Author: Jim

How many people does it take to staff your schedule? (Part 1)

As with most shiftwork related issues, the question of “How Many?” has a short and a long answer.
Here is a link to the long answer.

Let’s start with the short answer.

Add up all of the man-hours that need to be covered and divide by 40.  For example, if you need 30 people for 8 hours a day, Monday – Friday and 20 people for 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday, you would do the following math:

(30 people * 8 hours * 5 days) plus (20 people * 12 hours * 2 days) to get 1,680

Now, divide 1,680 by 40 to get 42.

This means you should use 42 people on some type of schedule to provide the coverage.  With that number (42), you should expect to see an overtime rate around 10% once you take into account things like vacation, sickness, extra work and such.

That’s the short answer and as such, it could be perfect or it could be wildly inaccurate based on your operation.

Part 2 of this post gets into the longer answer.

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6-day schedules (part 4)

This is the fourth and final post in a series of four posts regarding 6-day schedules.  Here are the links to 6-day schedules (part 1), 6-day  schedules (part 2) and 6-day schedules (part 3).

In this post, we will look at two extremes when it comes to covering 6 days.  One uses extra staffing to cover 6 days with 40-hour workweeks.  The other uses traditional staffing for a 48-hour workweek but has a few 12-hour shifts to give an occasional weekend off.

First, let’s consider a schedule that covers 6 days with 40-hour workweeks.  This is more complicated than you might think.  Why?  Well, there are 144 hours in a 6-day period.  If a crew is worth 40 hours, then you would need 3.6 crews to provide coverage (144/40=3.6).

This is accomplished by having each of your three 8-hour crews being 20% larger than the number of people you expect to show up each day.  In this way, one out of every 6 people can be off on any given day (except Sunday when everyone is off).

Here is what the schedule looks like:

6 day 40 hourYou will notice that to have 5 people show up on any given day, you need to have 6 people assigned with one of those 6 being off on that day.

First, the good news about this schedule.  Everyone gets Sunday off plus one other day that week.  This should increase alertness (compared to the alternative of only getting Sunday off and no others during the week).  That’s about it as far as the good news goes.

There are several problems:

  • Supervisors cannot match their crews unless they work all 6 days.  If they also take a day off, then provisions must be made to cover for their open position.
  • People like two days off but generally prefer then to be two days off together.  Most shift workers will place a low value on having, for example, Tuesday off as their second day off that week.
  • The staffing requirement must be a multiple of 5.  This schedule works well if you need 15 or 375 people, but it will not work if you need 7 or 18 people.
  • Night shift alertness will suffer as night shift people lose some of their “night time adjustment” during their day off.
  • Cross-training is required since every combination of 5 out of 6 must represent all of the skills needed to get the job done.
  • Twice every 6 weeks there are “split workdays”.  This is where they are off the day(s) before and the day(s) after a single day of work.  Shift workers will quickly recognize that these solitary days are good days to feel…maybe a little too sick to come into work.
  • Companies ofter go to this type of schedule in an attempt to avoid the “high cost” of overtime; failing to realize that overtime and straight time are generally “cost equal”.

Onward…

This next schedule is an attempt to keep things simple and yet, still, give the employees a full weekend off once every three weeks.  “Keeping things simple” basically says, work everyone for 6 days in a row, all 8-hour shifts.  The workforce might not like this.  Alertness, safety, and productivity will suffer; but it’s “simple.”

Now to get a full weekend off with the smallest departure from “simple” you must work 12-hour shifts on two out of every three weekends.  The third weekend is off.

Here is the schedule:

6 day 12 hour weekendsThis schedule is only popular among those that place a very high value on full weekends off.  Working 6 days in a row is hard enough.  This schedule not only calls for that, but it makes one of those 6 days, a 12-hour day.  The result is a full weekend off once every three weeks.

This is probably not a sustainable schedule for more workplaces.  However, in the short run, it may be just what you need.

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The difference between “a schedule” and “your schedule”

The number one way that companies find a shift schedule is to hold a meeting and ask, “So, does anyone know of any shift schedule patterns?”

