Your best tech gives two weeks' notice. You now have to replace them, and fast.
It’s tough in this market. The techs you want to hire already have jobs. They're booked solid at another company, earning good money, and to get one you have to convince them to leave a sure thing.
So you run the interviews and try to figure out who's worth it. And the pay numbers make that harder than it should be.
Say you get lucky and two techs apply.
Tech A makes $45 an hour.
Tech B makes $25 an hour.
Which one earns more?
Often, you can't tell. Tech A gets no incentives. Tech B gets incentives on every job. B could take home more than A every week, and the hourly number wouldn't show it.
When your techs earn more on performance pay, you earn more too. Want to see how much? We'll run the math for your business. Show me my numbers →
Every candidate walks in with a different pay setup: straight hourly, hourly plus spiffs, or a percentage on installs. The hourly rate they quote only tells you part of the story, and you're left comparing numbers that don't line up.
Stop focusing on hourly pay. Ask what candidates earn per hour when they hit their numbers. That's their effective hourly rate, and it's the number that tells you who you're hiring.
Then turn it around. Don't sell a candidate "$25 plus incentives." Show them what your best techs earn per hour, all in. When a good tech is weighing whether to leave a steady job, that's the number that gets their attention.
The same number decides whether your best techs stay.
A tech who doesn't understand their pay only knows their hourly rate. So when another company offers $30 an hour, and your tech thinks of themselves as a $25 tech, the offer looks like a raise.
That's why we put the effective hourly rate on every tech's phone in ShareWillow. They watch it climb through the day. A $25 tech who sees they take home $40 an hour after incentives knows that $30 offer is a pay cut.
And when a tech has a question about their check, they don't have to guess or wonder if they got shorted. They open the app and see their own numbers.
A tech who understands their pay can see what they'd give up by leaving. That can be the difference between keeping your best tech and getting their two weeks' notice.
Hiring a great tech is hard. Pay they understand helps you land the right one, and it keeps the ones you have from leaving.
Want to see what your techs could earn on a performance pay plan? And how that’d also boost your bottom line? We'll build a plan on your real numbers and show you the effective hourly rate each of your techs would see on their phone. Book a call with my team here.
Best,
Ryan
P.S. Hiring right now? Check out our pay report to see what tech are earning in your industry and location.