The tool, in your browser
The monthly pulse check log
One row every time you check a man: his name, the month, and his five gut scores — the work, whether the pay feels fair, the crew, home, and whether he feels treated right. The page averages the five and flags the two things that mean a good hand is on his way out: any score of two or under this month, and any man whose average has fallen two months straight — the quiet drift, which is the dangerous one.
Free, and it asks for nothing. No email, no account, no sign-up. What you type stays in this browser on this device.
Read this first
This saves in this browser, on this device, and nowhere else. Nothing you type is sent to us and there’s no account to log in to. But saved in a browser isn’t the same as locked: anyone who opens this page on this computer can read it — what a man said about his pay, his crew and what’s going on at home included. Keep this one on your own phone, or clear it before you walk away from a shared machine.
And the sheet is the record, not the meeting. Run the check at the truck first — five minutes, one man at a time — then write it down. A man watching you type while he answers is a man giving you fours.
The log fills in right here in your browser. If this line stays put, JavaScript is off — the spreadsheet below does the same job.
How it gets used
- Once a month, one man at a time, five minutes. In the truck between jobs, at the tailgate while the trailer loads. Have him score the five one to five, then shut up and listen to the low one.
- Use the same spelling of his name every month. That’s what puts his months together — and it’s how the falling flag sees a slide. Capitals and a stray space don’t split him in two here.
- Dig into the lowest number only. Don’t chase all five. “You said a two on the pay. Talk to me.” Then let him talk without jumping in to defend yourself.
- Fix one thing, and say out loud what it is. Not all of it — one. Put the one you promised in What we’re fixing, and put it on the promise list with your own name on it — type it across, the way you would between two spreadsheets. A fix that only lives here won’t get chased.
- Next month, follow up — that part is the whole thing. “Last month you were a two on the pay. I moved you up fifty cents like I said. Where’s it sit now?” Then set last month’s row to Yes. Skip the follow-up and all you ran was a survey.
- Read the average as a thermometer, not a grade. Don’t wave it at the man. A 3.4 that’s been sliding matters more than a steady 3.0.
Before you act on it
This one is built for employees
It doesn’t port to a sub. What decides how a man is classified is how much you direct and control the work, and a standing monthly sit-down on his pay, his crew and whether he feels treated right is you managing a man — not two outfits doing business. Where that line sits is a call for your accountant or a labor attorney. With a steady sub, keep it strictly to the business a couple of times a year: is the work still worth his while, are the terms fair, does he want the next run of jobs.
One more thing: this play is how we run a shop — it’s not legal advice. Rules change by state and by contract, so before you act on the legal-sounding parts, run them past your own attorney or accountant. It’s your business, and what you do with any of this is your call and your responsibility.
Want it in a spreadsheet?
The same log as a spreadsheet
the-monthly-pulse-check-log.xlsx is this log as a spreadsheet — same five scores, same average, same two flags — for the computer at the shop. Four differences in the page’s favour: the falling flag reads each man’s own months in date order, so you never have to keep the rows sorted by man and then by month (the file needs that, ships a hidden helper column to catch it, and shows a red warning until you re-sort); a month you haven’t finished scoring can’t be counted as part of a slide, where the file’s comparison can trip on a half-scored row; there’s no twenty-row ceiling; and the three example rows are placeholder text here, so there’s nothing to delete before you start. Three the other way: if you log the same man twice in one month, the file will still read one of those rows and can flag a slide off it — this page refuses to guess which, so that row and the month straight after it sit out of the falling flag until you fix the month (the box says so when it happens); the file is a real file, so it survives a cleared browser and can be kept somewhere only you open; and it opens on any computer you send it to. The sheets ask for your email once; this page never does.
The play behind it — M4-04 Catch the Quit a Month Before It Happens — is the five-minute check itself and the words to use on the low number, and the sheet notes spell out every column and both flags.