@Bruce thanks for the excellent response. I’ve been thinking about this the last few days. The 20-25 call outs I mentioned was ASIDE from our paid holidays and paid PTO. Remember that none of our guys really works 8 hours a day. The UPS example is great but their standard work day is 8-12 hours.
My wife works in manufacturing management and her the plant she works at has dozens of large-scale machines worth tens of millions of dollars. She said that they plan for about 15% planned downtime for maintenance and 10% unplanned downtime.
I’m not sure how we can give 40-50 paid days off between holidays and PTO but still turn a profit. We already have a PTO plan that rewards production, quality, and seniority.
the 8 hours a day comes from leave shop, return to shop, rather than on job time. pest control and others are similar leave/return to shop
love the planned and unplanned downtime split! that comes out to everything being based on 75% production. What do your guys end up at % of 260 days a year they show up? including off for weather
labor without additional non-time dependent upsell profits is so direct and linear its really a pain in the neck and so razor sharp to be right on in production rate
Oh I didn’t mean 8 hours on glass; 8 hours total from arrive at shop in morning to leaving shop to go home. So I am including the 10-15 minutes in morning to get work, change rubbers, fill bucket; same at end of day. Most of our guys show up at 8am and leave at 2pm.
Most of our guys are 85%-90% of 260 days per year. This INCLUDES off for holidays, PTO, weather, etc. So it looks pretty good on paper I guess; maybe part of it is because most only work 6 hours a day. But I am still left wondering about the 10-20 days that the guys “call off” and what can be done about that? Or should that even bother me at all? Just seems like a waste.
221attendace days *.75 three quarter work day = 166 8 hour equivalent work days
166 total 8 hour equivalent work days = 63% (think of the machines at your wife’s work)
so that’s what you’re fighting is the additional 22% loss vs 85% 8 hour work days
unless they’re working 6 days a week, but you still come up short
you might want to think/calculate/have a report in terms of 8 hour equivalent days rather than head count, that helped me at a time when I had several part timers
if you have 4 guys at 63% you really only have the equivalent of 3 full timers at 85%
sheesh, cushy 6 hour days and they still call out 10-20 days? lol wimps hahaha
When I hired my employee I told her she would get a $20 bonus for getting a new account. She wasn’t the outgoing salesy type but she did get me one new account. The initial scope of work was for cleaning a hotel’s restaurant kitchen 7 nights a week. Doing that work gave me the potential for access to bidding on the WC and carpet cleaning for more than 100 rooms and some condominiums. Unfortunately there was an immediate “surprise” expansion of the scope of work to also include cleaning the restaurant and bar. It was set up to gross $5K per month (but with a miserable margin) so in addition to the $20 I also bought her a $180 vacuum as a sales bonus.
The account grossed less than $800 for four long days, including 17 man hours of using my expensive floor cleaning machine to excavate the kitchen floor’s grease. We quickly parted ways due to the massive increase in the unpaid portion of the scope of work.
Lesson learned: avoid doing business with the squeaky tight margin restaurants around here. I was also glad that I wasn’t required to file an Environmental Impact Statement for the grease excavation.
Here are some of our guys numbers for 2017. This is 99% window cleaning; we don’t power wash at all. Other things included are gutter cleaning and chandelier cleaning which amount to about 1%.
Worked 1,297 hours cleaning $22,516 Averaging $17.36/hr
Worked 1,753 hours cleaning $30,838 Averaging $17.59/hr
Worked 1,670 hours cleaning $29,969 Averaging $17.95/hr
Worked 1,637 hours cleaning $35,135 Averaging $21.46/hr
Worked 1,590 hours cleaning $28,018 Averaging $17.62/hr
Worked 1,476 hours cleaning $28,550 Averaging $19.34/hr
Worked 1,737 hours cleaning $31,828 Averaging $18.32/hr
@dgalkin thanks for the info. What are the experience levels of your team members? I’m trying to get a base line. I’m working with two part-time guys with very little experience (less than a month combined) and paying $10 hr while they learn. One is coming along very well but the other is not but it’s punctual and keys a positive attitude.
@leavingnc no one really wanted to I think. We have 6 paid holidays and 5-10 PTO days depending on production. We had a few days closed due to weather. Add on top of that days that guys called out due to illness, family illness, etc.
@WindowGuysLV all of our current guys have been with us 1-3 years.
