30th August 2004, 01:21 PM
A couple of random comments regarding economics...
Employees are a commodity, and are generally paid around one third of the charging out price, so ?150 per day chargeout = ?250 per week wages. This happens in all kinds of businesses. Just like a shop buying wholesale for 10p and retailing for 30p. Employees that don't understand this principle are destined to remain employees simply because they have no grasp of business. It is not greed, just the way things work.
Bad weather can be very expensive to cover - a couple of weeks of heavy can send a project into the red. Lazy, Hungover or incompetent employees can cost more then they earn, and there are plenty around (I just remembered one excavation where the (student) finds supervisors insisted that Eastings ran from right to left (even argued about it!)and cocked up the entire archive. Luckily I wasn't in charge). I've not heard of an employee saying 'You're right - I screwed up and will make good at my own expense', which is the position the boss or the company is in. So you train them - how is this paid for?
Administrators and others not actively earning money also get paid from this sum. These are often permanent staff members with pensions to pay for as well.
15K per year is about right for overheads where you work from home and don't employ full-time staff, but not enough to run an office with admin staff - you can double or even treble that amount.
As a matter of interest, how much are people paying for their professional indemnity?
Pete Muckle
Employees are a commodity, and are generally paid around one third of the charging out price, so ?150 per day chargeout = ?250 per week wages. This happens in all kinds of businesses. Just like a shop buying wholesale for 10p and retailing for 30p. Employees that don't understand this principle are destined to remain employees simply because they have no grasp of business. It is not greed, just the way things work.
Bad weather can be very expensive to cover - a couple of weeks of heavy can send a project into the red. Lazy, Hungover or incompetent employees can cost more then they earn, and there are plenty around (I just remembered one excavation where the (student) finds supervisors insisted that Eastings ran from right to left (even argued about it!)and cocked up the entire archive. Luckily I wasn't in charge). I've not heard of an employee saying 'You're right - I screwed up and will make good at my own expense', which is the position the boss or the company is in. So you train them - how is this paid for?
Administrators and others not actively earning money also get paid from this sum. These are often permanent staff members with pensions to pay for as well.
15K per year is about right for overheads where you work from home and don't employ full-time staff, but not enough to run an office with admin staff - you can double or even treble that amount.
As a matter of interest, how much are people paying for their professional indemnity?
Pete Muckle