Mike Andes argues owners/managers should stop lamenting that employees "will never care as much as you" and instead build systems that incentivize desired behavior. He recommends pay-for-performance models tied to efficiency, financial consequences for damage or poor-quality work (reduced pay if mistakes occur), and other accountability mechanisms to push staff toward operating at roughly 80–90% of the owner’s standard.
Chapters
Employees will never care as much as you. This lack of care shows up in the form of broken equipment, lackadaisical standards, doing a subpar job, not treating customers correctly, speeding down the road in company vehicles, doing stupid stuff in your uniform. They don't care. And as much as I want to lament that fact, if you get caught up in that something that you cannot control, you're going to get frustrated. And so what we want to focus on is create systems that incentivize the behavior you want to see. If you want them to be more efficient, make sure you have a pay for performance model that the more efficient they are, the more money they make. Make sure that you're incentivizing things around damage cases so they don't want to make damage cases on customer's property, that if they make a mistake on a customer's property because of poor performance or poor quality, they're going back to the job site and they're making less money. By creating this kind of culture of accountability, you can at least get people to operate at 80 to 90% as good as you.
