Mike Andes (YouTube, Mar 8, 2024) explains how he eliminated unproductive off-season labor in his home-services business by reducing staff hours or encouraging temporary job changes during winter, then rehiring in spring. He found most employees returned the following season and argues paying slightly higher wages when active ("$2–3 more per hour") would cost far less than carrying idle labor (he cites tens of thousands, "less than $50,000").
Chapters
The first reason why so many small businesses in the home service industries go out of business is unproductive labor. During the off season, I had people delivering cookies to property managers. We were doing free services for our regular mowing customers simply because I was trying to keep them busy. And so all of a sudden, what could have been done in like half a day of shop work all of a sudden took one full day. Because there was no reason to have to go quick. There was no reason they couldn't make any money on pay for performance. It was like everything was slow. What I learned is that instead of having unproductive labor and trying to keep my team members on all year long and throughout the off season is just tell them, hey, you're either going to have reduced hours or go get another full time job and I'll guarantee you a start time in the spring. And I was amazed the first year that I did this. Almost every single team member that left in the fall came back in the spring. This whole time, I've been spending tens of thousands of dollars just trying to keep them busy. If you took two or $3 more per hour and paid that to your team, you'd spend a whole lot less than $50,000. And you'd be able to increase their wages so that when they are there, they're incentivized to be there more.
