Task Weights System

Policy Status, Amendments & Legal Disclaimers

This policy is not a contract. Nothing on this page creates a contract of employment or a guarantee of any particular rate or amount of compensation. Employment remains at-will, exactly as stated in [Employment Policies](/employment-policies).

Right to amend. The company may amend, suspend, or withdraw this system at any time. Because task weights determine pay allocation, any change takes effect prospectively only and will be communicated in writing before it applies — Minnesota law (Minn. Stat. § 181.032(d)) requires written notice before a pay-rate change takes effect. No change ever retroactively alters weights for routes already started or completed.

Attorney review pending. The compliance language on this page (minimum wage true-up, blended overtime, $0 labor lines) is drafted policy and is flagged for attorney confirmation before go-live. Where this policy and the law disagree, the law controls.

Effective date. This system is not in effect. It becomes effective only when the owner announces a go-live date in writing, together with the published weight tables for each site.

Glossary — Three Systems, Three Different Words

The company runs three separate systems that all involve numbers, and each one has its own word. The word "points" is never reused across systems — if someone says "points," ask which system they mean.

Credits & Debits (the [Employee Credits & Accountability System](/points-accountability)) track accountability. Credits reward good work; debits record mistakes. Over time, credits earn your rank.

Rank multipliers come from the [Route Shares Pay System](/route-shares-pay): Prospect 0.75, Crew Member 1.0, Crew Lead 1.25. Your rank is a pay multiplier earned through the accountability system.

Task Weights measure site effort. Every site visit is worth exactly 20 weights, divided across its tasks. Weights are about the work, not the person — a task is worth the same weights no matter who does it.

The one-line version: *Credits earn your rank, your rank multiplies the task weights you complete, and your weighted total is your share of the route.*

Three Layers, Three Words

The Fixed Pool — Every Site Is 20 Weights

Every site service visit carries a pool of exactly 20 task weights, no matter the site's size, price, or difficulty. A 15-minute postage-stamp lawn is 20 weights; a 2-hour commercial property is 20 weights.

Why fixed? Because weights are deliberately decoupled from dollars. The route labor allowance (set under Route Shares) already reflects how big and valuable each site is — that is where the money scales. Weights answer a different question: *within this site, who did what share of the work?* Keeping every site at 20 means the math is always the same shape, weights can never be inflated to move money, and crews can compare task values across sites at a glance.

The pool always pays out exactly. All 20 weights of every completed site are distributed — there is no leftover, no house cut, and no rounding remainder kept by the company. Forfeited weights (see Forfeiture Rules below) simply drop out of the denominator, which means the remaining crew's shares of the labor allowance grow to fill the space.

Weights are applied per route only. Your weight balance resets to zero at the start of every route and is never banked, carried over, or averaged across routes or days.

How Weights Are Assigned — The Allocation Rubric

Each site's 20 weights are divided across its tasks before the route starts, using a published two-factor rubric:

Step 1 — Time base. Each task gets a raw score equal to its expected share of the site's total minutes, from the site's published task-duration estimates.

Step 2 — Strain modifier. Multiply each task's minutes by its strain factor from the menu below. Strain reflects physical effort and precision demand — a minute behind a trimmer costs more of your body than a minute in a mower seat.

Step 3 — Normalize and round. After reserving the Site Duties line (next section), scale all task scores so they sum to the remaining weights, then round to whole weights (largest-remainder method, so the total is always exact).

Arithmetic example. A site has 40 expected task minutes: riding mow 20, trimming 10, edging 5, blowing 5. Three weights are reserved for Site Duties, leaving 17 for tasks.

- Riding mow: 20 min × 1.0 = 20.00 raw - Trimming: 10 min × 1.5 = 15.00 raw - Edging: 5 min × 1.5 = 7.50 raw - Blowing: 5 min × 1.25 = 6.25 raw - Total raw = 48.75; scale factor = 17 ÷ 48.75

Scaled: riding 6.97 → 7, trimming 5.23 → 5, edging 2.62 → 3, blowing 2.18 → 2. Total = 17 ✓.

Why trimming outweighs riding per minute: riding earns 7 weights for 20 minutes (0.35 weights/min) while trimming earns 5 weights for 10 minutes (0.50 weights/min). The strain menu is doing exactly what it is designed to do — the harder, more precise handheld work pays better per minute than seat time, so nobody can camp on the mower and starve the crew of trim pay.

Strain Modifier Menu (owner-tunable, published before go-live)

The Site Duties Line — Teamwork Is Always Paid

A small reserved portion of every site's 20 weights — 3 weights by default, admin-configurable between 2 and 4 — is set aside as the Site Duties line. It covers the shared work that never shows up on a task list: unloading and loading the trailer, gate checks, moving obstacles, spotting for a crewmate, final walkaround.

