Creative approach to keep contractor from padding hours?

[Tom Maurer]

I have 3 buildings made up of 31 1-2 br units. I have a maintenance person that lives 10 minutes away who does everything – carpentry, HVAC, plumbing, painting etc. - jack of all trades but master of fewer. Unfortunately, I live too far away to monitor how much time he puts in. I pay him a fair rate but I have a feeling he is padding his hours sometimes. He also uses a helper (which I also pay for) for 90% of the work. I think he likes the company of his helper but I think only about 60% of the work needs a helper and I think the helper actually makes him a little less productive sometimes. I think I want to keep him but I wish I could find a nice way to reduce the padded hours and helper use without driving him away and without having someone supervising him. I thought about some sort of incentive program if he keeps his expenses down but why would that work when he can keep everything he pads instead of getting what would naturally be a smaller incentive. Any creative ideas out there or should I just count my lucky stars of having someone who can do almost everything and is there when I need him?

[Erik W.]

The trick with this is, unless you have eyes on him the whole time, there's really no way to know for sure someone is working even if they are physically present in the unit.  This is why I pay by the job rather than by the hour.  I realize that may be tricky for a maintenance man, so unfortunately I don't have any better suggestion if your pay is hourly.  I'd be tempted to put him on part-time salary and say, "These are the expectation of what you need to do and here's how much we will pay. If you get done early and there is nothing else to do (rare!), you're welcome to head home."