A few day ago I wrote about the issue of garage managers being underpaid. A correspondent wrote that the solution was more technology. That way, there would be fewer employees and more money to pay the rest. Read it here.
With all due respect, I have to disagree. In the cases I mentioned, both had state of the art revenue control systems. The concern was not that there wasn’t enough money to pay the staff. In fact the owners told the operators that the money was available and to pay their staffers more.
The problem was one of "spoiling" their staff. If a manager at garage "a" makes 50,000 a year and the managers at garage "b, c, d, and e" make 40,000. When they find out about "a" won’t they demand more? The operators could see that even when the money was available at "a" and not available at "b,c,d,e" they might be forced to pay more at their other locations. Also, operators like to be able to move staff around a will. That would be impossible if they paid substantially different amounts at different locations.
A solution might be to base the person’s pay on experience, the size of the location and amount of money generated there, on increases based on the activity of the person, and the like. I’m not in that business, however I do know that running a garage is every bit as complicated as running a McDonald’s, and to get people who can run it properly, you must compensate them appropriately.
JVH
