Veteran trimmer Marc Fisher once wrote an article for us about this exact topic: "Paying Staff Hourly, Salary or Commission?"

He experimented with a 100% commission model, but ultimately ran into some trouble with it. He eventually scrapped it and went back to hourly pay.

Give it a read.

Thanks!
We did read this article but I was hoping other shops might have had success with this concept or a variation on it. In the past number of years trimmers have applied here for employment that worked for shops that paid commission so I'm sure this must be more common than we might imagine. In the end maybe it's just not practical in our industry.
One of the things we have done is create a database in Shopmonkey for the number of hours each job should take and hold the employee accountable.

Have you considered a hybrid? For example, pay a slightly reduced rate by the hour -- but also offer a commission for projects employees bring in. This way they can actually make more than they previously were.

Every car guy has a network of car guys. If you incentivize bringing in work, you could encourage them to sell jobs on their off time (and also not to do work on the side). It would raise sales for you and increase their pay.

We're a small shop -- so no non-family employees. Maybe someone with a bigger staff can chime in.

One of my customers has a bonus scheme for their staff, where the employees are given a percentage of the profit that the company makes, on top of their regular salary. It's a pretty good system as it encourages the guys to focus on efficiency and productivity, because the more money they make for the company the more bonus they get at the end of the year.

Giving employees an incentive bonus works well by showing an added appreciation of their hard work. Be careful and check with your accountant of creating a sub-contractor base employee if your company is hourly base pay. I know a guy who did that with his current hourly based employees and 1099 them when they did renovations on his building. He received tremendous fines. .