​Question: We will soon be implementing pre-employment online onboarding. As such, individuals who have accepted an offer for employment but are not yet employed will complete pre-employment paperwork including I-9, W-4, etc. on a one-time basis. They will also familiarize themselves with a few select policies. The paperwork is not burdensome. They can complete the paperwork on their own time at home and at any time prior to their first day. The paperwork is not part of the worker's assigned job duties.  Do the soon-to-be employees need to be compensated for the time it takes for them to complete the paperwork?


Response: Yes. Generally, any time an individual spends under the direction and control of the employer is compensable, and this also would include time spent completing new-hire paperwork, training, testing and/or being oriented to a new job, even if this occurs prior to commencing duties. The best practice is to have employees report for work on the first day and go through the regular orientation and paperwork process, training, etc., thus making the "hire" and "start" or "onboarding" date the same day. In sum, the employer must ensure that new hires are properly paid for all time spent "working," even if this is only to fill out new hire paperwork and undergo training or orientation before commencing actual work and even if such tasks are completed from home.
 
Want to learn more about how to handle issues like this?  Click Here to listen to our podcast about pre-start onboarding.
 
 
 
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To learn more about the Federated Employment Practices Network®, contact your local Federated Marketing Representative, or visit www.federatedinsurance.com.
 

Festool announced today that it has started producing its FS Guide Rails, an integral system component and accessory of many of its power tools, at the company’s North American headquarters in Lebanon, IN.  Festool plans to expand its Lebanon-based manufacturing facilities for additional production lines and other products in the future.
 
FS Guide Rails production uses U.S.-sourced material and will begin shipping throughout the U.S. and Canadian markets in late 2017.
 
Essential to the Festool power tool system, FS Guide Rails are aluminum tracks that work in collaboration with some of Festool’s most popular products, including its track saws, routers and jigsaws.
 
“German engineering and American manufacturing is a powerful combination,” says Ole Held, CEO of Festool USA. “Launching a U.S. production line will allow us to expand the Festool presence in North America and strengthen our commitment to create innovative, precise, superior quality products.”
 
Festool designs and engineers its portfolio of innovative power tool products in its home country of Germany and all Festool power tools are manufactured in Europe.
 
About Festool
Founded in Germany in 1925, Festool is known for its innovative, precision-engineered power tool solutions.  With North American headquarters in Lebanon, IN, Festool offers a comprehensive lineup of power tools and system accessories, designed to boost productivity through efficiency and high performance. Festool USA and Festool Canada are divisions of Tooltechic Systems, LLC, a subsidiary of TTS Tooltechnic Systems AG & Co. KG. For more information, visit www.festoolusa.com or www.festoolcanada.com.

​Rev-A-Shelf, LLC is excited to announce the acquisition of Glideware, LLC of Grand Junction, Colorado. Rev-A-Shelf General Manager David Noe alongside Dave and Jenny Hall of Glideware issued joint statements confirming the intension to merge the two companies.
 
“The acquisition of Glideware is a perfect fit for Rev-A-Shelf; we have a lot of respect for Dave and Jenny and the creative work they’ve done to bring innovative new ideas to the accessory/organization category,” said Rev-A-Shelf’s General Manager David Noe, adding, “We will work closely with Dave over the next few months to properly integrate their products into our customer segments. These are versatile products that resonate in many applications and we expect our broad exposure to provide even more success to the line.”
 
“Jenny and I are very excited about this acquisition and are looking forward to working with Rev-A-Shelf to ensure a smooth transition,” said Glideware founder Dave Hall, adding, "We are confident that Rev-A-Shelf will continue to deliver quality products and offer great customer service that Glideware customers have come to expect. We are proud of what we have accomplished since introducing Glideware in 2013 and could not have selected a better company to continue its success.”
 
 
About Rev-A-Shelf LLC.
Established in 1978 as a division of Jones Plastic & Engineering, our product line began as metal and polymer Lazy Susan components manufactured for the largest U.S. cabinet manufacturers, and they have grown into the market leading innovator of quality functional residential cabinet storage, LED Cabinet Lighting and organizational products.
 
Rev-A-Shelf manufactures thousands of innovative accessories for your kitchen, bath or closet.  With the acquisition of Tresco Lighting, Rev-A-Shelf offers a full line of L.E.D. lighting options for residential & commercial cabinetry and store display fixtures. Rev-A-Shelf’s primary markets are Cabinet Hardware Distributors, large OEM cabinet manufacturers, Lowes and Menards home centers, and a number of online web resellers.
 
About GlidewareÒ
Launched in 2013, after struggling to find a solid solution for storing a new set of cookware, Jenny and Dave Hall began Glidewareä with a mission to invent new ways to organize “stuff”. The original product was a one-of-a- kind hardware innovation, recognized as a Best of the Kitchen & Bath Industry Show winner, and one of This Old House Magazines’ top 100 products. Today, the Glideware portfolio has evolved into a full complement of organization solutions for closets, mud rooms, lockers, vanities and kitchens – indoors and out – all proudly made in America. 

