Route Commission Systems
Commission, (incentive) systems work very well in environments where the employee has a great deal of control over the rate of production, based upon his ability to work harder, smarter, longer or faster.
Commission systems can be less effective in industries where the employee has less than total control over the rate of production. A vending route environment would be one of those industries. For example, a route person who is paid on a commission basis knows that he will earn more if he collects more money on his route.
System must motivate productivity
A route driver will learn how to fill and clean Antares vending machines as quickly as possible. He should also reduce the amount of time spent at each location, with the hope that he will have more time to service more machines and thus, collect more money each day. Up to this point, a commission system appears to be a win-win situation for the Antares operation and the route person. In this way the employee can earn more commissions and the company can earn more profit. A survey that was conducted revealed that most operators pay drivers some type of incentive. Fewer pay drivers a straight salary. There are those that pay only commission, and others pay a combination of commission and salary.
Be aware of all possible results
There can be several downsides to commission systems as well. Since a route driver would want to service more Antares vending machines, he may, 1) drive too fast; 2) perform less than 100 percent of the machine sanitation requirements; 3) ignore simple, mechanical procedures, such as removing a paper clip from a coin acceptor; 4) not take the time to coin test a machine after filling it.
Any or all of these conditions can create more serious problems than the problem the commission system was originally designed to solve.
Pay plan has no bearing on schedule
A commission system, in and of itself, will not teach a route person how to schedule his route. The key to improving route productivity is scheduling the route person to service an Antares machine only after the machine has made enough sales to profitably justify the cost of service. This would be a management or supervision function.
The operator who runs weekly route averages of $4,000 to $5,000 and thinks that the installation of a route commission system will automatically double those averages is kidding himself.
posted by Larry Bunker @ 5:40 AM
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