Replies

1. 
   Sgian_Dubh | Jan 11, 2002 02:25pm | #1

   *
   My experience of piece work schedules is very small, so my opinion probably isn't worth much, but I worked for a while in a place that made quite a few standard items; in amongst the more interesting custom 'secure' money handling stations, counters , pay stations, and so on for banks, etc., we made standard doors, bullet proof glazed window units and the like.

   The firms approach was to bring in time and motion study experts. Every stage of a particular product was itemised, categorised, stopwatched, etc., and people in white coats (and very soft hands) hung around the workshop watching your every move, making little marks against a checklist. They even made notes on how often you went for a pee, wasted time walking over 'there' just to get a break from the tedium, etc.. Eventually they crunched the numbers and came up with 'task times.' From these studies they were able to nail down average production times pretty tightly. Needless to say anyone that was being 'stopwatched' resented it.

   As a first step my guess would be that you would need to employ an outsider to conduct a similarly impartial study in an attempt to be fair. I'm not sure after that what your approach would be. It seems to be hard to motivate people when the work is boring and tediously repetive. Slainte, RJ.

1. 
   PeterG | Jan 12, 2002 04:37pm | #2

   *My guess is that any change would be helpful. Part of the reason the worker are slow is that they are bored! Changing the levels of the lights might help. Free tee-shirts might help. You get the idea. If you roll out a plan to pay them extra for better performance, it will wake some of them up for a while. Firing the worst person might be the best thing? Everyone knows the dead wood and proving you will not tolerate poor performance has worked for me quite a few times. :)The first thing you need to decide is what you are trying to achieve. Are you trying to keep your payroll level, but pay the best people more? Are you trying to get rid of the worst people so you can replace them with someone who might be better? Or something else?First, let's agree that we are not talking about employees who are on drugs or booze (if their work is effected by substance abuse, you have a problem of a different color). Right off the bat I can tell you that most employees want to succeed, but are not managed in a way to allow that to happen. Most likely you can get better performance by being a better leader. Changing the method of earning pay is one way. Other ways include better training, positive feedback, and other "touchie-feelie" kind of management tricks.My experience is once I take some responsibility for my management behavior I can start to positively effect my staff. The easiest thing is to decide you are not the root cause of performance. Once you decide you might do better as a manager, the joy of learning how to do that starts. That is hard.In summary, there is no master stroke that will solve your problem. Only by understanding the problem exists (that is what your post is about right?) and changing your methods fairly often can you find an answer that will work in your organization. The good news is that change is the only thing that will work, the bad news is the method that works now will most likely stop working in 6 months. :)Good luck from someone who has been there and done that.

1. 
   Adrian_Wilson | Jan 16, 2002 03:49pm | #3

   *I think any incentive scheme you can come up with would be better than piece work, ESPECIALLY if the foreman is the problem....those schemes always get twisted so the foreman gets paid. Sometimes he's doing some of the hands-on, in which case his incentive is to make sure he gets the creamy parts or whatever, or if he is getting a percentage of the others work, his incentive is to get it done, regardless of quality....same goes for every one else, forget about quality, it becomes about numbers. I've had to resist moving to piecework really strongly in one situation where I was the foreman.....I think it's a bad situation, personally, and any savings would be offset by increased demands on quality control.. My own opinion is you're better off a) weeding out the bad apples, even if it hurts now and b) giving other incentives for increased production at your determined level of quality....like time off, cash bonuses, profit sharing, stuff like that....as long as it comes out of increased profits, not your present bottom line. You can also challenge them by setting production targets, and get them involved in how to improve things (for everyone's benefit). I also think it's beneficial sometimes to have a heart to heart with everyone, share some numbers with them, and talk about where you are and where you want to go...let them help with the 'how do we do it' part.Again, my opinion, piecework used to work, possibly, better in the old days than now....I don't think it's suited to the work ethic you find in a lot of folks today.Just opinions, mind...

1. 
   Steve_Schefer | Jan 30, 2002 01:07am | #4

   *I did piece work in an Auto body repair shop when I was a kid. The owner was a cheap SOB but there was a method to his madness. He never let us see the light of day for the work that was in front of us. We always knew we had more work to do and we needed that work to make a decent paycheck. We didn't bust our humps for him we did it for ourselves. We knew he made the big money but it didn't matter as long as we had enough work.

2. 
   jase | Jun 04, 2002 10:07pm | #5

   Is this custom work or production? Production work leans toward a piece-work reward, custom to a per-job reward.

   For a custom job that one employee completes, that employee could get a percentage of the profit on that job as an incentive. If the job is shared, then take the same percentage and share it with the builders. Shared jobs become a problem because they reward more than one person and the work contribution may not be equal.