For those of you that are running a web-hosting business, how do you pay your employees that are working remotely? (off-site)

Commission? Recurring? By recurring, I am talking about a certain percentage that goes toward the employees every month for the # of months the client stays.

I'd like to know what you business owners out there use nowadays. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

employees will want to have a set income to stay with your business. what you can do is give them a small fixed income plus commissions and bonuses based on their performances.

Hrmm, a fixed montly salary. They'd have to meet a certian quota every month. Do you think this would work best?

fixed salary is to keep the right employees, and commission is for them to work hard for you and for themselves. you won't be able to find all the right people to work for you, and there will be employees who will dissappoint you. you should set a quota for that set salary before they can start receiving commissions for their extra hard work. if they do not meet the quota, the best way is to lay them off. there are always risks in running a business and hiring people to work for you. one can't always be the winner...

If you want to keep your employees - it's have to be hourly or fixed weekly/monthly rate - nobody (seriously) will work for commissions.

Anytime I have worked for a company on contract basis, we have agreed to either a fixed monthly rate, or a per-hour rate. Absolutely no commissions, absolutely no per-ticket stuff. Time is time, and my time is valuable.

Pay them often and pay them well, and they will reward you with loyalty and good work. :)

:) Bailey

I'd recommend with money :P

As they say you need money to Make Money.

Fixed salary, or hourly wage if they're casual/part time, with performance bonuses based on how the employee and/or company is doing. Maybe Christmas bonuses too? :)

Your employees are the ones who will be talking to your customers - and since customers make you money, they need to be treated well. Employees will feel like treating the customers well if you treat your employees well. :)

Greetings:

Thread title: How should employees be paid?

Answer: On time ;-)

In terms of compensation, it depends on the position, what you've verified as acceptable by your tax accountant and law firm in terms of practices, etc.

In terms of legal and tax issues, you have to be extremely careful in the U.S. (not sure about elsewhere) in terms of classifying some one as an independent contractor, and paying them as such.

And if they are classified as an employee, then (again in the U.S.) there are minimum wage laws, as well as paying them their value.

Thank you.

I think you guys missed the part 'remotely'. These employees are working OFFSITE and being compensated on an hourly bases is out of the question.

I think you guys missed the part 'remotely'. These employees are working OFFSITE and being compensated on an hourly bases is out of the question.

How are people missing the point? Salary is probably the best and most common route to go.

I was referring to the hourly bases part. And yes, I think a fixed salary would work best as long as the quota is met. Thanks for all your help.

I had 10 remote employees at one time, the best bet is to have a good helpdesk software solution in place where you can pull logs to see if one actually worked the hours they said they did. Asuming your an established host, at least 1 ticket an hour is going to come in so you have the logs to prove it.

If not established to well, outsource it via a support company or yourself. I can refer you to a few good techs in India if you need them, just pm me.

Thanks

Fixed salary plus bonuses every now and then, such as now (christmas).

I know I'm repeating myself from another thread, but it's the easiest and best way to go. They can make their budgets on a fixed income. It's not your employees fault if you don't get any customers (even with a bad support reputation, in which case, it's still your fault for keeping a bad employee).

I think you guys missed the part 'remotely'. These employees are working OFFSITE and being compensated on an hourly bases is out of the question.

Not sure how you figure this. You should be able to confirm your tech's activity in the helpdesk (software access logs? ticket logs? Apache logs?) and via e-mail logins/e-mails sent, if you don't trust them enough to be honest on their hourly reporting.

But then, if you don't trust their honesty for something as simple as time reporting, what are they doing with root access to client data...? *cough*

It's called ethics, man. Hire good people and this isn't a concern. Technology is advanced enough now that if you aren't sure, you can check up even on remote employees. If you find yourself needing to do this often and are catching dishonesty, though, there are some serious issues with your hiring practices. :(

:lovewht:

:) Bailey

I think you guys missed the part 'remotely'. These employees are working OFFSITE and being compensated on an hourly bases is out of the question.

I disagree 100% with this statement.

An employee mans the help desk for 12 hours and no tickets come in so he doesn't get paid anything for sitting at his PC monitoring your system for all that time?

It also depends on what sort of tasks the employee is doing, a sales employee is more likely to work on commission than a server tech.

I agree with all of you that technicians should get paid on a hourly/salary basis. As for Sales Reps, do you agree they should get compensated on commission + other bonuses?

I know from offers for sales positions that I have received, that some companies prefer to have their sales people on commission. I've always worked sales on an hourly basis though. Reason being, I can count on the income, rain or shine. It's not my fault if the company's prices or offerings are lousy/non-competitive ;) and I don't think that my commissions should take a hit because of the company's pricing strategies. That's the company's problem, not mine... y'know? :)

FWIW I've always had a good conversion rate, so I would do nicely on the commission basis, but I have also hand-picked my contracts to work with companies that are, errrm, convertable. Not cheap crap, but high-value-per-dollar companies.

:) Bailey

Fixed salary + commissions

Cheers,
Beruska

Thanks for everyone's input.

I was referring to the hourly bases part. And yes, I think a fixed salary would work best as long as the quota is met. Thanks for all your help.

What position are we talking about, sales, tech support, server administration? Obviously you can't pay them all along the same lines. For a sales position, a salary with bonuses for sales is a great solution. Hourly or salary would be effective for a tech position, and server admins should almost always be on a salary basis, with a defined average hours per week.

Now quotas are quite possibly the WORST method of employee compensation... which is why you rarely see even moderately sized businesses using quota compensation... that said, I've seen quotas work for sales, but even then I consider them unneccesary. First, it puts any employee in the position of overloading and/or failing to take adequate amount of time for a problem. For techs and admins, this means employees making quick patches to the symptoms of a problem, as opposed to finding a solution to the problem itself.

