5 Low-Cost Benefits That Will Attract All-Star Painters

Busy!

Busy!

Busy!

It’s midsummer, who’s looking for help out there?

I want to share some of the things we are doing to cultivate our culture and find new help.

We are so busy and each one of these additional tips, help us not only to build revenue for the business, but it puts profit on our bottom line.

Let me share some things with you right now.

As of this week of July, 2018, we have hit a 44-year low of unemployment.

In my mind, anybody looking for a job, has a job.

There will always be someone unemployed because as you and I know, not everybody wants to work.

If people have a choice of pressing a button someplace and making $15 an hour, why would they want to start off in a painting trade, sweating and moving things around?

We have to look and make our company, the company that people want to go work for.

What does that mean?

It means changing culture.

There is no phenomenal painter that’s been sitting at home for the past 2 months saying, “Maybe, I will answer this Indeed ad.”

By the way, Indeed works, Craigslist works, and referrals work as well!

We do this all the time but in a busy situation.

We want to win over those painters who aren’t happy with where they are currently working.

Let me share some things with you that we tried, that seem to work for us.

Why are we doing this?

Because we don’t only want a painter that can work for us for the rest of the summer, unless you are hiring college students.

You are going to put the time into it and you want a return on investment (ROI) on that painter.

You have to make him part of the team so that he feels loved.

Not only that, you are also going to give him an opportunity to grow, and you are going to build your company at the same time.

1. Offer benefits:

I am not talking about health care, or dental or anything like that.

I am going to share some benefits we use at our company, that not everybody participates in, but a lot of them do.

2. Share Vision:

You have to share the vision of the company with your potential employees.

You have to let them know what you stand for, what you are looking to do, and where you see your company going.

You also have to share this with your current employees, so that they are all reaching for the same goal.

3. Encourage Goals:
   You have to encourage the employees’ goals.

If one of your employees wants to go to school and become an architect, that’s great, help them get there!
You don’t want to shun that person.

Great employees know great employees.

They hang around great employees.

You are the average of your 5 closest friends.

The 5 people you hang around with, you are a mirror of them.

You have to encourage their dreams and I will tell you how some encourage some of the dreams.

Let’s go over a couple of quick numbers…

The industry standard of a veteran painter, who can produce well, is worth about $100,000 a year.

It breaks down to about $2,000 per week and $400 a day!

These are just roundabout numbers, more for some, less for some.

If your net profit is 15%, at the end of the year, you look at your business (and I hope you are looking at your business numbers).

If not we can talk about that in another article.

I know companies who have 20’s and 30’s as net profit, especially the small companies. They can really control their expenses.

Let’s go with the net profit of 15%.

Your employee is worth $15,000 in your pocket, after their pay, overhead and things like that.

That employee is generating roughly $100,000 a year, that’s $15,000 in profit!

What does it cost you and what kind of aggravation and time does it cost to find a new employee?

Especially one that produces and is nice and fun to be with?

Let’s look at a couple of things…

Here are some benefits that seem to be working for us:
1. Aflac:
We’ve all seen that little duck on TV that goes around saying, “Aflac!”

What we did is, we brought Aflac into the company’s meeting and we had the Aflac rep there.

We went through the disability insurance because I have talked with the Aflac guy a few times prior, that not all my painters would jump on to want to pay $7, $8, $9 or $10 a week on a policy that if they get hurt, it’s going to pay them.

They are working week to week in some of these cases, so spending an extra $10 a week is not something they want to do.

Aflac will write the policy if at least three people want to join.

I looked at my entire company and added up how many men I have.

If your company has 5 employees, it’ll costing you $50 a week.

It could be a little less, some of the policies are a little less, depending on what you are using it for.

I took a round number that seems to be popular across the United States, let’s say you charge $50 for 1 hour of work.

Imagine, 1 hour of work pays for all of your employees Aflac.

No one is going to think it is a big deal until the first person gets hurt, on-work or off-work.

I was talking to an Aflac rep, he had a person cut themself.

Workman’s Comp. actually covered the cost of the employee but because he had an Aflac policy, the employee got $850 on top of that.

This shows you that it’s a benefit for the employee.

The first person who gets hurt, hopefully they never have to use it, but it pays for itself.

When my employees heard the spill from the Aflac rep, I stepped in and said, “You know guys, I realize it is an expense you weren’t counting on.

I know it’s important and I am going to cover this as long as you work for me.”

If they actually leave your company, they get offered the same thing, from Aflac.

They will contact them but you know they are not going to carry it anyways.

2. Text Books:
   I have a guy going to school at night.

It was a one night a week, forever I guess, because he was trying to get his degree.

What I did was that I offered that for anybody going to school, I would pay for the books. It cost me $150 for the quarter, which breaks down to 1 hour a month of work, if we are charging $50 an hour.

1 hour a month is earmarked for one person, it’s earmarked for his book.

You start adding these things on top, not that it is a lot of money, but this is the reason for people to stay with your company.

When he is talking to his buddy who is another painter and he tells him, “My boss pays for my books.”

He’ll say, “But you are going to school for architecture?”
“Yeah, but my boss is still paying for my books.”

Good things happen to good people. Be that good person!

3. Clothing Allowance:

Some of us do it, some of us don’t. We give a $25 a month clothing allowance.

I want my guys to work in nice painter’s whites and shorts. I provide the shirts.

They do not have an excuse not to look good.

If you make them look good, you look good, because you are going to be part of them. They are a reflection of your company and when someone sees a professional looking company, your rates go up.

4. Gas Cards:

We do a quarterly bonus. I personally do not do the gas cards because my guys have gas debit cards.

Another way to do it is, you make a company goal that for a dollar amount to hit every month or hours worked every month, you’ll reward them all with the $25 gas card or whatever you want for a gas card.

This way they have something to strive for.

Let them have a gas card for a couple of months and let’s say on the third month they didn’t get it because they didn’t hit goal, they’re going to try a little harder to hit that goal because they want it.

You can make it a $50 gas card, whatever it may be.

5. Half day on Birthdays:

We started this a while back.

We don’t give them the whole day off, we just give them a half day.

They are able to leave at noon and do what they want and they get paid for the day.

They have already made the money for me, in the morning.

They come fresh and excited.

They have the rest of the day off so they pound out their work, do a great job, and they go off on their way.

You start adding these things up and it’s not going to break the bank.

If you jump into that 15% net profit you have, maybe it cost you $500 an employee a year, to keep that employee.

Start thinking about what an employee costs to keep them.

Never mind adding an employee who is going to generate $100,000 a year, because they hear great things about your company.

The labor market is tight.

Like I said it is on 44 year low for unemployment, meaning if someone wants to work, they are already working.

You have to be the company that when they see at the paint store, they hear about it on the streets, they want to work for you. If you are paying someone X number of dollars or someone’s is paying them X number of dollars, it doesn’t really matter where they work.

If you are offering X number of dollars and this guy is still a dollar more, but you are offering all these above mentioned benefits and it is a fun place to work, they are going to want to work for you.

This is what we are doing.

We want to keep our employees because of this low labor percentage out there.

We want to be the magnet for great employees and I hope you can pull something out of this.

I am Ron Ramsden, a DYB coach, and a painting contractor in Massachusetts.

If you would like to chat, please find me at ron@dybcoach.com

Find me on Facebook and send me a message.

We can also pick up the phone, or we can just chat on messenger.

Happy painting and be the company that people want to work for!

Have a great day.