Salary Expense
Part 1 of a 2 part series
Warning Signs:
- Rising labor costs as a percent of sales.
- High turnover of employees.
- Evidence of inadequate training.
- Employee/supervisor conflicts.
- Increase in employee absenteeism/tardiness.
- Confusion/duplication of effort.
- Signs that a process needs improvement:
- Falling profits with stable or growing sales, stable prices and costs.
- Net sales to total assets out of line with industry averages.
- Unnecessary duplications.
- Unneeded income.
- Bottlenecks.
- Missing information.
- Missing resources.
- Poor morale.
- Rejects.
- Customer complaints.
- Absenteeism.
Steps to Improve: PRODUCTIVITY
- Evaluate staff productivity objectively.
- Reward employees with non-cash compensation.
- Reward your employees for bright ideas.
- Link bonuses to performance.
- Formula bonuses are less likely to become routine.
- Stamp out negative attitudes throughout the organization.
- Cross-train employees to handle multiple job duties.
- Invest in training your people in ways that will increase productivity.
- Daily direct input of time by time keepers increases billable time reported.
- Seize opportunities to upgrade your staff.
- Reshuffle under-performing staff to better suit their abilities.
Steps to Improve: OTHER
- Have written personnel policies.
- Pay twice a month or once a month, not weekly.
- Conduct exit interviews to confirm suspicions and uncover problems.
- Improve processes or re-engineer.