. Any time that time is tracked for an employee on "salary" it creates a paper trail and a reference of actual time tracking, this can come back and bite you severely in the ass as an employer.

If the employe should seek remedy in your state's system, you will find everything in your company under a microscope investigation, which can result in more things than the salary v hourly thing being looked at...

The laws vary from state to state, but the best thing you can do if you are consiudering or have employees on salary is to consult and reivew your program with an LABOR LAW ATTORNEY in your state. CYA.......

[Nebraska]

You guys must have missed where it was stated:

When we have overtime he is also paid overtime....In 99% of cases if we are working overtime the business is making more money and as such so should he.

A fair salary, overtime pay, stability, plus benefits...

vs.

...working for the competition and hang out in an unemployment line in the winter with some 'supplemental' income from the co???

There are two different profiles of people in each one of these categories. I know where I'm looking for the ones that are going to grow the business.

[Dale Wiley]

nebraska:

Your right I did miss that..

Then your doing some thing very few companys do, but will probably inspire some great loyalty.

Thanks for pointing that out and I will be sure and read a little closer next time..my bad...

[Stonehenge]

Agla, and Dale, both some great information. And Agla, you hit the nail on the head, in that my desire to create a salaried position is a defensive one on my part. If they are collecting pay over the winter, they may be less inclined to look for another job to replace this one, because they would be losing out on easy money if they left during the winter. And once my thinking was to that point, you and Dale are both right in that I was thinking about finding ways to work that situation to my advantage, or maximize the benefit of having salaried people on board.

And giving a salary could also have a disadvantage, in that someone could sleep all winter, collecting a paycheck, and then quit when springtime came, putting me in the worst possible situation.

So as I'm putting this bonus system together, I'm thinking I won't need to offer a salaried position. They will get regular info about what bonus they have earned, to be cut in one big check at year's end. If they leave before that, no bonus. If they really don't like it here, at season's end I think I'll know, and can act accordingly. And the pay w/ the big bonus should be plenty to carry them through the winter.

And then it takes the burden of all those hurdles to be salaried off of my shoulders.

[Paul]

Jeff If thats What you are thinking of doing, why not have a structured bonus system, lets start with say a $1000 bonus, paid in the fall before the holidays, then upon spring start-up they get a % more that would build up over the next 5 years to a certain level.

So year 1 would be $1000
minimum year 2 would be $1100
minimum year 3 $1210.00
lets call it return to work bonus. That would be separate from job performance increase.

[Nebraska]

Our vantage points are all over the board here. If we were not offering winter work I definitely would be very leary about paying someone over the winter a salary; probably wouldn't do it.

The situation that exists for us and I am sure that some of you have the complete opposite (by not venturing into the world of snow and ice) is that our winter services keep growing (last year greater than 55%) every year. We are at the point that one good snowfall can generate such good money that it became one of the overriding factors in the decision. Couple that with the fact that we are at the point where we have minimal dependance upon the revenues for snow to get us through until next season.

Sometimes I wonder if snow has become a way to keep good people on or are we keeping good people on because of snow?

Not to mention I definitely have a Love / Hate relationship with snow.


Dale,
It's an experiment whereby constant tweaking of the setup is necessary and I will jump the "salary ship" immediately should I start to get burned either by the evolution of the business or by the employees.

[jwholden]

You folks are way ahead of me with your business.

However, do you mind if I ask what a 'Big' bonus is?

I find myself trying to give my two employees everything I possibly can, within reason, because if I find a good one I want to keep them around. However, I base what I give people on what I would expect or want from an employer. This includes $$ in addition to not yelling or treating them like children.

I have gotten into a habit of rouding paychecks up to 35 hours even if it's been a slow week due to weather or me missing a day because of other obligations. If the day ends a little early I call it eight hours because I know they are the reason it ended early. Yes sometimes it hurts, but I also know I've got two motivated workers coming the next day. I'm sure you all know what confidence that can give you when looking for work.

This sense of 'employee security' is a factor in why my business is headed to another level.