Month: April 2019

The Weekend Warrior Trap

Human Resource Managers; how would you like a schedule that your employees will love?

Plant Managers, how about a schedule that adds 40% more potential production hours onto your weekly schedule?

Now that the hook is baited….shall we take a bite?

If that particular schedule calls for you to hire a weekend crew (aka Weekend Warrior Schedule) then you will want to give this idea a pass.

Weekend Warrior refers to a type of staff scheduling strategy for covering 24/7.

At its most basic level, a Weekend Warrior schedule is one that uses two crews to cover all of the weekend work so the rest of the company’s employees don’t have to.  There are several variations to this.  Here are a few of the more basic models:

  1. Two weekend crews are used.  One crew works 12-hour days on Saturday and Sunday while the other crew works 12-hour nights on Saturday and Sunday. In this way, the Weekend Warrior crews work 24 hours a week and only work 2 days per week.  The regular weekday shifts are covered by three other crews: an 8-hour day crew, an 8-hour afternoon crew, and an 8-hour night crew.
  2. Two weekend crews are used.  One crew works 12-hour days on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday while the other crew works 12-hour nights on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. In this way, the Weekend Warrior crews work 36 hours a week and only work 3 days per week.  Mondays through Thursdays are covered by two other crews: a 12-hour day crew, and a 12-hour night crew.
  3. Two weekend crews are used.  One crew works 12-hour days on Saturday and Sunday while the other crew works 12-hour nights on Saturday and Sunday. In addition to the 12-hour weekend shifts, each crew will work 2 other shifts of 8 hours at some time during the week.  In this way, the Weekend Warrior crews will get a total of 40 hours a week.  The regular weekday shifts are covered by three other crews: an 8-hour day crew, an 8-hour afternoon crew, and an 8-hour night crew.  Note that the weekend crews will augment the regular weekday crews when they come in for their additional shifts during the week.

While there are several variations to this concept, these three represent the lion’s share of what we have seen out there.

Now that we’ve clarified the type of schedule, let’s look at The Bait & Trap.

The Bait or the thing that makes this type of schedule so attractive is that it appears to satisfy everyone involved.  The company needs 24/7 coverage and this provides it.  The employees don’t want to work weekends so you hire someone else to do it.  This satisfies your existing workforce.   Potential employees want a job and will often take any shift to get a foot in the door.  This schedule allows people to get that foot in there, provided they are willing to work weekends – done deal.

Here is the problem.  The weekend crew will under-perform unless the company over-pays.  The Trap is that once this becomes apparent (usually within the first 18 months after implementation) it is too late.  Changing the schedule will seem like a take-away and the workforce will fight it tooth and nail.

Let’s look at the “problem” a little more closely.  Here are the things we typically hear:

  • The weekend crew has a high turnover as the employees leave for better hours.
  • The weekend crew has high absenteeism. This job is typically their back-up job.  When they go on vacation from their “main” job, they simply call in sick for their weekend job.
  • The weekend crew is out of touch with the rest of the plant.
  • The weekend crew people move to the weekday crews as soon as there is an opening thus making sure the weekend crew is staffed with the least skilled and newest employees.
  • The weekend crew typically performs at about 60% the rate expected of weekday employees.
  • When the weekend crew comes in for their 8-hour weekday shifts, the plant becomes overstaffed.
  • The weekend crew typically gets a full benefits package.  This means a 50% burden rate on the weekday employees equates to a 60-85% burden rate on the weekend crew’s hours.
  • Some companies, in an attempt to improve retention and performance on the weekend crews, will up the ante.  For example, they may pay forty hours for 24 hours of work.  I have seen companies that do this end up paying about twice as much for each hour worked by a weekend crew as they do for a weekday crew.

It looks good so companies go to it.  It doesn’t work as planned and companies can’t get rid of it.  If that’s not a trap, I don’t know what is.

If you know of anyone that is thinking about implementing a Weekend Warrior Schedule, I recommend that you have them take a look at this posting first.

Let us help you find a customized shiftwork solution that best fits the production needs of your site. 

Use our process of employee engagement to ensure the workforce buys into your new schedule.

Call or text us today at (415) 858-8585 to discuss your operations and how we can help you solve your shift work problems. You can also complete our contact form and we will call you.

