After more than two decades in business, Birmingham, Alabama–based architect Jeff Dungan hated the notion of encouraging employees to work more rather than more efficiently. After a breakthrough moment while crunching numbers, he overhauled his firm’s bonus structure to an incentive-based tier system.
What were you trying to solve for when you decided to reinvent your bonus structure?
I don’t run a sweatshop. I’m a pretty easy guy to work for. But paying a large salary and then coercing you to work a lot of unpaid overtime is the oldest trick in the book. Goldman Sachs is one of the most famous for it. They’ll pay you six figures right out of college, but they’re going to make you work 75 hours a week, so you’re not making a lot
if you actually do the math. Architecture firms will do the same thing—it’s like, “Fine, I’ll pay you whatever number, but I’m going to get it back out of you by working you to death.” But I don’t want to be that kind of person, and I don’t want to create that kind of culture.
BOH subscribers and BOH Insiders.