Salary & Compensation

Would this type of package appeal to you?

[eWhisper]

I have a friend who owns a small business (2 people), but she has a need to add 1-2 more employees.

This area has a similiar compensation structure to web design & advertisng where the salaries range from $10-$100+/hour depending on the area. Also, the quality of work ranges significently and is not related to the cost (think web design on that one). She is U.S., located in a major city.

The person's regular duties would include web design, banner design, site maintainence, etc. They would have a lot of opportunity to set their own goals/projects, but ultimately they would be following her direction and wishes.

As her company is small, she can't afford to flat out pay someone $50/hour (what she wants to offer). However, she can offer $25 + incentives.

Incentives would be 25% of the new sign up fee (generally $500-1000/company so $100-250) and 5% of monthly maintainence fees (which averages to $50/company/month for the employee). Signing up companies would not a primary duty, that would be from helping with phones, emails, etc. She estimates that someone would only be able to sign up 2 new people a month as she handles most accounts, although they would be free to try and get more new customers on their own time through other contacts.

After one year, this comes $25/hour + $350 signup/month + $1200 maintainence fees if they signed up 2 accounts/month or an average of $34.69/hour - roughly $70k year (IF it goes according to plan, at worst $50k/year, at best much more).

Of course, being small and growing, this person would also be on the ground floor and possibly be paid more over time as the company grows.

I don't know the average salary of very good web/graphic designers and what they would want for full time consistant work in a casual business environment where all hours are flex time.

Is that a compensation structure & salary that would appeal to you, a professional designer living in a major U.S. city?

Note: I don't work for this company or have a financial interest other than I like to see my friends succeed. I won't be accepting or passing on resumes, I'm just looking for opinions from professionals.

[Symbios]

Offering a lower salary with incentives is better as people tend to work harder.

[Shane]

There is a lot to this. She is thinking of salary assuming she will get the ideal candidate (i.e. what she is thinking of, she will get). That is not necessarily true. She may want to think in terms of ranges and see where on the range the person hired falls (e.g. experience in each area of the job).

I see a potential problem(s) in the bonus for signing up people. That seems lucrative relative to the other remuneration and yet she only expects 2 sign-ups per month as the owner herself will handle most of that. The problems I see are:
1. this may motivate someone to spend more time on that to the dereliction of other duties
2. sales are not always clear cut, there need to be guidelines around who gets the reward for a new customer

On item 1, you may want to put some guidelines around when a bonus can be earned (all other work done).

On item 2, what happens if the new employee is too busy to handle the sign-up and the owner ends up doing the majority of the work. Who gets credit. (Or is it just get credit for generating the lead.)

But really, you might want to speak with a HR benefits person. They deal with this all the time.

..... Shane

[bedlam]

The person's regular duties would include web design, banner design, site maintainence, etc. They would have a lot of opportunity to set their own goals/projects, but ultimately they would be following her direction and wishes.

[snip]

Signing up companies would not a primary duty, that would be from helping with phones, emails, etc.

I could have gotten the wrong idea here, but it seems that the person will be doing both design work and answering phones etc? My experience as a designer in a busy (but not brilliantly managed!) shop is that there is no better way to kill productivity than to have people doing creative work stop what they're doing to talk on the phone.

Small company or no, your friend may want to try a different kind of solution such as hiring the new design person half-time and hiring a skilled receptionist half-time. If the company is big enough to afford it, a receptionist who knows how and when to let calls through and when not to can be a massive benefit to productivity.

I know that when I worked in that shop, it was extremely time-consuming (and demoralizing!) for myself and the other designer to deal directly with customers 'checking up' on the progress of their jobs...

-B

[eWhisper]

Thank you for the feedback.

They are also going to hire an admin assistant, but often in small offices, other people end up answering the phones/email and doing a few other random things.

Its the attempt to create a small everyone is involved and casual environment, over everyone go sit in a cubicle and work for 8 hours.