Ray Confer on Performance Bonuses
When he dispensed this advice at the 2020 National Pavement Exposition, Ray Confer had been in the sweeping industry for about 40 years. His C&J Parking Lot Sweeping company has long been the unquestioned leader in his Greater Detroit market area.
This Tip was provided during the 2020 Contractors' Roundtable event. The question was how to motivate sweeper drivers to do, and continue to do, a great job for you. At Ray's company they offer a $1/hour bonus for their sweeper operators who do all of the following during their shifts the prior week:
- come to work on time (not a minute late...),
- take 15 minutes or less for pre-shift truck inspection/walkaround
- keep their vehicle clean,
- have no customer complaints,
- do no damage to their vehicle
The bonus is provided each week and includes any overtime hours, though the bonus is still $1/hour for overtime work.
"We give the bonus out every week," said Ray. "We learned that, if you give the money out once-a-month, for example, and they screw up in the first week, then there's no incentive for them to do great the rest of the month. It costs a little more to run the program weekly but you save a lot of money in the long run.
"The first couple of weeks I got pushback if someone was just a few minutes late. However, what I said to them was "What's the key word in 'You came in just a little bit late?' The key word is 'late.' After that, workers started coming in a few minutes early to make sure they weren't going to lose their bonus for the week by being even a minute bit late."
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