Shop Foreman Pay Package

[macinbc]

Looking for ideas on a pay package for Shop Foreman. I have a flat rate shop, but I was considering putting this person on a straight time pay package with a bonus on total hours produced by the whole shop. I want this person to assist other technicians and be my main troubleshooter, but I am also looking at having this person being able to push the other techs productivity.

Any ideas or thoughts would be appreciated, especially if someone is presently doing something like this.

[robc]

Our pay plan surveys show that most foremen are paid a mixture of salary and bonus. The idea of the position is to make the entire shop more productive, and while he's there to solve some of the nightmare jobs we don't want him bogged down in money pits.

The majority of plans pay 70-80% salary and the rest bonus. The bonus can either be a % of shop net or a commission per FRH. As always, what do you want to pay and work from there. For example, a shop with 12 techs billing 400 FRH per week,

$70,000 annual projected earnings
$52,500 salary (75%)
$17,680 bonus (85 cent/FRH) commission

Throw in a CSI, FIRTFT, and great productivity spiff in there and you got most of the foremen pay plans I've seen.

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** Rob, Editor Dealersedge/WD&S **
Help is only a message post away!
robc@dealersedge.com

[helpers1]

At our dealerships, our foremans (or "team leaders") are paid flat rate, plus a bonus for total shop hours--which doesn't make sense to me. Why would we pay a bonus on his own hours? We have a new fixed ops director who shares my opinion that the bonus on total shop hours should be less his own hours - more of an incentive to help others, not an incentive to make more money on his own jobs.

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Helpers

[robc]

Two quick points helpers...

1- Do you just not want to pay the guy -- is he making "too much" money, or do you think this will really encourage him to help others? (Sorry that reads kind of like an affront-but it really makes a difference)

2- Team leaders are NOT shop foremen. Team leaders are productive techs, with a wee-bit of oversight on the shop, but they rarely are actually service management (regardless of what the factory might think or the title you give them). Techs are techs, shop management is shop management - there is hardly ever a person I met that can be both. ATCon might believe and preach that crap about team leaders being quasi-foremen but it never really works out simply because you can't pay a good tech enough for him to care about the rest of the shop at his own expense. I mean what are you going to do pay a team leader $20/FRH and a $1/FRH for his team? That would mean the other guys would have to flag 20 hours or he'd need to flag one more to make the same. What do you think he's going to do with that 60K? Team leaders do not always mean more production and they sure don't get there through a pay plan that still has a majority of it riding on him being a tech.

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** Rob, Editor Dealersedge/WD&S **
Help is only a message post away!
robc@dealersedge.com

[helpers1]

We absolutely were not of the opinion they were overpaid - the plan is to adjust the amount of bonus/per hour upward so as not to decrease what they are currently making.

In the old days, we used to call these employees "shop foremen". The new-age calls them "team leaders" - either way, they are responsible for the technical quality of shop production as well as productivity. If you hire the right person, or train the right person, you CAN have someone who is productive on his own as well as "incentivized" in the right manner to want the rest of the team to excel.
I am also of the opinion that "one size doesn't fit all". Each shop has to work out what works best for them.

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Helpers

[Old Irish]

We have team leaders and yes, they help out other team members to a point, but they are not foremen. Their job is to dispatch tickets to the team and try to keep everyone's hours up.

Our shop foreman ("Production Manager" in our case) is a member of management and has his own office. A few of his duties: He is in charge of all tech training. He handles most technician "disciplinary" type issues. He assists on problem diagnostics---if the tech is 2 hours into a job and not making progress, he is called in. He does work on cars...but only the worst cases where we'd rather have the tech move on to somthing productive rather than continue banging his head against the wall. He is responsible for the inventory and maintenance of all shop equipment....as well as purchasing quite a bit of it. He has the authority to hire/fire technicians. He keeps all shop computers up and running. He is repsonsible for holding shop meetings as needed. He works closely with advisors and team leaders to help ensure the work keeps flowing as planned. He is responsible for QC in the shop. Basically, anything that happens on "the other side of the wall", is his baby.

He doesn't do all this entirely on his own. He and I meet at least twice a day to discuss what is going on, what needs to be done, who will do it, and so forth. When his plate gets full (and it does, fairly often), I take a break from admin duties and pick up the excess. In reality we co-manage the department with my duties biased towards administrative, advisors, customer issues, marketing, and the like and his duties biased towards keeping the actual shop up and running. We have 17 line techs, 2 detailers, 2 accessory installers, 4 advisors.

He is payed a base salary, a percentage of labor sales, and on "fix it right" for each of our 5 car lines.

Cheers
DD

[spwilkins]

We used team leaders to dispatch the work written by there respective ASM's. The team leader was paid by FRH and a bonus if each of the other techs reached there objective. Also, the teams were located together, with a very careful mix of qualifications and personalities. If the team leader did not fairly distribute the work, in the same way we expected the dispatcher to distribute the work, then he heard it first from the guys around him, then from management.