Paying instructor compensation on a per student basis tends to encourage instructors to shy away from small classes and pack as many students into larger classes as possible to maximize income. Downside is that from a student's point of view, smaller class size is clearly better for many obvious reasons. So you have motivating factors in two opposdite directions - quite the quandry!
How do we address that here? Our instructor compensation, as well as AI's & DM's, is on an hourly basis. They prefer smaller classes to provide a more personalized experience and less rushing. Students win, instructors win, costs us a little more money but in the end, we win too. Can't beat that!
First of all - let me start by saying that my ideas here are based on my experiences as a consultant in multiple different industries. Please feel free to use these ideas - but they do not constitute direct personal advice. Each person's business is unique - and these approaches may or may not suite....
Having said that - quality and income do not need to be mutually exclusive. I do, however, have a bit of a problem with hourly rates.... If you pay somebody by the hour - they have no vested interest in what exactly it is that they do during that hour - as they get paid regardless. This type of pay system works well if you have good staff that take personal pride in their jobs. If you don't - you will go broke very quickly (or at least lose money....). This system puts the power into the hands of the employee - as they can chose what behaviour they will exhibit.
There is a saying in corporate world that goes something like this: "If you want to understand why an executive behaves the way he does - have a look at his scorecard". In other words - what key achievables are in his contract that are linked to money. These drive the way most people behave. This is no different in a small business (to an extent, but for the most part).
First thing I would do would be to create what is known as a balanced score card or the business, and link that through to each employee's individual performance scorecard. It's called different things in different companies - but the underlying principals are the same.....You start by listing down what you want from that employee in their day to day role. How do you want them to conduct themselves? What does an ideal employee look like? Once you have the actions / traits / behavours spelled out - you start assigning dollar figures against each.... This assumes you have a general business direction mapped out, and are working towards some sort of goal in the first place. You populate your balanced scorecard with your business goals, and then link those through to individual tasks / duties that each employee is assigned.....
I hate to say it - but we all behave in a manner that maximises our personal benefit. If you think about it - we really do...... Therefore, if you want your employees to act a certain way - remunerate them accordingly. Some call it manipulation - large corporations simply call it HR
. This will give you some background on what a balanced score card is:
Balanced scorecard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It can be as simple as a one page excel spreadsheet, with key deliverables on it. I would attach an example, but I cannot seem to be able to post attachments to this thread....
This is also sill very much in-line with my previous discussion on remuneration. The two are not mutually exclusive - except now we are talking about base pay as opposed to bonuses and extra's.
Some more reading on the topic:
Balanced Scorecard
Giving an example is difficult without being able to attach documents to his thread - but I hope that this helps in some way.......