Like I said, I've seen quotas in sales positions but don't like them. Remember, salespeople are your potential clients first impression of your company. Forcing quotas will probably lead to overstretching your sales force, so a bad first impression.

Salary and hourly paid positions (with performance bonuses) are the most effective form of employee compensation, for both employee production and loyalty to company. If some of the other methods used on this forum (such as per-ticket) were successful in the long-term, than you'd see the Fortune 500 companies using them... and they don't.

Hourly is best. Set your employees up in shifts. Gaps in shifts can easilly be filled with the prospect of money.

Hello,

I recently posted about this asking the same question. If you plan to do 24x7 Tech Support, I would recommend having either 3-5 staff (1 on backup) and have 8 hour shifts. I pay will soon be paying (once i open) my support reps $1.10 per ticket and my sales reps the same per ticket/chat + 20% Commision. That way, they are receiving a "somewhat" steady income, and not completely commision based :).

As JustinH said, hourly is best. However, most smaller hosts do not have the money to pay hourly, and I think this is somethingwe all would like to do. However, if you want to have a good pay system and want to pay a decent amount, I would sugest Per Chat/Ticket + Commision.

Thanks again,

Paying service techs commision is not fair, especially by ammount of tickets they close, or how fast. Who's to say a tech will get ANY tickets? A friend of mine works part time in a data center and on Sundays he'll close a "staggering" 2 tickets a day. Maybe 5 on Saturday. Paying per hours means that the tech will get paid for his shift, and will also make him flexible. You won't feel guilty asking him to do a few extra hours, and he won't have to worry about getting tickets.

Sales people however, can receive comission, but depending on what you have your sales reps do it's still a good idea to consider an hourly wage.

Hello,

I recently posted about this asking the same question. If you plan to do 24x7 Tech Support, I would recommend having either 3-5 staff (1 on backup) and have 8 hour shifts. I pay will soon be paying (once i open) my support reps $1.10 per ticket and my sales reps the same per ticket/chat + 20% Commision. That way, they are receiving a "somewhat" steady income, and not completely commision based :).

As JustinH said, hourly is best. However, most smaller hosts do not have the money to pay hourly, and I think this is somethingwe all would like to do. However, if you want to have a good pay system and want to pay a decent amount, I would sugest Per Chat/Ticket + Commision.

Thanks again,

If you are a startup host who cannot afford to pay staff, outsource your support to a professional and reputable firm. Bobcares.com is one company.
Hiring part-timers for peanuts is not the way forward. Hiring people remotely and at these rates leaves little scope for professionalism or reliability. How are you so sure these people are trustworthy and won't delete system files if they get angry with you?

If you want dedication and quality work from your staff, they must be paid a stable salary with perks.

A webhosting company is dependent on quality people. You need to learn how to retain talent and expertise in the company and build motivation/dedication within your staff to ensure quality work from them.

To keep the good people within your company, especially your top managers and system administrators, it is important that you sell to them the vision of the company and their part in that vision. You need to ensure they are well paid, and they get their perks.

web hosting is so dependent on quality staff. Paying such staff hourly or on a commission basis offers them no stable livelihood or job security. It is impossible to maintain a quality team like that. And without a quality stable team (a team that retains talent), no hosting company can be successful.

Outsourcing is a shortcut startups can take. It puts alot of dedicated expertise at your hand, given that the outsourcing firm has top people working for them. Once you grow to a certain level of revenue, you can start phasing in your own staff and phasing out your outsourced support

To say a fixed salary is good, but only if they meet a certain quota, is saying you are not going to give them a fixed salary. You may want to consider not hiring these sort of people on and stick with on-site support.

Hi ushdlew,

Too many people here seem to think commission alone is fine for any work. And it's laughable the amount of people who want to pay per ticket on live chat (sit in our chat all day so that IF we do ever get any visitors it looks good on our site). No, if you're doing something properly, you need to pay people regardless of how well your business does, and maybe pay them EXTRA if they get you more money. It really depends what the staff are doing. For saes representatives a sallary and commission is usually reasonable. For tech staff and other staff who work set shifts, an hourly pay is usually reasonable. For a sysadmin or anyone else who has to do the work set regardless of the hours, a sallary.

Good luck

A webhosting company is dependent on quality people. You need to learn how to retain talent and expertise in the company and build motivation/dedication within your staff to ensure quality work from them.

To keep the good people within your company, especially your top managers and system administrators, it is important that you sell to them the vision of the company and their part in that vision. You need to ensure they are well paid, and they get their perks.

web hosting is so dependent on quality staff. Paying such staff hourly or on a commission basis offers them no stable livelihood or job security. It is impossible to maintain a quality team like that. And without a quality stable team (a team that retains talent), no hosting company can be successful.

Outsourcing is a shortcut startups can take. It puts alot of dedicated expertise at your hand, given that the outsourcing firm has top people working for them. Once you grow to a certain level of revenue, you can start phasing in your own staff and phasing out your outsourced support



I agree 100%. It's hard to find good people but when you do you need to find a way to keep them happy.

Generally what we do is pay our full time guys a set salary based on how they perform. The guys that do alot of work and show they can get things done get paid the most and it goes don from there. Then there are the guys that don't do much and just answer tickets.. These guys we pay on a per ticket base and keep track of it through the help desk. It seems to work out pretty good since our 'newest' employee celebrates his 2 years next month. :)

Thanks Rich and everyone. Greatly appreciated!