Performance Pay Design Series
If you run a service business long enough, you’ll eventually notice a pattern: your best technicians are often the ones doing side work.
This observation is usually followed by frustration. Side work can feel like disloyalty — or worse, competition.
But that framing misses what’s actually happening.
Side work is a signal, not a moral failure
Technicians who take on side work are not lazy, disengaged, or uncommitted. In most cases, they are highly capable, entrepreneurial, and confident in their skills.
Side work is a signal that the technician sees a gap between:
- the value they create, and
- the earnings available to them inside the company
Output without upside
In many service businesses, technicians are paid primarily by the hour. When they work faster, solve harder problems, or upsell responsibly, their pay often stays the same.
From the technician’s perspective, this creates a simple equation:
“If I’m going to put in extra effort, I might as well do it somewhere that pays me for output.”
Side work becomes the only place where effort, skill, and speed are reliably rewarded.
Why loyalty arguments fail
Appeals to loyalty or culture rarely solve this problem. You can’t culture your way out of a compensation mismatch.
When the core pay system does not reward output, technicians will seek performance-based earnings elsewhere — quietly, efficiently, and rationally.
Performance pay changes the calculus
When technicians can earn more inside the company by:
- completing more work,
- covering extra routes,
- solving harder problems, or
- taking on inconvenient jobs,
the appeal of side work diminishes. Not because it’s forbidden — but because it’s unnecessary.
Speed matters
Timing matters just as much as rate. When performance pay is calculated automatically and paid immediately, technicians experience a tight feedback loop between effort and earnings.
Side work thrives in the absence of that loop.
Conclusion
Technicians don’t take on side work because they don’t care. They take on side work because they care — about being paid fairly for what they produce.
MyFieldPay helps service businesses bring performance pay inside the company, calculating earnings from completed work and delivering them immediately. If you want that effort focused where it belongs, we should talk.