Month: February 2018

How will a new schedule impact your Employee Handbook?

Measure twice, cut once.

This adage is as applicable to a schedule change as it is for those in the carpentry trade.

Make one mistake and either be prepared to live with it or face the uphill battle of yet making another major change to your workplace.

There are all types of pitfalls.  You can put in the wrong schedule (yes, not all schedules are the same).  You can alienate a section of your workforce.  You can use the wrong staffing model.  You can overlook an opportunity.  Or you can put in the wrong policies.

This last mistake, the “policy” mistake is a big one.

Let’s take a look at a going from a 5-day schedule to a 7-day schedule.

To begin with, you will need “process” policies. The workforce will want to know “how” you are going to do things.  How will you decide who goes to what shift?  How will you pick the shift times?  How will you pick the schedule?  Does seniority count more than skills?  Should temporary employees participate?  Will there be a trial period?  This is a list that can seemingly go on forever.

Once the schedule is in place, will you have policies ready to support it?

If your answer is “Yes, our 5-day policies will work on a 7-day schedule,” then the answer is “No” your policies are not ready to go.

You will need to look at the following, at a minimum:

  • Overtime pay
  • Holiday pay, Holiday premiums, Recognized Holidays
  • Shift Differentials
  • Breaks
  • Jury Duty
  • Partial vacations
  • Vacations
  • Overtime coverage
  • Training
  • Shift Swaps
  • Absentee coverage
  • Attendance policy
  • Pay week hours
  • Payroll system settings

Let’s just take a look at vacation; possibly the simplest policy to address.  If you go to a 12-hour schedule, will employees still be able to take off full weeks or will they change to blocks of days?  Will they be able to take single days off and how much will their account be charged when they do and how much will they be paid?  Will vacation count towards hours worked for overtime calculations?  Can they carry over or sell back time at the end of the year?  Suppose they have some vacation left but not enough to take a week or even a full day off, what do they do?  Can they combine vacation time with other types of PTO?  Suppose I am on vacation (12-hour shifts) and a holiday falls during my time off, will I get 8 hours or 12 hours of pay?

Be ready to address your policies ahead of time if you want to have a successful transition.  They should be ready to go before the change takes place.  Remember to get your IT people involved as well.

Call or text us today at (415) 763-5005.

Is Overtime Really a Problem?

I recently participated in an online forum about the “Evils of Overtime.”  I was surprised at how uniformly overtime is seen as something to be avoided.  Its as if overtime was a measurement of how poorly you were managing your workforce.  Here was one of my comments:

Overtime is only a problem if you see it as such. It’s not unusual for a company to contact me with an “overtime” problem. They look at their costs and see, for example, a million dollars spent on overtime last quarter. They think they will save this amount if they eliminate overtime. The fact is that, unless they are improperly staffed, they will only reduce overtime by increasing the straight time (hiring). After all, the work supposedly needs to be done and eliminating overtime means its either not getting done or you found another way to do it.

The cost of an hour of overtime is typically competitive with the cost of straight time. I’m working at a company right now and the precise cost of paying someone $15.47 an hour is $25.25. At the same time, the cost of paying someone that same hourly rate at time-and-one-half is…$25.35 an hour. 10 cents more!

Overtime allows you to compete for labor even though you cannot afford a high hourly rate. People can make more money and supplement their income in spite of low wages. I can work at company A for $20 an hour but no overtime or I can work at company B for $17 an hour but can work all the overtime I want.

Overtime is flexible. You don’t have to buy it in 40-hour/week increments. The person is already trained and hired.

On the downside, there are fatigue/safety issues, although these can be managed if you are paying attention. There is also to the potential of too much overtime – translated into “not everyone likes a lot of overtime but everyone is getting a lot of overtime.”

This last issue can be fixed if you remember that overtime is a function of how much work there is and how many people you have to share in that work. Variations in workload aside; you should staff to the point that there are typically reasonable amounts of overtime for those that want it and very little mandatory overtime for those that don’t.

Two rules of thumb: (1) 20% of your workforce wants a lot of overtime; 20% wants no overtime and 60% will take it from time to time and (2) If your workload is flat, you should be in the 5% to 15% overtime rate. Note: Companies often boast that they are perfectly staffed because they have no overtime. They couldn’t be more wrong. Zero overtime almost certainly means you are overstaffed.

Call or text us today at (415) 763-5005.

Why should you consider changing your shift schedule?

Changing shift schedules is not like changing the curtains in your kitchen.

It’s complicated.  It disrupts your workforce.  It takes a great deal of effort in an area that you likely have very little experience AND if you make a mistake, you must be prepared to live with it for a very long time.

So, if you don’t need to change your schedule don’t change it.

Having said all of that, there are many very compelling reasons to at least take a look at alternative ways of scheduling your workforce.

Here is a sampling of reasons that companies have given us in the past:

  • We are out of capacity during the weekdays
  • There is no room to expand our facility outside of our current building
  • Overtime is out of control
  • The workforce is tired and mistakes are on the rise
  • Safety
  • Costs need to be contained
  • Product flow is irregular causing shortages and stockpiles
  • Seasonality
  • High turnover
  • We need to reduce shutdown and start-up costs
  • Lean manufacturing initiative is not supported by the current schedule
  • Trouble distributing skillsets across all shifts
  • We are combining two plants into one
  • Lower costs
  • Supervisors don’t match the crew schedules
  • Vacation and absentee coverage is difficult
  • Current schedule does not support training
  • We need to get rid of a weekend warrior schedule
  • We are in a tight labor market and need a more attractive schedule

This list goes on and on.  Nearly every company has its own unique reason for wanting, at the very least, to look at alternative ways of scheduling their employees.

Every company that competes on the open market must be constantly striving to improve.  However, be careful.  Your workforce is likely to be very wary of any attempt to upgrade its schedule.  Interestingly, this is even true if they hate their current schedule.

Call or text us today at (415) 763-5005.