Unibase / ACS
The Commission Shift
Dee Gardner, July 1, 2026
Learning Lessons: Deadline crunches are rarely a staffing problem; they’re an incentive problem. Aligning your team’s earnings with the company’s success creates natural momentum and eliminates the bottleneck.
Situation: Unibase (later acquired by ACS) was severely struggling to meet critical client deadlines within their Quality Control (QC) document auditing department. The team consisted of 25 people paid a flat hourly rate of roughly $8.00/hr, resulting in low urgency and a massive operational bottleneck.
Task: Restructure the QC auditing workflow to guarantee met deadlines, increase processing speed, and reduce ballooning labor costs.
Action: I audited the baseline metrics and proposed a radical shift: transitioning the team from a flat hourly rate to a performance-based commission structure where they were paid per audited document.
Result: The commission shift turned auditors into stakeholders. Freed from hourly stagnation, 12 hyper-efficient people did the work of 25. Costs plummeted by 50% ($32,000/mo down to $16,000/mo) while peak earnings jumped to $18.00/hr. Urgency wasn't managed; it was unlocked through ownership.