For Your Assistants/tm's what Kind of Break Time Do You Allow?

[Justin Bilyj]

What's a good amount of time to have per amount of calling time for a break?
I was thinking 10 minutes every 4 hours.
I used to have my callers just go through the shift no breaks, but I really want to keep my new caller (shes American), and not burn her out.
Thank you,

 

[VolAgent]

How are you paying them? W-2 or 1099? Do they work at your location and direction?

 

[Justin Bilyj]

1099 at their location

 

[VolAgent]

To me, you start to cross the line of IC vs employee when you start telling them when and how they have to work.

I know Josh has a dialer where you can monitor actual dialing time. I'd probably pay them off that, maybe talk to him about what is a reasonable amount of dial time in an hour and set the rate to equal it. So if reasonably you should have 40 minutes of active dial time in an hour, pay 1.2 times per an hour of dial time what you want to pay per hour.

Ie, $10 an hour turns into $12 an hour based on dial time.

 

[Josh]

Most laws seem to indicate an employer is required to give a 15 minute break every four hours. This is not an employer/employee relationship so your ability to dictate that is fairly limited. That said, it's very much your option to only pay for time dialed.

For any telemarketers I've hired my policy is clear, I'll pay them for the time they're logged in. Within reason they can take all the breaks they want, I don't want to be cracking a whip on them, but if if they want to make money it'll keep them dialing.

With respect to my dialer, Welcome to AffordableDialer.com is a very strong solution when it comes to monitoring the times the callers are spending and what they're doing with it.

 

[KidsGotHeart]

Doing research on something very similar to this, while I wait to start my PH.D. If you can find a way to pay for performance, much like insurance companies do, then you will get more production for your dollar, generally speaking.