I always love to find out how businesses run, especially with hands off owners looking for a more turn-key approach.
I find it more fascinating when there are multiple departments, and they are treated differently. One that I was able to observe for a few years was definitely intriguing.
One department head was on salary, but was bonuses based on ebbs and flows of the business, so he was always pushing the employees to service as well as sell to the clients.
The other department head, was a strict employee with a salary and office bonus, not tied to the success of the department. To make this even more unpleasant they knew of the other’s deal. They also had to continually justify their existence to the Office Manager who was basically evil.
The second department head was hired after the woman who created the department quit, because she found out about the other deal. She demanded to be treated the same and was rejected, so she let.
I saw several people roll through the second department, over the years, no one wanted to keep making only the rich richer.
It ended by the first department head being offered to buy his department, he did and lived happily ever after.
The second department was sold to a larger company who gutted the employees and kept the name only, not the service.
The moral of the story, look after yourself, few others will.