No Splash and Dash

If you ask five companies that do regular pool service and cleaning how they pay their technicians, you’ll likely get five different answers. the location, number of accounts and the gallons of water they’re responsible for each week all come into play.

“I’ve tried all of it,” says Jack Manilla, owner of Portofino Pool Services & Outdoor Living in Jacksonville, Florida. “Every kind of pay system there is over the last 20 years.”

Manilla worked in various construction industries before purchasing a pool service business. He spent five years working in the field himself, training a new technician after he’d built up a good route, then moving on to build the next, until he had enough business he could come back in the office and manage. So he knows what his people are facing on a regular basis. His company services and renovates residential and commercial pools, rarely building new unless it’s a special project. Manilla employs 20 technicians who care for 40 million gallons of water a week.

At first Manilla tried paying piecework, paying a flat rate per pool and then giving out a weekly gas allowance. But over time he started to hear from customers who complained his guys were “splash and dash.”

“Your guy shows up, and it seems like he’s in such a hurry,” Manilla recalls them saying. “It seems like he’s here five minutes and he’s gone.”

When he confronted his workers, he found they were more concerned with doing more pools for more money than the quality on which Manilla had built his reputation. “I fought that battle for a number of years,” Manilla says. “I then made a strategic decision to change the pay system.”

To ensure a higher quality of work, Manilla began paying hourly. “It shifted the responsibility to me to be a manager,” Manilla says. “My job became even more demanding in terms of overseeing their work and the quality of their work.”

Manilla stills pays hourly, but he’s experimented with different incentive programs over the years, particularly giving out spiffs if someone sold something when they were out in the field.

“I had a tree [structure] that said if you sold them a heater you get more money than if you sell them something small,” Manilla explains. But after years of trying, he found it was always the same employees who would get the extra check. “The rest could care less or did not have the skillset to do it. They would get themselves befuddled and just rather not do it.”

Now Manilla has what he calls an open-book policy. “We set goals for the company in terms of sales, cost of services, cost of goods sold, gross profit, administrative expense, etc.,” he says. “If we hit those goals on a quarterly basis, every employee in the company gets a bonus.”

The Christmas bonus is based on how long each employee has been with the company, so there are no surprises. In addition, Manilla hands out gift certificates for meals or food on birthdays, Thanksgiving and Christmas. He also makes sure his technicians are guaranteed a 40-hour workweek.

“For my existing staff, I’d pay overtime until I had enough accounts to justify bringing another person on board, then I’d make sure [the new employee] got 40 hours,” Manilla says. “I wanted to make sure they were comfortable with their take-home wages so they could live a quality life as well.”

He wants his technicians to take pride in their job. “It’s not a dead-end job,” Manilla says adding that over the years some of his employees have said otherwise. “I tell them, ‘You’re not a pool cleaner; you’re a professional technician.’ ”

And he treats them as such, ensuring they have the proper training and certifications. The company also has a corporate structure that allows for job growth with four technician categories: Grade-one technicians are apprentices working with a senior technician to start, then moving to the more labor-intensive residential accounts. Grade two technicians get better routes, perhaps small hotel or condo pools. Grade three techs do mostly commercial accounts. Grade fours handle the company’s major commercial accounts. Grade three and four technicians who aspire to more growth can become team leaders, and have four or five grade- one and two techs working under them. A supervisor oversees team leaders and all technicians. This structure is the same for each department in the company.

“We run our business like a large corporation, but we’re still a small outfit,” Manilla says.

For Kyle Chaikin, president of Ultimate in Pool Care, Inc., in Long Island, New York, making sure his employees take pride in their work is important — and personal to him as well. For some time, Chaikin only saw himself as a “pool guy.”

“In the very beginning it was tough for me; I never felt very proud of what I did,” he says. Then he got tied into the local, regional and national pool associations, took advantage of the education they offered and built a high-end business.

“It’s one of the biggest things that we push,” Chaikin says. “This is a career, not just a job. It is something to be proud of. It’s why we bring our guys to the design awards; it’s why we take them to education classes; it’s why we do in-house education.”

Chaikin pays his workers an hourly wage, which he says makes sense for his business because of its seasonal location. During the busy season his employees put in long hours and accrue a lot of overtime.

“We urge our guys to pay attention to budgets,” Chaikin says. “[We] try and help them…to be smart because they earn an awful lot of money during the busy times, and they shouldn’t be without come the slow times.”

Even hourly workers qualify for holiday pay and company gifts. Chaikin says they do that to help foster that career mentality and keep them coming back year after year.

“For the most part, we’ve had the same crew since 2011,” Chaikin says. That year he merged his two companies into one. “Every year, we have to add or fill in areas when we lose a guy here or there. Labor is certainly the hardest part of our business model.”

Like Portofino Pools, Ultimate Pool Care also has different levels of technicians, with each new level representing higher pay. And like Manilla, Chaikin isn’t a fan of paying technicians commission to sell in the field.

“I think it leads to unnecessary selling of products to homeowners,” Chaikin says. “Our first concern is to our customer.”

He expects his employees to point out worn equipment to the homeowner and company managers for follow-up. And he doesn’t do charge backs if one of his guys makes a mistake that causes damage. “Honest mistakes happen,” he says.

Chaikin says even in his area, each pool company operates differently, so his approach to pay wouldn’t work for everyone. “Everybody’s business is going to be different,” Chaikin says. “I wouldn’t be comfortable telling people they need do what we do.”

As different as Manilla’s and Chaikin’s businesses are, there are some similarities in how they treat their employees that can be mimicked no matter where you’re located or how many pools you service.

— Provide proper training

— Have a tiered structure that allows for job growth

— Whether employees are hourly or salary, provide benefits other than just wages

— Instill a sense of pride in the work that they do

With those principles, you can hopefully keep “splash and dash” from being associated with your company.