As a construction manager, you are responsible for all of the project details including maintaining the materials inventory. Construction materials tracking must be done correctly to avoid overruns in material costs and job delays. There are several areas where mistakes in materials management can be made; once you understand the problems, you can take effective actions.

The reason employees lie is they do not want to cause or get into trouble. In some cases, employee lying is to cover for another employee's lie. In other cases, they lie to cover for themselves.

How did we get here?
The United States is one of the few industrialized countries without statutory national mandates for paid leave. The EU  requires a minimum of twenty leave days, not counting national holidays. Australia has similar laws.

On average, U.S. companies provide ten to twenty days per year depending upon seniority. But many companies provide only ten days (two weeks) off per year. Then there the 25 percent of American workers and 31 percent of low wage earners have no paid vacation time at all, according to a 2011 study by the Center for Economics and Research. 

Where Did Paid Leave Start?

Amazingly, while the U.S. currently lags behind, the push for paid leave actually started here. Paid leave mandates have been attempted and got stopped each time. More than 100 years ago, in 1910 President William Taft proposed that every American worker needed 2 to 3 months of vacation. He said it was “in order to continue his work next year with the energy and effectiveness which it ought to have.” Taft hammered away at Congress, but his law never passed. However, But around this time, Sweden and Germany took the American president's lead, and both passed legislation mandating seven weeks of paid vacation per year.

Foreman logs or supervisor diaries and foreman log books are guarded more than a little black book. These supervisor logs hold every note you make over the course of a work day. Your recorded employee attendance, material shortages, safety hazards and multiple lists of things that must be done to get the job completed. They can also be used to track checklists from daily huddles. The problem is your notes grow by the day and carrying an encyclopedia around just makes your job harder.

Safely operating equipment in the construction industry is critical. Accidents and injuries cause lost job time, increase insurance costs and can bring fines from OSHA. While all safety areas are important, several issues present the majority of problems. Understanding the major construction safety pitfalls and knowing how to avoid them will help keep your crew safe.

Entering and exiting machinery

Little To Fear for Businesses So Far

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is here to stay, most experts agree. The politics of the issue, while unsettled are fading, the Supreme Court ruled the law is legal, and soon too many Americans will have coverage under their employers; from the exchanges, or Medicaid that dismantling it is not feasible.

The Only Things We Have to Fear Is...

Businesses, generally want predictability from government, not surprises. So what can you expect knowing what we know now. Generally, big businesses will be doing the same, just differently. 99% of businesses with over 200 employees already provide health insurance for their workers. The remaining one percent will have either to begin insuring their workers by 2015 or face a $2,000 per employee penalty. Some cynics suggest that employers who already provide insurance may opt for the penalty as it is cheaper than insurance. That is less likely if they wish to attract and keep the best employees. However, there have been some notable retail firms that have announced plans to cutback healthcare insurance benefits for part-time workers. Read: Trader Joe's Will Cut Health Benefits for Part-time Employees.

If you're one of the millions of workers who track their time on timesheets, you know how tedious it can be to account for every minute of your workday. Tracking your time may be monotonous, but timesheets are an essential business tool. Since the invention of the clock, virtually every industry and profession has measured the value of labor in shifts, hours and minutes. Timesheets make these measurements possible.

Ancient wages

The modern timesheet has its roots in ancient history. The Code of Hamurabbi, a Babylonian treatise written in 1772 BC, set a typical worker's daily worker's wage at 6 grains of silver. That's about $0.25 per day, without adjusting for 3,786 years of inflation. Some trades earned less than a laborer. A tailor earned 5 grains of silver per day. A carpenter, 4 grains.

The Time Clock

Unscheduled absences can be expensive for your business. They leave you short-staffed, can overburden other employees and cause delays. Understanding why unscheduled absences happen can help your organization find ways to reduce their impact. The journal Employee Benefits took a survey of employers and found the top five causes of unplanned absences from work. Read on to what they are and how to avoid them.

An employee forgets to properly log his sick time for when he was out on Monday. Because he’s in a rush on Friday he submits a timesheet that incorrectly says he worked on Monday. His supervisor is busy and signs the time card without checking. The time card information goes to payroll and gets processed. The employee gets a paycheck the next week showing a vacation balance that's 8 hours too high, and 8 hours of regular time he did not work. 

Companies Lose Money, Time and Productivity

Employee timesheet errors are rampant in some organizations. They can happen when employees take time off but code it as jury rather than vacation. They might receive a pay differential when they work in another cost center but fail to code their hours with the right cost center number. Employees can accidentally under report work hours, or when their supervisors are not paying attention, over-report work time. Once you process these errant hours and pay employees, you now must correct these mistakes and any additional errors they create.

How much does it cost to correct pay data errors? A lot.

First, all of these errors will create the need for FICA corrections, and in some cases you will need to file IRS Form F941x which requires detailed explanations of every correction. If your FICA underpayment is greater than or equal to 2% of your total FICA obligation, you will owe penalties and interest if you do not correct errors and make these adjustment payments with your next quarterly return. 

Another area where time card errors uncorrected will hurt is for hourly worker defined contribution amounts.  These are calculated based upon hours worked.  Any errors not fixed by year end will be even more expensive to correct. 

All of these errors cause even more damage to your business, not only rippling through an employee's entire paycheck, but infecting your accounting systems, accounting costs, billable hours and invoices. All of these errors need to fixed.