fdmonline.com
George Koeninger
gkoeninger@yahoo.com
Q:You’ve stated in previous columns that you don’t believe in piecework – payment for each piece of work completed – in the upholstery manufacturing process. How, then, do manufacturers motivate their employees to work harder without using piecework?
conditions and a friendly atmosphere. Third, you need challenging work; and fourth, you want appreciation expressed when you know you have made a great effort.
A:Those of you who know me or have read my articles know of my total disdain for piecework. In brief, people have a God-given body clock. If you know me, mine is set on slow while yours is probably set on fast. In order to sustain an untenable pace, people on piecework take breaks more often, miss work to rest, take short cuts from specs, sustain more injuries, etc. Quality is trashed, people revert to their body’s natural pace and then demand more per piece to make up for lost income. When they can no longer sustain the abnormal pace because of age, another skilled asset walks out the door.
The best advice on people management comes from the Bible: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” So what do you want and need from your work effort? First, you probably want a fair, equitable and consistent paycheck so you can plan your life. Second, you want good working
Fair and equitable pay
Our first “Do unto others” is fair and equitable pay. In order to pay equitably, allow people to know where they stand, treat all fairly according to law, and take the monkey (“If I don’t get another quarter, I’m walking!”) off the back of supervision, we need to develop a fair and equitable pay methodology.
To do this, we develop two spread
sheets. A representative of sheet A (see
Figure 1) lists on the vertical column
the attributes you desire in an
employee. The horizontal
columns contain mea-
surements with their as-
signed points. Each six
months, the employee
is evaluated and
the points totaled.
The points are then
referred to the second
spread sheet where the
point spread is in the first
column and the dollars per
hour of pay are in the second
column (see Figure 2). This is their
rate of pay for the next six months.
If an employee has dropped in points, they have the next six months to make improvements or their pay
continued
Got a
question?
o you have an upholstery-re-
lated question you’d like George
Koeninger to ans wer? E-mail it to glausch@
wattnet.net, with Ask George in the subject
line. Please include your name, location
and contact information. If we run your
question, we’ll only include your
initials.
D
References:
Archives