Most contractors have some kind of bonus. Most contractors also cannot point to a single thing their crew does differently because of it. In this episode Brent Oberlink and co-host Travis talk with Michael Fortinberry of Protiv about performance pay, and the conversation gets practical quickly.
The question that exposes the problem
Fortinberry's test for any bonus program is simple. Do you think the man on your job site is working differently on a Tuesday in April because of a bonus he might see at Christmas?
His point is that crews think in terms of Friday's paycheck. A payout that lands months from now, in an amount nobody can predict, is not connected to anything happening on site today. As he puts it, "Why have a bonus program if it doesn't change behavior?"
What does work, in his experience: keep it simple, keep it transparent, and pay frequently. If someone can see on their phone that they have money accrued this week, the bonus is now part of how they think about the day.
How it gets structured on real jobs
The obvious objection comes up on the episode. A job with the same four people for two months is easy. A job with twenty seven people rotating over seven months is not, and nobody wants to wait seven months to pay anything.
The answer he describes is partial payouts along the way when the team is ahead, with a reserve held back in case they fall behind later, and tracking that follows each worker through each phase of the job. Bonuses typically get paid about a month in arrears, which leaves room to true things up if the job reopens or work has to be redone.
He is candid about the limit: once money is paid out, it is paid out. You are not clawing it back from a future check.
It is not really about the bonus
The strongest section is where Fortinberry argues that what you are actually building is a culture of performance, and that the bonus is just the mechanism that makes people talk about it every day.
The examples are specific. One contractor ties payouts to preventive maintenance being completed on schedule, which is a real problem on equipment heavy crews. Others tie bonuses to completing safety training. He notes the line you cannot cross there: OSHA does not allow paying people for not having accidents, but paying for completed training is fair game.
His own company used it on attendance. They had a no call, no show problem, and tying bonus eligibility to zero no call no shows ended it. When someone can see two hundred and seventy five dollars sitting there, they call.
What it does to the people you can hire
The hiring angle is the part most contractors will not have considered. Fortinberry describes a carpenter walking in asking for forty five dollars an hour. His answer was that their carpenters have a base of thirty five and average around sixty two, because the good ones perform and the pay follows.
Then the advice that follows it: if a candidate does not respond well to that, do not hire them. You have learned something useful in the first five minutes.
He also makes the retention argument. Turnover has a cost most owners never total up, and a pay model where strong performers earn more is a reason for those specific people to stay.
Two warnings worth repeating
First, do not pilot it with two guys. Presenting performance pay to part of a crew tells everyone else they are not worth it, and you will spend more time repairing that than the test was worth.
Second, do not fund the bonus by cutting base pay. He says they tried a version of that early and dropped it, because the unintended consequences were obvious once it was live. Performance pay works as upside on top of a fair base, not as a way to pay the same money with extra steps.
Listen to the full episode, or find The Better Contractor Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.