Site Duties weights split evenly among everyone signed in to the site — no claiming, no competition. If three people are signed in to a site with a 3-weight duties line, each receives 1 weight automatically.

Why this line exists: a pure task-claiming system would quietly punish cooperation — every minute spent helping a crewmate would be a minute not earning weights. The Site Duties line guarantees that showing up, pitching in, and doing the unglamorous shared work is always worth something on the ledger. It is also the floor that guarantees anyone signed in to a site earns nonzero weight (see the prevention stack below).

Sign-In / Sign-Out — Every Task, Every Person

Each crew member signs in to a task when they start it and signs out when they finish it, in the app. This replaces the old model where only the Crew Lead entered a single site duration for the whole crew.

Why per-person, per-task sign-in matters:

- It is the pay trigger. A task's weights accrue to whoever is signed in when it is completed and verified. No sign-in, no weights. - It is the audit trail. Every weight on every paycheck traces to a timestamped sign-in/out pair. - It feeds calibration. Actual task durations, collected across every crew and every site, are what the seasonal recalibration (see Rate Integrity below) uses to keep the published weight tables honest. Bad sign-in hygiene degrades everyone's future weights, not just yours.

Forgot to sign out? Tell your Crew Lead before the site closes — the Lead can correct a timestamp with a logged reason. Timestamp corrections after the route is complete require the owner and are always logged.

Claiming Rules

Tasks unlock when the Lead starts the site. No task at any site is claimable until the Crew Lead marks that site started. There is no route-start land grab — you cannot claim the best tasks at site five while the truck is still parked at site one.

First-come, first-serve — throttled by real work. Once a site is open, tasks are claimed in the app, first-come-first-serve, with one hard rule: one active task per person. You cannot claim your next task until you sign out of your current one. Claiming pace is therefore throttled by actual working pace — fast workers naturally claim more, and nobody can stockpile.

Disputed tasks — the toss-up. If two people want the same task and will not yield, either may trigger an in-app random toss-up. Both disputants must opt in; the result is shown to both instantly and logged with a timestamp for audit. The toss-up is consensual — if either person declines, the task stays with whoever claimed it first in the app.

Shared tasks split by signed-in time. When a task is legitimately worked by more than one person (the Lead designates it shared, or a reassignment happens mid-task), its weights divide in proportion to each person's signed-in time on that task. This is the single shared-task rule — the split is never negotiated or eyeballed.

Prospect training shadow. When a Crew Lead designates a task as a training task, its weights split 75% to the trainer, 25% to the shadowing Prospect. The Prospect earns real weight for real learning time, the trainer is compensated for slowing down to teach, and the site's pool is never inflated.

Rotation is a crew norm, not math. Crews are expected to rotate high-weight tasks so the same person is not on the trimmer every site all summer. This is a stated professional norm enforced by Leads and culture — the system does not force rotation with formulas.

Getting Paid — Rank-Weighted Accrual

Everyone starts every route at zero. As you complete tasks, each task's weights multiply by your rank multiplier and accrue to your balance:

Your weighted balance = Σ (task weights completed × your rank multiplier)

At route close, the labor allowance splits by balances:

Your labor pay = labor allowance × (your weighted balance ÷ crew's total weighted balance)

That is the entire model. There are no baseline shares, no bonus curve, no caps, and no thresholds — the split is smooth, and the pool always pays out exactly.

Two things this design guarantees:

1. Effort can beat rank. A Crew Member who completes more weights than a Crew Lead out-earns the Lead. Rank is a multiplier on the work you do, not a guaranteed cut of the pool. 2. Rank still pays a premium for identical work. If a Crew Lead and a Crew Member complete the exact same 18 raw weights, the Lead's balance is 18 × 1.25 = 22.5 against the Member's 18 × 1.0 = 18.0 — the Lead earns 25% more for the same tasks, reflecting the responsibility their rank carries.

Both guarantees show up in real numbers in the worked example below.

Complete Worked Example — Three-Site Route

A route has three sites (60 total weights) and a $300 labor allowance. The crew: one Crew Lead (×1.25), one Crew Member (×1.0), one Prospect (×0.75). Every site uses the rubric example above: riding mow 7, trimming 5, edging 3, blowing 2, Site Duties 3 (1 each, all three signed in at every site).

