The situation
The client — a major US home services company with installers operating across many local markets — had historically paid its installers as contractors, compensated through incentive-based structures tied to the installations they completed. The solution described here was initially built for the client’s Minnesota operations, with enterprise-wide expansion in progress starting with California.
Changes in federal and state labor law required reclassifying those workers as W-2 employees. The reclassification itself is a significant operational shift — but the harder problem is preserving the economic substance of the previous compensation model while fully complying with new legal obligations. Installers who had thrived under the incentive structure needed to continue earning at the same level. But as employees, they also had to be guaranteed minimum wage for every hour worked, and overtime calculations had to reflect the blended rate required by FLSA when multiple pay types apply.
Off-the-shelf payroll software handles the basics. It doesn’t solve this problem.
How we approached it
We designed and built a comprehensive incentive pay calculator integrated across three platforms:
- Salesforce — where the client tracks installer activity and the amounts earned per installation
- Workday — HR platform of record
- UKG Pro WFM — workforce management and time tracking
The calculator pulls installer-specific incentive amounts from Salesforce, reconciles them against hours worked captured in UKG Pro WFM, and produces compliant pay calculations that flow into Workday for payroll processing.
Three specific compliance layers were engineered into the logic:
- Minimum wage protection — the calculator guarantees every employee reaches at least the minimum wage required by their specific jurisdiction for every hour worked, regardless of how incentive pay calculates in a given pay period.
- Incentive pay preservation — where incentive earnings exceed the minimum wage floor, installers receive the higher compensation, preserving the economic model they had as contractors.
- FLSA blended wage overtime — when installers work multiple pay types across a workweek, the overtime premium is calculated against the properly blended rate, as FLSA requires.
Why this matters
Misclassification and wage-hour compliance are two of the most actively litigated areas in American employment law. Department of Labor enforcement actions and class action suits have cost employers in the home services industry hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years. Standard payroll systems don’t natively handle the specific combination of incentive pay preservation, minimum wage protection, and FLSA blended overtime that this workforce structure requires.
This is another instance of the principle that clients know their business better than vendors. Our client knew exactly how installers had been earning and what the economic model needed to preserve. Our job was to build technology that honored their installers’ earning structure while satisfying the new legal obligations — not to force them into a vendor’s generic compensation model.
Outcome
- A compliant incentive pay system integrated across Salesforce, Workday, and UKG Pro WFM
- Minimum wage protection for every installer in every pay period across every jurisdiction
- Preserved economic substance of the incentive structure for installers earning above minimum
- FLSA-compliant blended overtime calculations for multi-rate pay periods
- A reusable architectural pattern for any services business navigating similar contractor-to-employee transitions
- Proof of concept validated in Minnesota operations, with California rollout underway and enterprise-wide expansion planned — a pattern where a custom-built solution becomes the template for scalable deployment
What this demonstrates
Engineering at the intersection of HR operations, compliance law, and multi-system integration. Custom calculator design where vendor-standard products can’t meet the specific compliance requirements. Multi-platform orchestration across Salesforce, Workday, and UKG Pro WFM. And the kind of integration work that directly addresses active legal exposure for clients — not just efficiency wins, but compliance wins with meaningful dollar and reputational consequences.
The solution’s MN-first, CA-next, enterprise-wide rollout pattern reflects how RJR’s custom engagements often evolve: built for a specific business need, then scaled as the client expands the pattern across their operations.