Welcome back again, I\u2019m Marty here at warehouse and operations as a career. Last week we talked about short on trucks, mis picks and damages and we mentioned incentives that may be offered to selectors and loaders for improving error ratios within the company. Well, over the last week I heard about a couple of other incentives or bonuses being offered or being considered at different facilities that I\u2019d like to share with our group. The first one, and I really like this one because its easy to achieve is just showing up to work on time. This one is offered to Unloaders or Lumpers at a distribution facility. Simple, measurable and we can figure our incentive throughout the week. Basically, an unloader that shows up for his or her scheduled shift on-time, and I\u2019m hearing there is a fifteen-minute grace period that counts and stays until the entire day is finished or until the supervisor dismisses them will have an additional amount per case added to their piece rate pay. What a great incentive or motivation to get up and ready to walk out that door 10 minutes early every day! Another thought that was brought up somewhere else is a Error incentive pool. The way I understood it was a set dollar amount is offered each week. Monies are deducted from that dollar amount for each short or miship that occurs each shift and at the end of the week whatever\u2019s left in the pool is paid out equally to each employee that reported each shift to work and on-time! One facility that works off of an activity-based compensation program has as one of its component of pay a dollar amount that is awarded for each day an associate is on-time for work.
\nI did a little asking around for different bonus programs and incentive structures out there and found almost all of them do have an attendance or on-time kicker built into them. I know here at WAOC we stress to the point of being on-time and reporting to work for every assigned shift and its interesting to see how much value employers place on just that! Of course, there\u2019s something in it for our companies, they need the man hours available each shift to ship their products, and I believe its great how they\u2019ll share those savings of not needing the additional O/T to ship their products because the shifts whole and on-time every day! The same holds true for error incentives. With reduced error ratios they may have recovery savings to share with us employees. I often see even better wages at facilities that already have errors under control because they\u2019re not out those expenses to begin with.
\nIf you have or know of any other examples I could share shoot me an email to host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com and I\u2019ll pass them along to our group!
\nAnother thing we talked about last week was damages, both product damage and equipment or building damages. Those subjects sparked a bit of conversation to say the least. Damages are another one of those expenses that really must be controlled. I was told by one individual that there\u2019s just going to be damages, when you deal with glass your going to break it. I understand what the gentleman was saying but I feel we must look across the table here too. We know its possible to pull every item without damaging it, we do it throughout every shift. In my experience, see how I said experience instead of opinion, We, employees can control the damages. I mean we\u2019re professionals, if we handle the product correctly at every station or task, stack it correctly and follow all our preferred work methods, and really care about what we\u2019re doing we\u2019re not going to have damages! Product or equipment or building damage.
\nI think I\u2019ve mentioned it before but one of the best Safety Posters I\u2019ve ever seen was a gentleman standing in front of a judge\u2019s podium and saying, \u201cMy brakes failed\u201d and the Judge replying, \u201ctell a mechanic not a judge\u201d. I know myself I\u2019ve known my forks wasn\u2019t evenly spread throughout a pallet before b...