Time for another Clover experiment. I may be regretting this in a few months, but it’s worth a try.
As many of you know we’ve been doing a bunch of hiring as we get ready for truck #2 and the summer onslaught. We’re going to have to hire something like 25 people over the coming 2-3 months. This has involved better understanding how to find folks, understanding how to quickly assess folks, and getting better at training the new hires. We had some good practices to fall back on, but as always there is a bunch I’m convinced we can do better, so here we go.
So here it is, I’m going to try publishing our pay scales. We’ve cleaned this up and are very proud of the way we’re approaching pay. You know our employees all love you, and we hope they love working for us. But I’m not kidding myself, this is a job. Which means the money matters. Other than a few angels that have helped us without accepting pay (Gordon, I’m thinking of you), creating jobs is something we’re happy to be doing, and I love cutting paychecks. I love rewarding hard work. It’s important to us that as Clover grows that it’s not just the investors who get rich.
HOURLY WORKERS ($8.00 – $11.00), currently hiring
Everybody who starts at Clover starts at minimum wage, which in Massachusetts is $8. Well, a bunch of folks started at $8.50 when I thought that was the minimum wage, but then I looked it up, realized I was wrong, and changed it.
The idea is that we pay you more for 2 things: (1) skill/ experience – you get more done in an hour than a newby, and (2) responsibility – you’re stressing the details. We assess pay every month or so, and most full time employees have seen several pay hikes in the past year.
Maximum for “hourly” workers with no responsibilities is going to be something like $11/ hour. That’s the most we can afford to pay folks who are really good at what they’re doing, but not taking on additional responsibilities.
This has been an interesting approach for us. I landed here early on. I was trying to figure out how to think about pay. We knew we wanted to attract folks who are willing to roll up their sleeves and wash dishes, no matter what position you’re applying for or working towards. This is going to be a culture where nobody is beneath anybody else. So it just made sense that we all start at the same level.
SHIFT MANAGER ($11.00 – $12.00), currently hiring
If you’re taking on the responsibility of managing a shift we pay you more. Expect to be opening the truck everyday, or closing the truck everyday. You’re going to be responsible for other employees, you may have anywhere from 1 to 7 employees working for you at a given time. That means making sure things are getting done, training. And shift managers are responsible for customers that come to the truck during their shift.
ASSISTANT MANAGER ($11 .00- $15.00), currently hiring
This is a role for somebody who is ready to manage a truck. They need to be the right hand for the truck manager, ready to step in for anything. This is a role that requires full training on all shifts.
TRUCK MANAGER (Salaried, $35,000/ year + performance bonus of up to $25,000/ year), currently hiring
We spent a lot of time trying to figure this one out. The economics of the truck provided us with a possible envelope that depended on truck performance. And we wanted to create a position that was something like a small business owner, without all of the risk.
So we decided to create a guaranteed minimum salary that would provide a reasonably comfortable life for our managers. And we added a ton of upside based on truck performance. This may even grow in time. We want our truck managers to feel responsible for and rewarded for their success. They are running a not-s0-small business soup to nuts, and we want to recognize and reward that.
OTHER ROLES
As we grow we’ll need to fill roles at the restaurant and other “corporate” roles. We have lot to figure out on those fronts, but we’re going to try to keep things as lean as we can on the corporate side.