There are several false assumptions built into this methodology.  One is that all schedules are created equal; that any schedule that covers the hours needed is as good as any other schedule.  Another is that the workforce, having been allowed to choose between a couple of patterns will be satisfied that their needs have been considered.  Also, there is the one-size-fits-all idea which says that if one area goes to a 24/7 schedule (for example) then all other areas must follow suit.  There is the staffing assumption that you must staff to allow for ZERO overtime and that all areas of the operation must increase or decrease staffing levels in lock-step; that is to say, if a new schedule covers 40% more hours you will need 40% more employees across the board (including supervision, quality, maintenance, etc.)  Finally, there is the assumption that policies for things such as holidays and vacations, which worked for your old schedule, will also work for your new schedule.

There are actually many, many more issues that are overlooked or swept under the carpet in the name of expediency, but I think you get the picture.

The right schedule is one that is implemented using the old carpenter’s adage of “Measure Twice and Cut Once.”

Taking the time to do a schedule change right will not only save you from problems down the road but will likely result in immediate productivity gains and cost decreases which are not realized by the “Who knows a schedule pattern” methodology.

Here are my thoughts on just a couple of the “assumptions” mentioned above.

Employee participation is more than just allowing them to select between a couple of patterns.  Participation means they know why a change is taking place.  They are educated about what schedules can do (and can’t do).  They are given a wide variety of options that span the range of what is available instead of just a few similar patterns.  They are allowed to have meaningful input on things like overtime levels, start times, the day on/off patterns and more.  They are given “perfect” information about their final options in such a way as to allow them to discuss the options with their families before making a choice.

One-size-does NOT-fit-all:  You may have an operation that absolutely needs to go to 24/7 (for example).  In some cases, this means a “balanced” schedule across all days of the week where every day has the same number of people in production.  However, suppose one or more areas can keep up with the 24/7 production by only running one shift a week; should they go to the 24/7 schedule?  What about maintenance?  Should they have a “balanced” schedule or should the labor be moved to parts of the week that maximize production?  Remember, maintenance is at its peak performance when production is at its lowest.  (It’s hard to fix equipment while it is running.)  What about quality, engineering, and office staff?  These areas rarely need to go to a 24/7 schedule (in their entirety) when production does.   The “Best Schedule” is usually a collection of schedules that allow all areas to operate and support each other seamlessly.

Staffing is where most companies make the most costly mistakes.  They either over-staff and thus, pay for labor they don’t need or they under-staff and run the risk of high fatigue and turnover that typically come with a worn-out workforce.  Staffing is not guesswork.  There are mathematical solutions that will tell you what the optimal staffing level is for your site.

As for policies, let me just say this: “If you think your 5-day policies will all work just fine on a 24/7 schedule – you are wrong.”

If you decide to “go it alone” let me at least offer you this: Give me a call when you get stuck.  So long as I don’t have to pick up a pencil, I’m free.  So don’t make a mistake because you didn’t have someone to go to.

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6-day schedules (part 3)

This is the third in a series about 6-day schedules.  I recommend you read 6-day schedules (part 1) and 6-day scheduled (part 2) before going forward with this one.

Today’s post will begin the focus on a 12-hour schedule pattern for covering 24 hours a day, six days a week.

The premise behind this schedule is that you still only want to use three crews to cover six days, but you would rather not hire more employees.  Because of this, everyone will still have to work 48 hours a week (changing schedules does not change total hours worked.  Only changing staffing or the workload does that).  This schedule allows people to get their weekly 48 hours in by only coming to work for four days a week.

Let’s look at a quick comparison:

8-hour shifts: Work 6 days @ 8 hours and get one day off per week.  Total hours worked – 48

12-hour shifts: Work 4 days @ 12 hours and get three days off per week.  Total hours worked – 48

Picture2

This pattern can be worked as either a fixed schedule, a rotating schedule or and oscillating schedule.  The way it is shown here is as an oscillating schedule.  This is a schedule that has both “fixed” and “rotating” features.  In this example, the crews labeled “Days” and “Nights” are working fixed shifts.  That means they are always on Days or Nights.  The crew labeled “Day-Night” actually rotates between Day shift and Night shift (Nights on Mondays and Tuesday and then Days on Fridays and Saturdays).

