How grooming
business owners pay their grooming staff is subject to debate. The most common preference is to pay
groomers by "commission." Most career seekers
don't know what this means, so let's take a quick pause to
explain a "commission based wages."
Generally, if an
employed groomer completes the grooming of a pet start-to-finish the groomer may be paid for his or her labor by an
agreed upon rate of commission, rather than paid by the hour
or salary. Start to finish grooming usually means all the steps
for grooming a pet, including pre-bathing chores such as
combing, brushing, ear cleaning, nail clipping and sometimes
pre-clipping, and then bathing and drying chores, and then
finish styling as required by the pet owner's service order.
To pay for this labor by commission, we need to know the
total service fee charged to the pet owner. Let's assume the
complete grooming fee is $40. If the groomer is paid a 50% commission,
the groomer is paid $20 by the business owner. The equation is simple,
50% times $40 is $20. It is not uncommon for experienced
groomers to demand 55% or even 60% commissions.
Important: A
hired groomer paid by commission is 99% of the time still
an "employee" according to I.R.S. regulations.
Being paid by commission alone does not conclude that
an employee is actually an "independent
contractor." Commission is just a way of calculating
gross wages subject to payroll deductions like any other
U.S. employee. Yes, you may find some grooming business
owners saying their groomers are independent contractors,
but it's so rare we advise, "Beware!" As management
consultants we have handled many such cases where the
I.R.S. has stepped in and reminded owners that their
groomers were employees, not independent contractors and the
fines and penalties were severe. If you don't believe us, complete
an I.R.S. Form SS# 8 describing the conditions of employment
in your grooming business. Upon review the I.R.S. will make
a determination whether your groomers are independent
contractors or employees. We have done several variations and the
I.R.S. came back every time saying the groomers were
employees. Some of the key points of the determination were
1) if a worker cannot
take their work home with them they are an employee, and 2) if they have to show up
on a schedule set by the business, they are employees, not
independent contractors. Owners are required to withhold payroll
taxes from employee paychecks as well as contribute
additional employer taxes. Owners are not required to
withhold payroll taxes from independent contractors and
instead only have to report to the I.R.S. how much they paid
independent contractors on an annual basis.
Sometimes
commission groomers do not do the pre-bathing, bathing and
drying chores and "pay" or reimburse the owner for
this work done by a hired "pet bather" or
"bather/brusher" employee. Most "bathers" are
paid hourly, although there are owners that pay them by
commission. Prior to the 1970's it was not uncommon for
bathers to be paid by piecework, in other words "per
bath job." Today, most bather
employees are paid hourly and sometimes salary for full-time
experienced workers.
So if there are
other ways to pay full-charge groomers besides commission, what are they? There
are thousands of grooming business owners in the U.S. now
paying full-charge groomers either hourly or salary, and not
by commission. Indeed, 30% of grooming business owners
completing our 2000 survey here
at PetGroomer.com claimed they were not paying by commission
any more. Beware! Commissions versus salaries is a very
controversial topic, perhaps only second to cage drying.
Indeed, in some parts of the U.S. you will find very few
owners that pay by salaries either by choice, or they claim
they cannot find groomers to work for anything other than
commission. There is a lot of truth in that statement too.
However, we know owners that say they would never, and never
have, paid groomers or bathers by commission. In fact, we never paid by commission in 26
years while owning one of the world's largest salons, and
the new owner hasn't paid by commission in 15 years! We
rarely had any problem finding full-charge groomers either
because we used Madson
Team Trimming Operations and the quality of the grooming
satisfied about 5,000 regular clients.
One of our
primary services as management consultants to grooming
business owners is to help them with the very large and
often emotional task to convert from commission wage
structures to salary based wages without losing employees.
It's not that we require them to convert as a fair
percentage of our clients do pay by commission. It's their
choice. However most of our confident clients that have
taken on the task to convert to salaries tell us it was
heartily worth the effort. Perhaps the most ironic factor in
conversions is that groomers truly fear
salaries thinking they will lose wages, but in over 100
conversions we managed the groomers never lost a penny in wage rates.
Not a penny. Yes, some groomers do rebel and threaten owners
when asked to convert to salaries, and some do quit, even
when the owner offered more pay by salary, more pay than
ever could be earned by the groomer on commission. We said
our experience was ironic, and we have many stories of
actual cases we share at our workshops.
Well, we're not
going to take sides here but provide information. As a
business owner you have compensation choices, and we support
your choice. It's not a matter of right or wrong, but our
experience owning a major grooming business was quite pleasant
and somewhat problem-free overall. If you have
a serious interest in salary based systems that have been
proven for more than 40 years in the U.S. without trauma,
please see our corporate site at www.groomingbusinessinabox.com.
Other than dollars
and cents pay issues, there are distinct reasons why we don't
prefer commission based wages whether we are the employees or
the employers. These vital reasons affect the work environment
of the entire pet grooming industry and explain why there many
businesses that do have a hard time finding qualified groomers
and maintaining a pleasant working environment. Let's take a closer look
on the next page.
