Footwedge;1262327 wrote:SMH. Apparently this thread has flown right over your head. Not surprised. These things you listed will virtually disappear. It happens everywhere. The slickest business owners, both large and small, know this...and increase their bottom lines....not to mention improving the work life for himself...and his employees.

No, apparently you got lucky or, more likely, overpaid without realizing it and par for the course exhibit plenty of confirmation bias. There isn't a management book out there worth its salt that doesn't link pay with performance. It's time tested and proven again and again. Maybe your hiring practices were just so crappy that you needed to overpay to sell good people on the job. Successful companies invest in hiring more so than paying above market rates, goes back to what I was saying about the culture mattering more (a point that flew way over your head).

Footwedge;1262322 wrote:Don't know how many you employ, but if it is more than a few, you need to change your way of thinking. Because your thinking is stinking thinking...and losing thinking.

Interesting that I seem to be winning with it. I used to employ 12. I now employ zero. Cost of employing was too high for the return. Interestingly, my own pay is now higher than it was then.

Footwedge;1262322 wrote: You pay your guys a little more...let them know you are paying them more than the competition is, and your productivity soars.

This was never, ever the case when I raised the pay of someone who had yet to earn it.

Footwedge;1262322 wrote: Occasionally, you will have to deal with a drunk or whatever.

Drunk was never the problem. It was traditionally laziness. Upping pay never helped that. Never hurt it, either, to be fair. However, upping the pay of someone based on their current performance seems to solidify their current performance.

You don't give a runner a gold medal to get him to run harder. You make him aware that if he runs hard, he can get it. Same as you don't give a horse a carrot and then expect him to move.

I have ZERO qualm with telling someone what I'm willing to pay if they earn it. I actually ran a couple sales employees at breakeven, offering them not only a base salary, but every penny they earned (minus the cost of employing them otherwise) in commission. It worked well, as the carrot on the string was all the incentive they needed.

Footwedge;1262322 wrote:You fire him and move on.

I'm not talking about the employees who are problems. I'm talking about the ones who do enough to get by, but no more.

Footwedge;1262322 wrote:Most human beings will respond positively to a good deal. It is proven.

They earn 'X', and they'll make 'X'. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.