The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) classifies construction as a “high-risk” industry. Compared to other industries, construction workers are more vulnerable to serious injury. Because of this, it’s imperative that each and every worker understand the importance of construction safety checks.

Walk-Around Inspections

Each employee should have a walk-around inspection checklist. This checklist should be completed at the beginning of an employee’s shift, to ensure that their tasks are completed in the safest environments.

Everyone’s walk-around inspection will the different. For instance, a forklift operator will need to walk around and inspect his vehicle, while a construction manager will be responsible for doing an overall jobsite safety inspection.

Here are some examples of what could be on an inspection checklist:

• Ensure everyone is wearing the right safety gear: goggles, helmets, etc.
• Determine that all work areas are clean
• Determine that all exits are properly labeled, and that all emergency exit plans are hung in highly visible areas
• Flammable liquids, and other hazardous materials, should be properly stored

A supervisor, or foremen, is the crew leader on a construction jobsite. It’s up to him to plan, organize, and direct work in a safe, and timely, manner. All supervisors will experience conflict at some point, as well as safety violations and workplace injuries. By keeping a daily record of all activities, your construction site supervisor can protect your business from arbitration and/or litigation.

What is a Daily Log?

The daily log is a book, or software program, into which a supervisor records the day’s activities. Record keeping helps ensure project organization, as well as keeps tabs on day-to-day employee happenings. The daily log is essential because it keeps a consistent record, which could be useful if you’re ever sued, and need to prove that your workers performed a safety inspection, or conflict was handled immediately and efficiently.

Daily log sections include:

• Date
• Times of incidents
• Work performed
• Safety topics
• Problems and delays
• Employee conflict  
• Equipment usage
• Materials purchased
• General management

A new year has begun, and it's time to look at some of your business practices. Are you still using paper timesheets? If yes, then you are probably experiencing some of these problems:

Problem #1: Clerical errors

You spend a lot of time correcting errors.

Using paper timesheets means someone has to read everyone's handwriting, and has to enter numbers from a piece of paper to a computer, or hopefully not a paper ledger. Those errors can cost you time and money in reconciling with employees. Those errors can also cause you legal problems. There is a way to take care of all those errors.

Despite laws against the practice, many employees still attempt to cheat their time-sheets, collecting wages for hours they didn’t actually work. This practice can cripple a business, so diligence is needed to prevent it. Reducing fraud and errors in time tracking is payroll and management’s job, so encourage them to familiarize themselves with red flags, as well as institute practices designed to eliminate the opportunity to commit fraud.   

How is Time-Sheet Fraud Committed?

Unauthorized Hours –

Fraudulent employees will increase their time-sheets with extra hours they didn’t actually work. On a long enough timeline, this practice can end up costing a business thousands of dollars, as was the case in Vermont, where a police patrol commander was found to have padded his time-sheet from 2006 – 2012, defrauding taxpayers to the tune of $213,000.

Buddy Punching –

People build friendships at work, but those friendships can become toxic when employees start to punch in for each other. A “friend” may ask her fellow employee to punch her hours into the company clock, even though she’s not working that day.

Ghost Employees –

Unfortunately, many companies have been crippled by the actions of their payroll staff. Payroll is supposed to prevent time-sheet fraud, but sometimes they could be the department behind the fraud. In large companies, where the fraud is less likely to be noticed, payroll staff will create a fake employee and collect their wages. Ghost employees may also be employees that have left the company, but to whom payroll still continues to cut a check.

Pay Rate Alteration –

Sometimes, an employee and a member of the payroll staff will join forces to defraud the company. The payroll staff member will alter the employee’s pay, increasing it to an amount that is desirable to both of them. The amount will then be split when the check is cashed.

Employee absences and tardiness are costly to the business and can have a detrimental effect on overall productivity. Additionally, employee absenteeism can often be viewed as a gauge in determining employee morale. A survey conducted by CCH found that over half of the time an employee calls in sick, they're faking. With so much risk involved, many employers are turning to employee incentive programs, but do they really work? The answer is yes, as long as the incentives are tailored to your company and its employees. While these programs carry some disadvantages, such as time and expense, the overall advantages resulting from a successful attendance incentive program can easily outweigh them. 

There are many ways employee hours can be paid wrong. When you're calculating everything manually, mistakes can be made. For the Southeast Kansas Regional Correctional Center, they saw big problems when the latest paychecks came out for their employees, and they ended up much bigger than had been anticipated. In short, it was a massive trainwreck.

Gallup has released some very interesting data based on their research about the number of uninsured Americans who are unaware of the health exchanges. According to their surveys, only about 30% of the uninsured are aware of the health exchange sites.

About 44% of the insured who said they will seek insurance will get it from a health exchange. There are many reasons why people might be avoiding the exchanges. One is simply not trusting the government for anything. A CBS News poll from this year found only about 20% of their respondents said they do trust the government.

Another potential reason is that they have heard enough or too much negative publicity about the health exchange website problems that they won't bother trying to apply because they believe they would be wasting their time. Another reported problem is that the sites might have security issues, so not signing up now could seem like a wiser choice to avoid any issues with identify theft.

Some of those who are not flocking to the sites are unfamiliar with the sign-up process and how to navigate through the various options to obtain insurance. This barrier could be overcome easily once there is more buy-in and use of the sites. For others, the issue may be the the digital divide. Older people and the less well off still have some lack of comfort with using the Web and understanding how to complete an online application. They also might not have consistent Internet access.

(One report has contradicted this idea though, saying it is older Americans that have been signing up, because they have health problems that need to be addressed.) What has been unexpected is the low turnout in younger enrollees.

It appears the state health exchange sites are receiving more applications and visits than the federal one. This is likely to be because it is easier to create a single site for one state and insurers and residents than it is for a whole nation. All eleven of the state-run exchanges and at least 1,000 enrollees, but 27 of the states that used the federal exchange site had less than 1,000. It has been estimated that 95% of the enrollments for 2014 have not happened.

If the state health exchange sites are signing up the most people now, this trend may continue because the federal site still remains less than 50% complete.

Having health insurance could relieve stress for many workers around the country, because health insurance can help prevent very large health care costs for individuals. Even with a large deductible, health insurance is generally a better bet than having to pay for the cost of an injury or illness out of pocket.

Image Credit: Blue String, Wikipedia