engineer bonus ??

Re: engineer bonus ??

I can only speak for my experiences from working for Hotpoint over 30 years ago.

We had a bonus system in place when I first started and TBH it was an incentive to do fast, shoddy work, cut corners, fit parts that were not needed and to sell service contracts on clapped out machines that should have been scrapped in the first place.

At that time the service division was treated as the poor relation, run down vehicles, poor back up in most areas whilst the sales team ran around in new cars, each major store had Hotpoint employed ‘ Lady Demonstrators’ being paid far more than the engineers.

Mr Weinstock, the big cheese at GEC put his brother in law, Shiam Schreiber [sp], (the very same Mr Schreiber who at that time had his own furniture company ) in complete control of what was then known as BDA and he completely transformed the lot of the service engineer. He stated that the engineer was the companies most important contact with the customer and set about changing the status quo. He got rid of all of the Lady Demonstrators, drastically reduced the sales team, abolished the bonus structure and put in place a decent salary with minor incentives that did not rely on ‘performance’ as such.

The tatty old blue boiler suits went and a modern uniform was introduced, also the van fleet was vastly improved.

It was radical overhaul but it did lead to a much happier work force and strangely enough, improved productivity.

Things have doubtless gone downhill in a big way since but the gist of my post is, pay a decent basic wage, give good quality support with vehicle, stock and tech info and you should have no need to pay a bonus to anyone who is a good, conscientious employee.

Jim.

Re: engineer bonus ??

I think Jim is right, ask any engineer and i think they would agree.
All you ever want is a descent wage for a descent days work, also a bit of appreciation now and again also goes a longway. 😉

John.

Re: engineer bonus ??

Bonus is a an incentive to do whatever it takes, usually far worse than anything found on watchdog.

Engineers jobs are simple, if its broke we fix it, the difference though is should I cable tie a broken part hoping it last long enough to be able to have the correct part when it final falls off and get 2 completed calls for the price of one or order a replacement.

The cable tie scenario on paper shows that engineer is better than the one who orders, his completion is high, so he has to be a good engineer, right.

That is the reality of idiots running service depts, there usually bad engineers who have sucked up to the boss and become managers who in my experience couldn’t run a childrens party.

Personnally I wouldn’t use a bonus scheme, as engineers we have little control over company stock levels (in big companies) the ones on a bonus scheme should be the ones running the poor control systems and the call centres who cannot write correct faults from the client.

If you get the right info first, then prep the calls correctly, then the last one who needs to get it right is the engineer, a bit like a goalie, if everything else is working right first, then we should be the last resort, in reality the team is generally poor, the result then reflects on the goalie.

Blue boiler suits and yellow leyland j4s with a sliding door .those where the days
Dave

But lovely in the summer when you could drive around with the door open

Re: engineer bonus ??

😯

:p45:

mine had two