There are several benefits to this schedule over a traditional 6-day, 8-hour pattern.

Employees will like it for a variety of reasons.  All will appreciate the extra days off.  The Day shift people will like having every weekend off as a 3-day weekend.  The Night shift people will like having 3 days off in a row, even though they are Sunday through Tuesday.  The rotating crew will typically be the junior-most crew.  As the junior employees, they could be looking at years before they have enough seniority to get to the Day shift.  In this schedule, they work the Night shift for 2 days and then do not have to return to nights for another five days.

On the downside, the nature of the work must always be considered when looking at 12-hour shifts.  In nearly all cases, if someone can do something for 8 hours at a time for 6 days in a row with a single day of rest in between, then they can do that same thing for 12 hours at a time for 4 days a week with three days off per week to rest.

Most companies that go to 12-hour shifts will find that they need to rework some of their pay policies.  For example, if you only pay up to 8 hours a day when someone goes on jury duty, you may want to rethink that policy.

In 6-day schedules (part 4) I will return to the 8-hour idea.  We will look at a way to add people in a less-than-full-crew increment to reduce overtime.

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Safety Footnotes

At Shiftwork Solutions, safety concerns are definitely something we have to pay attention to.  We keep abreast of safety research as it applies to shiftwork and brings that knowledge to the table when working with companies.

Over the years, there are a few standard issues that come up.  I’d like to cover those now.  I also would like to bring up a few safety practices that I have seen at other sites that lent themselves well to the establishment of a strong safety program.

As they occur to me…

  1. As one ages, the ability to get enough sleep in one session diminishes.  The main sleep period will shorten and people will find the need to nap during the day goes up.
  2. Shift length plays a very small role in how much sleep one gets in a day.  A person on an 8-hour shift may get a few more minutes of sleep when compared to a person on a 12-hour shift.  However, people get a great deal more sleep on days they don’t come in to work: about 60 to 90 minutes more.  So, its better to work a shift with more days off.  This usually means longer shifts.
  3. The older one gets, the harder it is to work more days in a row.  It is also harder to adjust to different shifts – a problem that is growing smaller as more and more companies get away from rotating shifts.
  4. We need about 8-hours of sleep a day.
  5. When people become sleepy, they care less about doing a good job.  This will start to show up in small ways as people begin to take short-cuts in their work.  Short-cuts can lead to quality, production and safety problems if left unchecked.
  6. Naps are a great investment.  A short, 10-15 minute nap can make one alert for the next several hours.  The problem with napping at work is that we don’t fall asleep instantly and, we need to deal with sleep inertia – the grogginess we feel after waking.
  7. A workforce that starts its day shift at 7:00 am will get about 20 more minutes per night than a workforce that starts its day shift at 6:00 am.
  8. People learn by (1) doing the task or (2) reading about the task or (3) watching the task being done or (4) conceptually imagining how the task might be done.  Apply this to safety at your site.  Don’t just rely on one method of making people “safety aware.”
  9. At one site we worked at, every time a group of people got together for a meeting, the first thing they did was ask “Who wants to tell us about a task they have coming up?”  The volunteer might say, “I am going to the warehouse to pick up some spare parts.”  Next, every single member would have to point out a safety item dealing with that task.  For example: “Make sure to wear your safety belt on the drive over” or “When you get there, make sure you wear the proper protective equipment” or “Check the pressure on your tires before the drive.”  As you can see, no issue is too small and there are lots of issues.  This exercise forces everyone to “think” for a moment.  I really like this idea.
  10. At another site, we didn’t hear “good-bye” or “I’ll see you around.”  The parting comment was always, “Work Safe.”
  11. At one of the mines we helped with schedule design we saw nearly 100 huge trucks moving around the site at any one time.  As we were tracking accidents we could see which hour of the week had the most safety incidences.  When that hour came up the following week, we would go out on the general communication system and say, “You are now entering the most dangerous hour of the week.”  As a result of the repeated reminder that hour nearly always became one of the safest hours of that week.
  12. When I go to a site, I sometimes leave off my safety glasses or ear plugs and see how the workforce responds.  When I get stopped right away by an hourly guy telling me to put on glasses, I know I am at a well run plant.  A plant that has a strong safety program is typically strong at a lot of other things as well. How would your site do in this respect?