Sign-in log (task weights claimed and completed):

- *Site A:* Lead — riding (7). Member — trimming (5) + edging (3). Prospect — blowing (2). Duties: 1 each. - *Site B:* Member — riding (7). Lead — trimming (5). Prospect — edging (3) + blowing (2). Duties: 1 each. - *Site C:* Prospect — riding (7). Member — trimming (5) + blowing (2). Lead — edging (3). Duties: 1 each.

Raw weight balances: Lead 7+5+3+3 = 18. Member 5+3+7+5+2+3 = 25. Prospect 2+3+2+7+3 = 17. Total = 60 ✓ (all three sites fully paid out).

Rank-weighted balances: Lead 18 × 1.25 = 22.50. Member 25 × 1.0 = 25.00. Prospect 17 × 0.75 = 12.75. Crew total = 60.25.

Dollar split of the $300 labor allowance:

- Lead: $300 × 22.50 ÷ 60.25 = $112.03 - Member: $300 × 25.00 ÷ 60.25 = $124.48 - Prospect: $300 × 12.75 ÷ 60.25 = $63.49 - Total: $112.03 + $124.48 + $63.49 = $300.00 — the pool pays out exactly.

Read the result: the Crew Member out-earned the Crew Lead ($124.48 vs $112.03) by completing 25 raw weights to the Lead's 18 — effort beat rank. Meanwhile every weight the Lead completed paid 25% more than the same weight completed by the Member, so rank still carried its premium. Drive pay is separate and unchanged — it still splits under the Route Shares drive-pool rules.

*This example doubles as the acceptance test for the future CRM build: given these sign-ins, ranks, and allowance, the system must produce exactly these dollar lines.*

Worked Example — $300 Labor Allowance, Three Sites (60 Weights)

No One Rides for Zero — The Prevention Stack

A pure claiming system could theoretically leave someone with nothing. Five stacked rules make a zero-weight day essentially impossible for anyone actually working:

1. Crew-size gate at dispatch. A route cannot be assigned more crew than its weight pool supports. The system enforces a minimum of available weights per member (admin-configurable) before a crew size is allowed — a 60-weight route cannot carry a six-person crew if the minimum is 15 weights per person. This doubles as a staffing calculator: the weight pool tells you what truck size the route actually supports.

2. Live claiming only. Tasks unlock site-by-site as the Lead starts each site, with one active task per person — no one can stockpile claims and lock others out (see Claiming Rules).

3. The Site Duties line. Anyone signed in to a site automatically earns their even share of the duties weights. Signed in = nonzero weight, guaranteed.

4. Forfeiture is per-task and never retroactive. Failing one task forfeits that task's weights only — with the redo offered to the same person first. It never strips weights from other tasks you completed that day.

5. Mid-route reassignment splits by time. If a task changes hands after a breakdown or injury, its weights split by each person's signed-in time — the injured or reassigned worker keeps the share they earned.

The residual case — never signed in all day. A crew member who never signs in to any site all day receives a $0 labor line for the route. Their drive pay and shop pay are unaffected, and the Minnesota minimum-wage true-up (see Compliance Floor) still backstops their total pay legally. Not working while on the clock is handled as an accountability event on the Credits & Debits ledger — it is a conduct issue, never a pay adjustment beyond the $0 labor line the math already produced.

Forfeiture Rules

Unclaimed or incomplete tasks earn zero. A task nobody claimed, or a task signed into but not completed, pays no weights to anyone. Its weights drop out of the site's paid pool, and the crew's completed weights split the labor allowance without it.

Failed verification forfeits that task only. If a task fails photo verification or generates a client callback, the person who signed it forfeits that task's weights only. The redo is offered to the same person first — fix your own work and re-earn the weights. Forfeiture never reaches backward into other tasks already completed that day.

Weather cutoffs prorate. If weather shuts a site down mid-visit, completed tasks pay in full, the in-progress task splits by signed-in time against its expected duration, and untouched tasks pay nothing. The site's labor slice prorates the same way under the Route Shares partial-completion rules.

Forfeiture is weights only. Forfeiting a task's weights is not a debit, not a rank event, and not discipline by itself. Patterns of failed verification are handled by the Credits & Debits system on their own track, exactly as callbacks are today.

Rate Integrity — Weights Are Locked

Weights are fixed before the route starts and immutable after. The weight table for every site on a route is locked at dispatch. No one — not the Lead, not the owner — can change a task's weights mid-route or after completion. If a site's weights are wrong, they get fixed for *future* routes, never for the one being paid.

Why immutability matters: the moment weights can move after the fact, every route ends in a negotiation. Locked weights mean the deal is known before the first sign-in, and the math is the referee.