5 Things You Should Know About Overtime

  1. Quantity Matters.  If your workforce is complaining about overtime, don’t assume that it’s always because there is too much.  It may be just the opposite.  In most workforces, about 20% of your workforce will avoid all overtime.  At the same time, about 20% of your workforce will work all the overtime they can get.  The remaining 60% will tolerate what they consider “their fair share.”  Find out how much overtime your workforce wants and try to make it available to them, within reason.  Too much overtime and you run into fatigue-related issues, even if your workforce wants it.  Too little overtime and you lose flexibility to respond to short term labor needs.
  2. Distribution Matters. Suppose you knew, on average, your workforce wants 8 hours of overtime a week.  If you gave everyone 8 hours of overtime a week in response to this knowledge, you will likely find that you made very few people happy.  Why?  Because not everyone wants the same amount of overtime.  You may have a workforce where half want 16 hours of overtime a week and half want none.  So, giving 8 hours to everyone meets the needs of no one.  The key is to have a process that gets overtime to those that want it without forcing it on those that do.  While it’s probably impossible to hit this mark all the time, efforts to do so will be noticed and positively received.
  3. Cost Does Not Matter. While employees make 50% more money when working overtime, the company actually does not incur an increased cost when they pay this 50%.  The reason for this is that straight time and overtime are not “loaded” the same way.  When looking at the cost of paying for a straight time hour, one must not only consider the wage, but the additional costs such as medical coverage, payroll taxes, holiday and vacations.  Of these extra costs, only payroll taxes apply to overtime.  The result is that overtime and straight time probably cost the same (plus or minus 5%).  Companies may worry about their overtime costs and try to lower these by hiring more people.  They can then see overtime costs drop, but this should be accompanied by a nearly identical increase in straight time costs.
  4. Lead Time Matters.  Resistance to overtime is inversely proportional to how far in advance the overtime is announced and assigned.  If the lead time is short, resistance is high.  If the lead time is several days or weeks in advance, resistance is low.  Actively look for ways to extend the amount of time between the assignment of overtime and when the overtime will actually occur.
  5. The Schedule Does Not Matter.  Overtime quantities depend on two things: (1) How much work there is and (2) How many people you have to do that work.  Low staffing equals high overtime and high staffing equals low overtime.  The schedule only determines “Where” the overtime will occur.  Does it occur before or after a shift?  Does it occur on a weekend?  Does it occur on a day off?  These are the things a schedule determines.

Call or text us today at (415) 858-8585.

The best way to schedule your maintenance crew in a 24/7 operation

Maintenance Managers, you know the drill – Keep the equipment running and still, somehow, get your maintenance done.

On a 5-day schedule, this typically means Maintenance “maintains” during the week and “repairs” during the weekend.

When a plant shifts to 24/7 operations, the first thought of maintenance people is “Where do we go now?”  The weekend, once reserved for maintenance, is now being taken up by production.   Is this the end of preventative maintenance?  Will maintenance now be restricted to small windows of opportunity such as line changeovers?  And the biggest question is “How will we schedule maintenance people when we no longer know when we will have access to equipment?”

To get to these answers we first need to break down maintenance into its three main components: (1) Corrective Maintenance, (2) Preventative Maintenance and (3) Project work.  We will cover all three of these here.

Corrective Maintenance

On a 24/7 operation, everything is running all of the time.  While there are plenty of exceptions to this (change-overs, sanitation, etc.) we’ll consider production to be spread uniformly across all hours for this discussion.

Since corrective maintenance is not “scheduled”, it can be nearly impossible to predict with any accuracy.  Therefore, we should consider an “event” requiring corrective maintenance to be random.  That is to say, it is equally likely to occur at any time during the week.  Under this type of condition, it is best to spread your resources around equally.  From a corrective maintenance perspective, it makes no sense to staff differently on Saturday afternoons than on Wednesday nights.

When it comes to staffing levels, maintenance managers will have to take into account things such as: (1) the likelihood of something breaking down, (2) the opportunity cost of delaying a repair (3) the cost of overstaffing when those people could be used more effectively elsewhere and (4) the availability of additional resources through callouts. Overstaffing the corrective maintenance crew is a mistake often made. Maintenance managers need to realize that there will never be enough people to always ensure there is enough coverage for every possible contingency.  It is better to have an effective plan for augmenting your crew in an emergency.

Preventative Maintenance

Surprisingly, Preventive Maintenance is actually easier to accomplish on a 24/7 schedule than on a 5-day schedule.  On a 5-day schedule, you are essentially committed to “pit stop” maintenance.  You only have a very little window to fix everything so you throw all of your resources at it during that time.  Hopefully, you get enough things fixed so the plant can run well the next week.

On a 24/7 schedule, you still have maintenance to do, but you no longer have to do it all on the weekend.  Now you can spread it out during the week.  For example: instead of trying to repair all production lines on Saturday (typically an impossible task), you now take down one line at a time; leaving the others up and running.  Maintenance personnel rather do preventative maintenance during the day shift on weekdays.  Not only is this the preferred schedule for your people, but it is also when you have the most resources available.  On Monday through Friday day shifts, you will have greater access to vendors, parts suppliers, and engineers.

This all points towards scheduling as much preventative maintenance as possible during Monday through Friday day shift.  Of course, there should always be preventative maintenance assigned to other shifts throughout the week so maintenance people will be productive if there is no corrective maintenance needing their attention.

Project Work

Project Work is like preventative maintenance in that it is best done during the weekdays when the most outside resources are available.  Unlike preventative maintenance, project work often requires several consecutive days or weeks of work to be accomplished.  It is best started, maintained and completed by the same people to minimize any loss of information during turnovers between crews.  To do this, you will want to use 8-hour workdays where the project people come to work and advance the project every day, five days a week.

In summary, maintenance scheduling for a 24/7 operation opens up new opportunities that allow for better schedules for your maintenance employees while improving overall maintenance accomplishment and equipment reliability.

Give us a call today and discuss how we can help you get the most out of your maintenance department in a shiftwork operation.

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