Work safe.

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

6-day schedules (part 2)

Part I of this series was posted a few days ago and discussed some of the problems surrounding 6-day schedules.  I recommend you read that posting before going forward with this one.

Today’s post will begin the focus on schedule patterns; specifically, those patterns that cover 24 hours a day for 6 days each week.  I will cover one schedule per post for the next four posts so be sure to stay tuned.

Let’s start with the most basic way of covering 6 days.  All you need to do is, sometime during the week, tell everyone, “I’ll see you all on Saturday.â€Â  Then, when everyone shows up on Saturdays (good luck with that), you will find that you have quite neatly covered 6 days a week.

6 day part 2

The best thing about this pattern is that you can easily contract back to a 5-day schedule.  Just don’t work on Saturday and you’re there.  Another plus is the fact that the supervisors can stay with their crews.  Employees will have mixed feelings about this.  They don’t like working all of their Saturdays or having only one day off per week.  They do, however, like getting 30% more pay (due to overtime) than they did when they had all of their weekends off.

On the down-side, this is not really a sustainable way to cover the 6th day.  People are simply working too many days in a row with not enough time off to recuperate at the end of the week.  One plant that I recently worked with showed a positive relationship between the number of days of work each month and the OSHA Recordable Rate – as the number of days went up, so did the Recordable Rate.  In fact, the relationship was so strong that 56% of the increases and decreases in the Recordable Rate were statistically attributed to the number of days people worked.  At the same time, this company’s Productivity Index showed an inverse relationship.  As the number of days worked by an employee when up, the measure of productivity went down.

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

6-day schedules (part 1)

Sometimes companies are born into a 24/7 schedule.  An example would be a refinery.  From the moment it was conceived until it reached operational retirement, it was a 24/7 operation.  There are many examples like this.

More often than not, 24/7 schedules are something that companies grow into.  They start off covering one or two shifts during the week.  As they expand, they add more shifts; more hours of productivity.  It’s these companies that I’d like to talk about today.  More specifically, I’d like to talk about the murky waters of 6-day operations that companies often wade through as they transition from a 5-day workweek to a 7-day workweek.

I use the term “murky waters†because there is no easy path when you are sitting on the cusp; when 5 days a week is too little and 7 days a week too much.

People don’t think about this much until they get there.  Only then does the reality of their situation set in.  That reality is: There are no good 6-day schedules.

That may actually be a little judgmental as “good†is in the eye of the beholder and I can certainly name a few companies we’ve worked with where a 6-day schedule was perfect for both – operations and the workforce.  However, in the vast majority of 6-day operations, the options are few and not very attractive.

Let’s look at this first from a staffing perspective.

A schedule that covers 24 hours a day, Monday through Friday is a 120-hour schedule.  That is, it covers 120 hours of the week from when it starts to when it finishes.  This is an important number since we need to hire people to cover those hours every week.  A 120-hour schedule uses three crews, each working 40 hours a week on average (note: There are 3-crew, 12-hour schedules that average 40 hours by working 36 hours twice and 48 hours once in a 3-week cycle).  So, once you have your three crews, you are ready to go.

A schedule that covers 24 hours a day, every day of the week (24/7) will use four crews.  This is because there are 168 hours in a week.  If you divide those hours among 4 crews, each crew will get 42 hours on average (note: Using 8’s, their weekly hours will be 40, 40, 40 and 48.   Using 12’s, half the weeks will have 36 hours and half will have 42 hours.)

So, if a 5-day schedule uses 3 crews and a 7-day schedule uses 4 crews, where does that leave us with a 6-day schedule?

