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COATINGSPRO MARCH 2017 23 employees on the job being productive. A lso look to your employees themselves to help you figure out some of these changes. Ask them where they see wasted time. Having them track some of these items on their time card w ill help you gather information and make some necessar y changes. Be careful not to make the process onerous, though. Don't make them write in codes for ever y unbillable item; help them help you by creating the codes that you want to track, such as safety meetings and material runs. T his w ill help give both you and your employees a real idea of whether their time spent is billable or not. T hat information can be used for you to make some changes and for them to make some of their ow n. If you connect each individual worker's labor utilization w ith bonuses instead of using net profit bonuses, for example, that might give him or her incentive to be more efficient. Net profit bonuses might not change the behavior of the workers, after all. If the workers can see how much billable time they have that month or quarter and increase their chances of getting larger bonuses, they' ll be committed, managing the labor efficiency percent- age themselves. If the employee can track his or her ow n labor efficiency on the time card, then the employee can actively reduce his or her unbillable time. A worker might say, "I' ll be sure to have all the materials I need on the truck today so I can have more billable time tomorrow," for example. In that vein, have your most expensive people do the most difficult work. Bottom Line At the end of the day, if you can do more work with the same number of people, your business should be able to make more money. By making sure that both you and your employees are aware of where the money is going and how it affects paychecks, you can start to increase the amount of billable time — hopefully for the same amount of money. CP Leslie Shiner is t he ow ner of The ShinerGroup, prov id ing top-level f inancia l and management consu lt ing for t he const r uct ion indust r y, helping businesses ma x imi ze prof its and ga in f inancia l cont rol. She is t he aut hor of numerous publ icat ions, inc lud ing A Simple Guide to Turning a Prof it as a Contractor. For more infor mat ion, contact: Lesl ie Shiner, w w w.shinerg roup.com Money Matters DeFelsko Corporation l Ogdensburg, New York USA Tel: +1-315-393-4450 l Email: techsale@defelsko.com Measures the concentration of soluble salts on metal surfaces using the Bresle method n Displays test duration, sample temperature, conductivity (µs/cm) and surface density n Easy 1-2-3 gage interface guides users through the Bresle method n Includes PosiSoft suite of software for viewing and reporting data NEW 1-800-448-3835 www.defelsko.com Innovative PosiPatch TM n No adhesive residue n N o sharps, no needles! For use with all Bresle pat ch t ypes including t he innovat ive PosiPat ch Wr i te in Re ad e r In q u ir y #34