Pay rate change

[cmplxty7]

My new department at work will soon be switching over to Activity Based Compensation. Ever heard of it? It pretty much comes down to getting paid for how much you do instead of a flat hourly rate regardless of what you produce. It is hard to explain since you don't know a lot about my job, and it's a lot of math, but I will do my best here.

The work we do can be put into two final categories: completes (which are reviews we finish on our own in our office) and pends (which we send back to the client to complete in their office). The goal is to make completes - those are the important numbers. Unfortunately, we are not given all the resources our client uses, and we have to pend quite a bit of stuff back to them because we are not permitted to do it in our office. Currently, our goal is 49 completes per day per person. So I currently get paid $16.80/hr and am expected to average 49 completes a day.

Under ABC, our time will be electronically tracked to show when we are on/off production. When we are on production, we will get paid $2.70 for every complete we do. When we are off production (away from desk, in bathroom, talking, whatever) we will make $11/hr. We will also have a subsidized rate of $11/hr, so that if we are on production, but not making completes, or enough completes to be more than $11/hr, we will always make at least $11/hr. When it is something out of our control - meetings, training, system down, etc. - we will be paid at our current rate, $16.80/hr for me.

This is a last-resort they use for businesses that are struggling to meet production and quality goals. It typically separates those that want to do the job from those who don't. It is purely working for incentive (well, unless you are happy making $11/hr). The only thing that everyone is worried about is that people in this department generally struggle to meet their goals, due to constraints from the client. Also, it is impossible to know what your check is going to be a month from now, six months from now. It will not be a constant rate of pay. However, it can be a much larger rate of pay if one performs really well. Math below:

I currently make $134.40/day, $672/week
My current goal is 49 completes per day
We will get paid $2.70 per complete
$134.40 divided by $2.70 is.....49.7!

So pretty much, if I can meet the same goal as I am already expected to meet, my pay will be the same as it would have been anyway. Downside is that if I do not meet that production, I will be penalized for it. Upside is that if I can produce more than that, I will get more money!

Of course, it is terrifying right now because I am only getting an average of maybe 10-15 completes per day. My best day so far was 30. But we are still in training, and even after we get done training we will have a 90 day probation period. So I think I will be ok, but only time will tell. The cool part about the 90 day probation is that if we exceed our goal, we will get the extra incentive pay, but if we do not meet our goal we will not be penalized since we are in the probation period. ALSO, with this, if you meet your goal you can take the rest of the week off. So if I were to somehow meet my weekly goal by noon on Wednesday, I could take off until Monday. Or I could stay and make bank the rest of the week.

This is very scary since there are several people that have been on that team 10 months and still can't consistently hit goals. So like I already said, only time will tell, but I am pretty freaked about it, though I am trying to be positive about the fact that I will meet production goals just fine.

[madd74]

It sounds wonderful! I realize you are freaked, but I hear you talk about your job so often and how you are always ahead of the class. To me, it sounds as if one you get into the swing of things, that you will end up with some possible days off.

Also remember, I do my best to think positive, not that you make it easy on me or anything

I certainly understand how freaky change can be. I am doing my best to keep calm and collective as all this crazy stuff is going on. I will get more into it later, as I really do not want to get into it now.

I have faith in you because I know how you are with your job and what you put into it. I believe you have the ability to surpass these goals, even though I understand right now it adds a bit of stress to you.