My 7 Principles for Service Technician Compensation

graphic of money jar for 7 Principles of Technician and Employee Wages and Incentives Blog

Whether you’re a plumber, an electrician, or an HVAC business, knowing what to pay your technicians can be complicated. At Zip Solutions, we’ve seen thousands of mistakes, but from our experiences with numerous field service businesses, we’ve developed a few principles that we follow when counseling others on employee compensation.

7 Principles for Service Technician Compensation

  1. No employee compensation solution fits every company.
  2. No one company has only one employee compensation plan for everyone.
  3. The employee incentives must be understood by all to be effective.
  4. To be understood, employee incentives must be simple.
  5. An incentive-based compensation plan needs a little reward but can’t cause the paycheck to fluctuate too much.
  6. All incentive plans, including hourly pay plans, go stale and need to be refreshed on a regular basis.
  7. Of course, all employee compensation plans must conform to government regulation.

And a bonus principle – Do not change compensation plans on short notice. Changing someone’s paycheck is a serious matter, and it must be well planned in order to not stress employees. A poorly launched compensation plan will cause an employee to quit or, WORSE, stay and pollute your company culture.

Zip Solutions’ field service management software has the tools to equip you to build the ideal compensation and incentive plans for your plumbing, electrical and HVAC technicians. With our technician behavior tracking features, you’ll be able to calculate what you can afford to pay techs, and then, you’ll have the data you need to create customized incentive plans to best motivate your team.

Plus, check the effects of your compensation plans all from within Zip Solutions’ field service software. See how much a technician’s pay will fluctuate with different plans before you make real changes affecting company morale, and then, determine how your incentive plans impact your hourly rate, company goals, and profit and loss statement. All of these tools are simple and easy to use for your front office. Your administrator will love the convenience, and you’ll find it easier than ever to make informed decisions impacting your business.

Additionally, Zip Solutions’ dynamic price book is designed to respond to updates in your compensation plans. Our “white glove” support staff can help you configure your changes to automatically adjust your prices as you create new incentives or commissions, or you can set your price book to only reflect manual changes. It’s your choice. We can help easily customize your software to meet your company’s needs, and whether that’s adding a spiff to a specific product (or entire department), creating a competition, adding a bonus for customer types for just a day or an entire month, we believe you’ll almost immediately start seeing increased productivity from technicians, improved margins and greater peace of mind.

To see firsthand how Zip Solutions helps plumbers, electricians and HVAC businesses like yours become more profitable and discover greater stability, schedule a demo today. You won’t be disappointed.