Hiring employees, different rates?

[Kastner86]

Hello all, I'm a new member, so this is my first post.

I run a smaller business and only do gardening maintenance (no lawn cutting), and currently do all the work myself, but as I'm expanding I'm finding a need to hire help to meet my customer's needs.

My question is... Is it typical to charge less per hour for hired help? My help would only be doing labor such as weeding and cleaning up. Which I do anyways. It's hard for me to justify charging a customer the same rate for someone with much less experience, who may be slightly slower, and isn't doing trimming/pruning and other detail work.

Should I be charging my usual foreman rate, and less for others?

Thanks for any advise.

[pow]

somebody has to do the grunt work, why should it be any cheaper? It's all part of the job

[Stephen M.]

Let's put it this way, when you take your car or truck into a shop, do you pay a SHOP RATE like $75.00 per hour, or does the shop charge you a different rate per mechanic based on senority?

[Stephen M.]

Let's put this in a different persective

My wife and I are in our 24th year. We've outlasted many who have come and gone because they paid their help under the table and gave the help $13-$15/hr and taking home $2-$3 for themselves. It seems that they hadn't a clue that since they own a business and taking all the risk, that maybe they should quit thinking like an employee and start charging for their business.

We also have had ex employees go off on their own and managed to steal some of our bottom feeders by telling them that we were ripping them off by charging 3 times the value of what we paid them. They had a rude awakening trying to figure out why we were still in business and they were almost out of business.

In one of the e-newsletters I recieve, the article author was relating an incident he observed at an arts and craft show he attended. One of the vendors was having little luck in selling well made stuff at $6 per item. He suggested that she double her price and then report back to him after the next day's sale.

The lady reported that she had sold out before the end of the day and was astounded by the results. The bottomline is this: If you don't believe in the value of your product [or service] by pricing it so cheaply, why would anybody else return the favor?

Yea, i know that 2010 is the year of the lowball, but it seems to be like any other year around here. Forget the low hanging fruit. Go after the fruit higher up where few are picking.

[dpld]

Hello all, I'm a new member, so this is my first post.

I run a smaller business and only do gardening maintenance (no lawn cutting), and currently do all the work myself, but as I'm expanding I'm finding a need to hire help to meet my customer's needs.

My question is... Is it typical to charge less per hour for hired help? My help would only be doing labor such as weeding and cleaning up. Which I do anyways. It's hard for me to justify charging a customer the same rate for someone with much less experience, who may be slightly slower, and isn't doing trimming/pruning and other detail work.

Should I be charging my usual foreman rate, and less for others?

Thanks for any advise.

you should be charging full rates across the board.

it should not matter what experience level they have because you as the owner will be making sure that they are performing properly for the rate you charge.

in the event that the worker screws something up and you have to pay for it where is the benefit in only making a couple of dollars off of him.
is the customer gonna say " well being you were saving me so much money i will replace it myself " ? i doubt it.

what if your worker gets hurt, is he gonna not look to get anything for it because he is so happy you are giving him a job? i doubt it.

how are you gonna pay for his taxes and workers comp when you really are not chargeing for him? it will come out of the rate you are charging for yourself, thats how.

i understand you are just starting out in all and probably pay your guy cash under the table but that is besides the point.

unless you want to stay small and only make a few bucks more then a regular job and have no real security as well as no saftey net in the form of a real business making real money, then by all means keep doing what you are doing.

but if you want to build a money making machine that will take care of you and your family for the long haul then from day one you have to operate, advertise and conduct your business in the same manner as any other real business in the world and never let anyone know you are a business starting out.

it may seem like the honorable thing to do as well as a good way to build up your business but in reality that way is just a quick way to be on the losing end of the bargain and all the businesses that fail outside of mismanaging charging your customers with a concious is the next leading cause to failure.

and while we are on the subject, put everything you do for people in writing and have it signed prior to starting the work because at the end of the day if they do not want to pay that is the only thing that will give you a leg to stand on as well as if you put it in writing and do everything you proposed exactly as described it eliminates the chance of them being able to say they thought they were paying for something different excuse.

and my last advice would be don't work for freinds, family or neihbors because you never make money.
i know good freinds and family you really have no choice with because you can't say no because you are obligated to help them out but don't bring it up unless they ask.
but neihbors definitly stay away from because 99.9% of the time it just does not work out.

when i first started my business back when we lived in our first house i did all the work for all the neihbors and it got to the point that everytime i came home after a long day busting the hump it would take me an hour to get in the house because they all had to bother me about every little problem on their yard.
i love what i do but after 26 years and working for 12 hours for the day, when i get home the last thing i want to talk about or do is anything involving landscaping or trees.
since we moved in the home we live in now 10 years ago if a neihbor ask's me if i would be interested in giving them a quote i tell them " i would love to give you a quote, but right now i am so busy it will probably take me a couple of months to get to it. so if you can wait for the work, i will gladly give you one" and usually, they pass.

i know it sounds silly but the realationship between neihbor's and the one between a business and customer usually dont go hand and hand with me and in the end its better off.

[steve-o]

Va. Boys Gotta Stick Together...............

somebody has to do the grunt work, why should it be any cheaper? It's all part of the job

think of it as a brothel............... some get paid a buck fifty with a box of chicken to boot, but the boss still gets his $100 per hour.

steve-oooooo