Seasonal recalibration. Weight tables are recalibrated from actual recorded task durations (from everyone's sign-in/out data) on a published seasonal cadence — at minimum once per season, announced in writing at least two weeks before the new tables take effect. Recalibration applies prospectively only. This is the long game of the sign-in requirement: real timestamps from real crews, not office guesses, set next season's weights.

Boundaries — What Task Weights Never Touch

Task weights never affect Credits, Debits, or rank. Weights measure work distribution; the accountability ledger measures conduct and quality patterns. A monster 40-weight day earns you more of the route pool — it does not earn credits. A forfeited task costs weights — it does not cost debits (a *pattern* of failures can, through the normal accountability rules, on that system's own terms).

Drive time is excluded. Drive pay comes from the separate drive pool under the [Route Shares Pay System](/route-shares-pay) formula and driver multiplier. No drive task ever appears in a site's 20 weights.

Shop tasks are excluded. Shop work pays flat piece-rates per signed task under Route Shares. Shop tasks carry no weights and never touch a route's labor split.

One pool, one instrument: weights split site labor and nothing else.

Compliance Floor — Minnesota Law Always Wins

Nothing about task weights changes the legal foundation under your pay:

Hours are always clocked. Every shift, every route, every person — regardless of how weights land. Sign-in/out on tasks is in addition to, never instead of, the time clock.

Minimum-wage true-up (Minn. Stat. § 177.24). Each pay period, your total gross from all pools is divided by your total hours worked. If the result falls below the applicable Minnesota minimum wage, the company pays the difference automatically. A $0 labor line from a route can never drag your legal hourly pay below the floor.

Blended-rate overtime (Minn. Stat. § 177.25 / FLSA). Overtime hours are paid an additional 0.5× your blended regular rate (total weekly earnings ÷ total weekly hours), computed exactly as described on the [Route Shares Pay System](/route-shares-pay) page. Weight outcomes never reduce an overtime premium.

These rules override weight math, always. If the formulas on this page ever produce a result below what the law requires, the law's number is the one on your paycheck. *(Compliance language flagged for attorney confirmation before go-live.)*

Phase 0 — Passive Task-Time Collection (Runs Before Anything Goes Live)

Before any weight table is trusted, the company collects real task times — with zero pay impact. This phase is pure data collection: no weights are paid from it, no payout math reads it, and nothing here changes a paycheck.

What gets recorded. At site completion, the crew records an optional task check-off in the CRM (this handbook is the policy — the CRM is the tool). Each entry captures:

- Task type — riding mowing, push mowing, string trimming, edging, leaf blowing, or other - Who did it — the crew member who performed the task - How long it took — a start/stop timer or entered minutes - Optional photo — of the completed task area - Optional notes — conditions that stretched or shrank the time (wet grass, tall growth, gate access)

Entries are stored per route, per site, per day, so the same site can be compared across visits and seasons.

Who sees it. Collected times are visible to the Owner only. They are never posted, ranked, or used in any conversation about individual speed during the collection phase. The point is honest data — crews who fear a stopwatch will game one.

How the data becomes standards. Published industry benchmarks are scaffolding only. A task's expected time is replaced with the company's own average after 5–10 comparable jobs, adjusted for site difficulty and conditions, and conservatively padded for setup, transitions, fatigue, and delays — machine-active minutes are never confused with blended man-hour minutes. Standards launch generously, are reviewed on a published, pre-announced cadence with crew input, and are never silently cut mid-season.

Why participate if it pays nothing? Because these numbers become next season's weight tables (see Rate Integrity above). Real timestamps from real crews — not office guesses — decide how the 20 weights split at every site. Logging your times is how the future system ends up fair to the people actually doing the work.

Disputes

Who decides: the Owner is the decision-maker for all task-weight disputes — claimed weights, sign-in corrections, shared-task splits, forfeitures, and toss-up challenges. The Crew Lead resolves live claiming friction on site; anything a Lead cannot settle, or any dispute involving the Lead, goes to the Owner.

Time window: raise a dispute within 48 hours of the route closing (or by the end of the next business day, whichever is later). The Owner reviews the sign-in/out timestamps, task logs, photos, and toss-up records, and issues a written decision within 5 business days. Because every weight traces to a timestamped record, most disputes are settled by reading the log.

What a dispute can change: which person a weight is credited to, a timestamp correction, or a forfeiture reversal — always with a logged reason. What it can never change: the site's locked weight table, another crew member's unrelated weights, or anything on a route already paid beyond the correction itself.

Disputes about *rank* or *credits/debits* follow the appeal process on the [Employee Credits & Accountability System](/points-accountability) page — not this one.