What is a reasonable hourly rate for a l6 yr old who helps in the garden

[Bouleversee]

and does other odd jobs in the South of England (Bucks)?

I have been employing a young lad for the past l8 months or so. What little he knows about gardening I have taught him but not all that much is retained. He seems incapable of recognising a weed even when I am pointing to and describing them, but is OK at mowing the lawn most of the time with my petrol mower. I haven't increased his pay because frankly I was paying him more than he was worth at the outset and much more than local shops were paying youngsters and wages for experienced workers weren't going up much if at all, though I have given him generous presents. However, he is now asking for a rise which I agree is now due but it is a question of how much. I think he is going to be l7 in the Autumn and he thinks he is worth £9 hr which seems a lot to me in relation to the Minimum Wage Rate and the standard of his work.

I should add that he is not all that reliable. He is always late and although I give him the choice of which days to come, he messes me about, e.g. sending me an email st 11.02 last Sat. night (which I didn't see then, of course) asking if it was OK to come on Monday instead of Sunday, and he rarely arrives before 10.30 a.m which makes my lunch very late.. I do, however, need some help being old and somewhat disabled, so I need to know what is a fair rate to pay to a schoolboy. He is already talking about starting his own gardening business and employing others to do the work so I expect he will go far - or go bust!

[UncleIan]

and does other odd jobs in the South of England (Bucks)?

The going rate for professional gardeners is about £25 an hour in Surrey/Hampshire apparently. This guy clearly isn't a professional. You don't say what you are paying him at the moment. Minimum wage for an under 18 is £4.20.

Might I suggest two rates? One for when he gets there when you want him to, as you're the customer, and one for when he rolls in at 10:30.

Or if you don't think he's worth £9 an hour, tell him why, and offer something less.

It's a delicate balance though, you don't want someone resentful moping around, and how much do you want to look for someone else?

[RececaDron]

"What little he knows about gardening I have taught him but not all that much is retained"

"He seems incapable of recognising a weed even when I am pointing to and describing them"

"I should add that he is not all that reliable"

"He is always late"

"he messes me about"

He is already talking about starting his own gardening business and employing others to do the work so I expect he will go far

Well, if he can negotiate a chunky pay rise on the back of a track record like that above, then he probably does indeed have a long way to go...

Alternatively, bin him for someone more useful and better value.

[Dod101]

I think you need to decide what you are getting from him against a professional gardener. They are expensive but my be more productive than he is, and they will probably turn up on time. If you can get a professional gardener for £25 per hour I think you would be doing well. On the rare occasions when I have had to employ one, they charge me £30 to cut my grass, a job that takes me about 40 minutes. They are though using their own equipment and take the grass away so I think that is OK. I live in a fairly affluent part of Perthshire and gardeners (decent ones) are hard to come by.

Dod

[Bouleversee]

I have been paying him £7 an hr. plus generous sums at Christmas and birthday. He's certainly not a professional; he doesn't know one plant from another and I frequently have to make him do something again, even things like raking up leaves as he leaves a lot behind and he doesn't listen to/retain instructions so forgets tools etc. He has lost umpteen pairs of secateurs, trowels etc. and I have found saws completely rusted in the garden weeks after he has used them to saw off a small branch. A nice lad in principle, however, so I mustn't be too hard on him but just rather more concerned with getting than giving and an inflated sense of his own value perhaps. I am wondering whether he might be on the autistic spectrum.

What I need to know is what other boys of his age earn. I daresay most are much the same.

Edit: I have just read RececaDron's post. I agree with you but it's not that easy to get anyone to do anything where I live. Lots of expensive houses and not very many manual workers.

Also just read Dod's post. I wouldn't pay that much for grass cutting. I wouldn't mind paying more for plantsmanship but even those who call themselves professionals often uses a hedgecutter to prune shrubs and remove all the flowering shoots. I prefer to do it myself with the aid of a youngster who can deal with the bits I can't reach, under my instructions.

[Itsallaguess]

I have been paying him £7 an hr. plus generous sums at Christmas and birthday.

He's certainly not a professional; he doesn't know one plant from another and I frequently have to make him do something again, even things like raking up leaves as he leaves a lot behind and he doesn't listen to/retain instructions so forgets tools etc.

