Moonlight Serenade

Tweet

"They're in the moonlight business, and the company is their customer," Burton Chertok says of his employees.

Chertok, president of Burton Energy & Solar Technology Inc. in North Babylon, N.Y., maker of solar equipment and packaging machinery and provider of a metal heat-treating service, encourages his 65 employees to act as independent contractors by submitting bids for construction or repair work at the company's 50,000-square-foot facility. He implemented the plan last May after he discovered that employees were turning down overtime at Burton in favor of repair jobs elsewhere.

Employees now complete company repairs on their own time using Burton's tools and facilities. According to Chertok, the program allows his employees to make more money than they would through overtime or moonlighting, since they have no overhead costs. When the job is complete, workers are paid in one lump sum which they split among themselves.

So far, about five employees have taken advantage of the moonlighting arrangement repairing a company furnace for $3,000 and renovating 1,000 square feet of office space for about $2,300. The renovation, says Chertok, involved "a lot of hauling, pushing, pulling, and painting." But, he notes, the workers are pleased. "They want the extra money and they enjoy the entrepreneurial spirit of doing the work."

Employees' project bids are usually reasonable, and projects cost about 75% of what outside labor would run. The method also works well for improving employee relations and encourages employees to take better care of the facilities, while providing them with extra money.

But for Chertok, it is not so much the savings that makes the project successful. "It's a function of taking care of your own," he says.