Fair compensation for a jr tech to sell work for sr techs?

[thetireshop]

I have an alignment tech that sells a lot of work off of his regular ROs, some of which he is not quite ready/qualified to perform. I'm trying to devise a "spiff" or something to keep him motivated to do what he's doing even if I have to route the job to a more qualified or idle technician, and he doesn't get behind on the alignment schedule. Any ideas?

[lmcca]

what exactly isnt he qualified to do? We have a guy that was a lube tech that showed promise and sent him to alignment school and he started buying tools and now does a great job. Suspension isnt overly hard so im curious as to why he cant do it.

[thetireshop]

He does a good job on alignments and suspension work. He worked his way up from the tire bays to the lube bay to the alignment bay. His experience level beyond suspension work is limited. He's competent to do a brake job, say on a Tahoe, but you wouldn't want him to try a brake job on a Benz or a newer Land Rover or Jag, or the like, at least not without supervision. He's been writing up a bunch of work, then getting way off schedule on alignments (we do a LOT of alignments). I want him to continue to write up work, but he can't always get it all done, and I have to re-dispatch that work to another tech. Just trying to figure out a way to compensate him fairly for his time when the work has to go elsewhere.

[Truett]

How do you pay him now? Hourly or Flat Rate or Commission? A mixture of both? We pay a mixture of both. I pay my "C or D" Techs a "finders fee" for any work they pass on. I pay by Percentage of the additional work done. 1 or 2 percent depending on the job.

Richard

[SMMotors]

I'm sorry, I'm confused. Why is he getting behind from writing up work, but he doesn't perform it? Does he just briefly write down " lie front brakes, bad idler, bad pitman, leaking radiator ?) or is he doing that and putting estimates together?

 

To answer your question, at my shop all my guys are either hourly or the foreman is salary. If we ( the techs) turn a certain amount of hours I give them a bonus ( which is 1099 so it doesn't raise my work comp). Then if the total labor hours for the shop is sold at different levels they get an additional bonus on that ( ie 400 hrs gets $250, 475 $375, 525 $500).

 

It's worked really well because we all work as a team and everyone wants to get the shop the higher hours which a is stagger so I make the lions share of the money but techs get a nice bonus (up to $1000 extra/ month)