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Garber Brothers Precision Concrete has always had a culture and value system based on hard work and accountability. But once we exceeded 50 employees, we started losing the personal connection. That's why we developed a system that we call PC Time.

PC Time touches virtually everyone in the company. Each employee has access to the system on a different level, but all have to enter the system every day. It's an issue of trust to let them fill out their own time sheets every day, and it's the best time to exchange information. The superintendents create a start time sheet that automatically creates all the time tickets and job sheets. The foreman tells workers where to record time, which phase, which job. It forces training and helps focus on what is important, what we are trying to measure. From day one, the culture of the company is being impressed on the employee.

Each employee has a home page on the system and can log in anytime from any place. The individual's home page includes up-to-date information on everything about his or her relationship to the company. For example, workers can log onto the Web site of the company that handles our 401k plan and see how much money they have in their accounts. They can also link to our health insurance provider and check for participating doctors, or they can check our travel policies, or look at a complete company manual.

But the most important thing for the employee is the time sheet. When the employee comes back from a job at the end of the day, he logs in and gets a time ticket, which pulls information directly from our job-costing setup. From there, the employee puts in his time. Time can be entered only into the phases available for that job. Drive time is kept separate so that it doesn't affect production rates.

The hours they record go straight to the job costing system. We can check to see not only where any worker spent his time that day but relate it back to training and see how many hours were spent on a specific type of work.

The check boxes on this time ticket, available only to foremen and higher management, make up what we call "the ding system." If an employee is late or doesn't show up for work, he gets a ding, which costs against his incentive bonus program. If he forgets to bring his tools and has to borrow some, he gets dinged. If he doesn't fill out his time ticket at the end of the day, he gets a ding. Each has a value assigned, which is taken out of his incentive. We pay an incentive bonus for every hour worked, and on December 1, we write a check to the employee for that incentive minus dings. Each day when they fill out their time sheets on their home page, they know how many dings they have and if they've gotten a new ding. There's also a dispute system if they feel they shouldn't have gotten a ding. These dings can be assigned or revised only by management.

We distribute the collected ding money among those with fewer than five dings. The ding money can amount to almost as much as the baseline bonus. It's only fair because the other guys on the job had to make up for the guy that didn't show or forgot his tools.

Hourly employees also can access their benefit pages. They can review vacation time-totals, days left and used, and when they took it. They can put in vacation requests and find out how much time they have left after the request. The program lists all their dings, how many, what day, the job they were on, and the reason. There's no question--they know exactly what's going on.

The system shows all pertinent employee performance evaluation information. Workers can compare their previous evaluations with where they are now. In the two-step process, the employee and the superintendent both fill in a form. Then in a formal meeting they go over the review together.

Training is important in performance appraisal. Workers can see how many more hours they need for each skill level. We can add comments to the evaluation. The employee knows where he is at all times.

The next level, for foremen, is an administration screen, which shows the daily job sheet. When a foreman closes out a job, the sheet disappears from this list, meaning that all the required information is complete.

The superintendent can check and correct all time tickets. The sheet shows total hours for each phase so far and tracks production rates. This is important because our incentive program is based on these production rates.

At our company picnic in October, employees get "PC bucks," accumulated whenever they beat the production estimate. We buy about $5000 worth of prizes--grills, bicycles, computers--and then we auction off that stuff for PC bucks at the picnic. Last year there were about $4 million dollars in PC bucks out there. It's fun because you may be bidding $100,000 for a gas grill. The best prizes go to the guys who have the most PC bucks because they'll spend them all for that prize.

Except for specific hourly rates, we share all financial reports with all management level employees. The daily job sheet has a diary of work performed so we know what happened each day. If a sub bills for something different, a red flag comes up. Special concerns, like potential delays, are noted. This eliminates all re-entry of data.

The job sheet also collects information from our pour and finish crew to protect us from risk and to help us learn from any problems.

This sheet also tracks all the equipment billed to a job, showing a picture of that piece of equipment. Once applied to a job, the program runs a ticket that shows the foreman how many dollars in equipment are being added to the job that day. We can also do this with inventory. The foreman is then directly responsible for how much is being spent on the job, and he knows where the cash is going.

We split all of the inventory off as a separate company called Site-bound Supplies, a material supply company automatically billed to Garber Brothers. We found in the past that at the end of the year a lot of inventory was missing--$30 to $40 thousand lost because it never got costed to a job. By setting up a separate corporation, we focused on recording and applying to jobs properly. Our own jobs get a discount, but we sell inventory to other concrete companies or general contractors as well.

The report that management uses most is the superintendent report. It tells them the jobs that are running and the dollar amount budgeted and spent. Here's the goal and here's the actual. Everyone knows the measuring systems and can understand the expected production rates. Everyone can see how much our average labor cost is per man-hour. So if someone says "wait a minute--what equipment did we rent that cost so much?" he can drill down and look at the invoices for every piece of rented equipment and say when something was misbilled. Changes go directly into the internal costing system. More eyes looking at every cost ensures our accuracy.

The work-in-process statement tells the exact contract amount, the original estimates, any adjustments, and the actual cost of completion, estimated profit, and how much was overbilled or underbilled. Everything on the system is live so there's no need to wait until the end of the month for information. We know exactly what our backlog is today, right now, and we take comfort in knowing whether we can take on any more work.

Another function, called "memos," is like an internal e-mail system. We can post news on the home page with pictures. We can congratulate everyone for completing a tough job and have pictures that make people feel like they are part of the whole. Birthdays and anniversaries also show up.

At the end of the week, everyone checks that all the job sheets are filled out, time is checked off and all the information is entered.

Then, each week, with one press of a button, the payroll clerk calculates and checks everyone's time, applies overtime, and posts it to the accounting system. All that's left is calculating taxes by hitting another button and processing the direct deposit. Payroll is complete in about 15 minutes.

This system paid for itself after the first year. We spent about $50,000, less than we were spending each year just to process payroll. We began in January 1999, and in 6 months we eliminated the paper system.

Our employees feel that they work for a company that shares information and lets them know how the company is doing and what their involvement is in the overall picture. This helps with communication and morale, and everyone focuses on production. It's based on fact. It's measurable and accurate, so accountability is created. If everyone knows what that measuring system is and they know everyone else is looking at it, pride and esteem result.

--Lee Clark is president of Garber Brothers Precision Concrete, Greenville, Ohio