Adam Sand compares managing roofing subcontractors to in-house crews. Subs face financial penalties for damage or poor work, creating strong incentives. In-house crews rely on wage docking or write-ups, which don't motivate the same way.
With subs, you manage for quality and property protection. And with in-house, you manage for profit. But you had to have these things where it's like, how do you celebrate doing the right things and create an aligned incentive for doing the wrong things? Because that was the thing you couldn't do with employees. You couldn't dock their wages. If they did something wrong, you just said, it's okay, but you know, try to do better next time. You could write them up and stuff like that. But with a sub, you could be like, yep, if you guys damage something, you're paying for it. We made it so that like, look, this is part of the sub agreement. But then we were like, look, we're paying you 'But we're paying you to meet these install guidelines, to meet these site management best practices, to meet this standard in terms of cleanliness and property protection. And when you don't, there will be costs.' And that's just if you care about quality.