He has lost umpteen pairs of secateurs, trowels etc. and I have found saws completely rusted in the garden weeks after he has used them to saw off a small branch.

I think it's great that even with the issues you've mentioned, it seems that you're still rooting for the lad (I'm here all week....) and hoping that he'll improve in the areas he's currently having a few problems with.

So with that said, I do think that any potential future rise should come with a sit-down discussion around reliability, promptness, and responsibility regarding looking after your tools. He needs to learn that these things are important to any future employer. Give him a probationary period on the new rate, and follow that up with a discussion around how he's doing with regards to the areas you want to see an improvement in, and make him aware that if improvements aren't good enough, then the lower rate will be re-applied.

Within that discussion though, you should allow *some* instances of late-notice changes to plans. Youngsters have very flexible social-lives, and I'm sure you'd rather he turn up late once in a while than not turn up at all, and he should know that there's at least *some* allowance in there for living a lively young life....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[wheypat]

I think you need to decide what you are getting from him against a professional gardener. They are expensive but my be more productive than he is, and they will probably turn up on time. If you can get a professional gardener for £25 per hour I think you would be doing well. On the rare occasions when I have had to employ one, they charge me £30 to cut my grass, a job that takes me about 40 minutes. They are though using their own equipment and take the grass away so I think that is OK. I live in a fairly affluent part of Perthshire and gardeners (decent ones) are hard to come by.

Dod

Wow! My wife started her gardening business this spring and is charging £15/hr using all her own equipment. We live in an affluent part of fife. No wonder the business has gone from nothing to her working 30 hours a week in a little under 4 weeks.

We got the price wrong . . . .

On the plus side she enjoys doing it and it's a lot more money than she used to earn in a pre school nursery.

[Dod101]

wheypat. That would figure. Yep I think your wife is under the market rate, certainly for here (near Auchterarder) The good gardeners work all the hours they can over the summer and in the winter cut hedges and suchlike. When I use the word 'gardener' often they are simply grass cutters, and trimmers with some weeding if you ask them nicely!

Still it will keep your wife fit and if she enjoys it that is a bonus. If she is good she will certainly get work.

Bouleversee. I only employ the guy I am referring to in adversity! In fact I hade a hip replacement 18 months ago or so, (over the winter before last) and decided for the first couple of cuts in the spring to get the guy to do it for me. He also cuts a 15 foot high hedge for me over each winter, probably at least 100 feet long. Better not tell you what that costs! The further details you provide about your lad means he is only providing labour and slowly destroying your tools. That would drive me round the bend.

Dod

[wickham]

The Hungarian lads who do gardening around me charge £12/hr (£10/hr last year) when they use my tools and petrol and an agreed lump sum which is probably £15 to £20 /hr for autumn hedge cutting with their trimmers.

The chief lad is, however, almost a professional gardener, but I seem to get a less experienced assistant for just an hour at a time while he works a full morning or day somewhere else.

[Bouleversee]

Itsallaguess -

I have had countless discussions with him on those lines. I had given him first choice of when to come over the holiday weekend and had made arrangements to visit my daughter on the Monday, which I had to cancel. Am I not also entitled to some social life, being on my own most of the time now? I am pleased to say I brought up my own son to have better manners and more consideration for others and to concentrate on what he is doing and not be thinking of his own enjoyment all the time. I don't think it is doing the young any favours to indulge them too much and I have done my best to instil some standards and knowledge into him, for his own good, an input which I get the impression is lacking at home. He wouldn't have lasted a day with a serious employer and would certainly not get the flexibility (he is away a lot) he has had with me.

Obviously, I shall have to pay the going rate, whatever that is. At l6 he is not eligible for the Living Wage so I looked up the Minimum Wage and in 2016 that was £4 for under l8s and this year has gone up to £4.20 (Apprentices earn even less) so hard to justify an increase from £7 to £9 over the same period. However, I suspect these figures are divorced from reality. This afternoon I asked in the local hardware shop what they thought for a l6 yr old and they said £5; the same from the little Indian shop across the road.

Perhaps I should be telling him I am going to reduce his pay,

Dod - I have a lot of hedges and have to pay a fortune to hedgecutters every autumn so no surprises there!