As technology continues to shape the way we interact with the world around us, Stiles Machinery Inc., in partnership with HOMAG, is equipping the manufacturing industry with innovative solutions designed to increase efficiency and dramatically reduce downtime during production. With the recent introduction of tapio, the world’s first digital platform designed to coordinate the entire value chain of the wood industry, along with many other smart manufacturing solutions, Stiles continues to strengthen its mission to put new technologies and new ways of thinking to work for manufacturers of all sizes.

tapio is poised to revolutionize the woodworking industry by leveraging digital innovation to access important data for every stage of the manufacturing process. With tapio, everything you need to be successful is now centralized in one easy-to-use platform designed to dramatically increase the efficiency of production management including production optimization, plant and machinery operation, predictive maintenance and much more.

Along with the introduction of tapio, Stiles revealed the first intelligent operator assistance system in panel sizing history, the intelliGuide. The intelliGuide system supports the operator visually by guiding them with an LED light strip and new laser technology projected directly onto the workpieces during cutting operations. This is achieved through a unique camera system located on the top of the machine that monitors the operator’s exact movement and reacts in real time achieving new levels of quality, accuracy, and performance, while simultaneously offering more flexibility to the operator, who is no longer bound to a specific order of operation.

In addition to these revolutionary technologies, Stiles Machinery, in conjunction with RSA Solutions and Schuler Consulting, offers a number of smart solutions that are helping manufacturers worldwide achieve higher levels of quality, efficiency, and productivity than ever before.
​
For more information about Stiles’ smart manufacturing solutions, visit StilesAWFScom or stop by Stiles’ booth #7411 at AWFS in Las Vegas.

​Vero Software will introduce its new WorkPLAN family of manufacturing solutions and exhibit the latest versions of its Alphacam and Cabinet Vision software July 19-22 at AWFS® Fair 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
 
The international AWFS Fair has become a critical hub for commerce in the woodworking industry. The fair brings together the entire home and commercial furnishings industry — including manufacturers and distributors of machinery, hardware, lumber, plastics, construction materials and other suppliers — to furniture and cabinet manufacturers, and custom woodworkers.
 
Visitors to the show can see the most powerful and reliable software products, used by tens of thousands of woodworkers worldwide, at the Vero Software booth, No. 4412. On exhibit will be the latest releases of the Alphacam, Cabinet Vision, and the new WorkPLAN solutions.
 
Alphacam is a leading CAM solution for wood, stone, composites and metal components from 2-axis through 5-axis NC programming applications. The emphasis behind the development of Alphacam is to provide our customers with productivity, reliability and flexibility.
 
Cabinet Vision is the most widely used design-for-manufacturing software capable of custom cabinet and room design, photo realistic renderings, material optimization, bidding and costing, and cutlists and bill of materials. Combined with the powerful Cabinet Vision Screen-to-Machine™ (S2M) Center, it can automatically create machine-ready G-Code for CNC flat table routers, point-to-point machines, panel saws, drill and dowel machines, chop saws and other specialized CNC machinery.
 
In addition to showing Alphacam, Cabinet Vision, and the S2M Center, Vero Software will also be unveiling a new product designed to help manage the entire shop floor, and new to the woodworking industry.
 
WorkPLAN a fully-scalable family of manufacturing software solutions, from project management to ERP, which enables custom manufacturers, project-based and make-to-order companies to automate and manage processes such as job costing, quotations, sales order processing, planning, quality, time, purchasing, and stock management.
 
About Vero Software
Headquartered in England, Vero Software designs, develops, and supplies CAD/CAM/CAE software radically enhancing the efficiency of design and manufacturing processes, providing its customers with exceptional value through high productivity gains and significantly reducing time to market.
 
The company’s world-renowned brands include Alphacam, Cabinet Vision, Edgecam, Machining STRATEGIST, PEPS, Radan, SMIRT, Surfcam, WorkNC and VISI, along with the production control MRP system Javelin. Despite the diversity of application, these solutions have one thing in common: they all address the rising challenges of achieving manufacturing efficiencies and bring huge value to the operations in which they are deployed.
 
Vero has direct offices in the UK, Germany, Italy, France, Japan, USA, Brazil, Netherlands, China, South Korea, Spain and India supplying products to more than 45 countries through its wholly owned subsidiaries and reseller network.
 
Vero is part of Hexagon (Nordic exchange: HEXA B), a leading global provider of information technologies that drive quality and productivity across geospatial and industrial enterprise applications.
 
For more information, please visit www.verosoftware.com.

Autokitchen, a leading kitchen and bath design software built on the AutoCAD engine, with offices in the USA, UK and Spain, and Eurosoft, an automation software solution provider, based in North Carolina, have entered into a partnership agreement with the goal of combining Autokitchen's strength as an easy to use, powerful and flexible point-of-sale design software solution with Eurosoft's twenty-one years of experience in the manufacturing industry. The combined software solution will cover the full distance from exceptional on-screen presentation of a kitchen all the way to production data for the shop floor. A prototype of the new seamless software solution will be shown at the AWFS 2017 in Las Vegas in July.