[Bouleversee]

P.S.to Itsallaguess:

His excuse for not being able to come on Sunday wasn''t because he had suddenly been invited to some exciting social event; it was because he had just woken up to the fact (so he said) that he had a lot of school work to do (he starts his O-Level exams later this month) and it had to be handed in by Sunday evening. His excuse for being late on Monday morning was that it gave him a bit more time for school work. When he was here, he let out that he had been to the gym on Sunday morning. Need I say more?

[didds]

TBH I'd dig around and see if you can find a replacement then let the lad go.

Ge clearly isn't worth a pay rise above £7 an hour, and asking for £9 an hour is taking the urine, however nice he is.

didds

[redsturgeon]

TBH I'd dig around and see if you can find a replacement then let the lad go.

Ge clearly isn't worth a pay rise above £7 an hour, and asking for £9 an hour is taking the urine, however nice he is.

didds

I think you have a couple of options.

Either you let him go and hope you can find someone better to replace him. My gardener is an old chap who has 40 years experience and he charges £9 per hour.

OR

You see the current situation for what it is...a failure of management. You need to put clearer objectives in place for him so he knows exactly what is expected of him. You can tell him that you have asked around and found that the going rate for a lad his age is £5 per hour and that you would love to pay him more but he will have to do things better than currently. Set up a trial period write down a checklist of exactly what you need from him and if he achieves it then he earns more money.

John

[Itsallaguess]

His excuse for not being able to come on Sunday wasn't because he had suddenly been invited to some exciting social event; it was because he had just woken up to the fact (so he said) that he had a lot of school work to do (he starts his O-Level exams later this month) and it had to be handed in by Sunday evening.

His excuse for being late on Monday morning was that it gave him a bit more time for school work. When he was here, he let out that he had been to the gym on Sunday morning. Need I say more?

Well, when you put it like that, it really does seem that he needs a lesson in reliability and overall expectations that, quite frankly, an immediate pay-rise simply isn't going to achieve....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[didds]

that he had a lot of school work to do (he starts his O-Level exams later this month) and it had to be handed in by Sunday evening.?

Yeah right.

So not only is he tardy and unreliable, he lies too.

didds

[csearle]

My instinct would be to go into overdrive to look for a replacement. Ditch this guy as soon as you can with a polite letter explaining the gulf between your modest expectations and his fantasy world of work. You've sometimes got to be cruel to be kind.

Regards,
Chris

[AleisterCrowley]

that he had a lot of school work to do (he starts his O-Level exams later this month) and it had to be handed in by Sunday evening.?

Yeah right.

So not only is he tardy and unreliable, he lies too.

didds

It's a few years since I was at school but I understand these days some coursework is done on a computer and uploaded - so a midnight Sunday deadline may be right. Or he could be fibbing...

[Mike88]

If you can't find a suitable replacement tell him you will pay £9 per hour on the days he turns up at the arranged time and £6 per hour on days when he messes you around. For what it's worth I pay a local man who is unemployed £10 per hour for odd jobs including gardening.

[didds]

It's a few years since I was at school but I understand these days some coursework is done on a computer and uploaded - so a midnight Sunday deadline may be right. Or he could be fibbing...

I get what you are saying AC, but I still doubt it. For a start this would potentially penalise any pupil that doesn't have access to a PC/internet etc at home or a suitable place to work at. For such pupils their deadline would effectively be 56-ish hours earlier than those with provision.

twenty-ish years ago I recall a discussion with my son's teacher about some homework that was set around TV programs. I asked what about any pupils that didn't have a TV in their household. Said Teacher replied she never sets homework that discriminated in such manner, and used an example a homework that required clipping stories out of a daily newspaper. I replied we don;t buy newspapers in our house - wasn't that the same thing. Comprehension dawned....

didds

[Bouleversee]

He did say it was done on line. My doubt, however, was about whether a teacher would want it handed in by Sunday evening when Monday was a Bank Holiday and then his excuse for being late on the Monday was because he needed to do more school work. I, too, suspect a bit of fibbing.

Thanks to all for comments and advice. I might have known it would all come down to my being a bad manager. Difficult to micromanage when your husband is dying and then have to deal with the aftermath of all that. I do my best.