The answer is, we need 3.6 crews to cover 24 hours a day, 6-days a week.  This is true if the average workweek is 40 hours.

The complexity of this type of crewing will be covered in the next blog post which I will post in a few days.  Suffice to say, partial crews raise all types of issues with supervision, rotation, and cross-training.

Now let’s look at the operational issues.

The single biggest problem is maintenance.  Depending on your facility and industry, there can be several similar types of issues like sanitation or changeovers and such.  I’ll just discuss maintenance here because it is a fairly universal problem with 6-day schedules.

For the purpose of this discussion, I’m going to assume that you must turn over your equipment to maintenance for one shift per week.

When a company runs 5 days a week, maintenance is inevitably pushed to the weekends.  This may not be good for the maintenance people who have to work every Saturday and Sunday, but it allows the largest portion of the workforce, those not in maintenance, to have the weekend off.   The good news is that maintenance will have 2 full days to get all of their work done before operations start back up on Monday.

When a company makes the leap to 7-day operations, maintenance opportunities actually improve.  Instead of trying to get everything fixed on a weekend, maintenance can now get access during the week.  Why?  Because maintenance has to be done and there is no longer any compelling reason to do it on the weekends.  So, why not start doing your maintenance when there are vendors, outside shops, engineers and supervision more readily available.  In short, maintenance is better done on the weekdays than on the weekends.  If you are going to lose a shift of operations to maintenance at some point in the week, pick that shift where maintenance is better accomplished.

Now we get to the 6-day schedule.  Operations will make the case that they need to run 6 days so maintenance should do their work on Sunday.  If you do maintenance anywhere other than Sunday, this means a productive shift is lost that must be replaced and the only place to add it back is…Sunday.  The choice becomes (1) maintenance on Sunday or (2) maintenance not on Sunday and the workforce comes in for a shift on Sunday to make up for the one lost to maintenance during the week.  Since the largest portion of the operation is not made up of maintenance people, they win and thus, get Sundays off.  This means maintenance is now saddled with doing a week’s worth of work in a single, weekend day.

Depending on the size of your plant, the scope of your maintenance and the reliability of your equipment, this may simply not be achievable.  You may not have enough maintenance people at your facility to do all of the work that needs to be done in a single day.  Maintenance will do their best but still, shortcuts may be the tool of last resort.  If your equipment is highly sensitive to partial maintenance, then it will begin to shut itself down during the week in protest of the lack of attention it got on the weekend.

Maintenance may add more people to their crews in an attempt to have more people available on the weekend.  This may actually work but can also result in overstaffing during the weekdays when everything is running and only corrective maintenance or project work can get done.

Maintenance may resort to using a Weekend Crew so they can add people without overstaffing during the week.  This may also work, however since Sunday is only one day and a weekend crew is, at the very least, a 2-day crew, you will still end up being overstaffed on Saturday when everything is still running.

So there you have it.  Staffing-wise, 6-day schedules are mathematically complex.  Operational-wise, you are out of room to do the support work that most operations require to run reliably.

In my next posting, I will cover schedules that address these issues with varying degrees of success.

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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.

See more blog posts:

6-day schedules (part 2)

6-day schedules (part 3)

6-day schedules (part 4)

Overtime: Fact V. Fiction

It is not unusual for a company to contact us with the following idea: “If I can just put in the right schedule, I will save a ton of money on overtime.”

There is really just one condition where this is absolutely true.  If your current schedule has too many people at one part of the week and not enough people at another part of the week, the right schedule will correctly redistribute these people and you will save a ton of money.

Then there are times when this is partially true.  If your operation is expanding and the size of your workforce is fixed, then overtime will go up.  When overtime goes up the following happens: (1) The workforce makes more money, (2) The workforce becomes fatigued, (3) Productivity per person will drop, (4) The accident rate per hour will go up, (5) Quality will decrease and absenteeism and turnover will increase.

The perfect schedule will allow you to keep these from happening.  It does this by allowing you to add straight time hours to “replace” overtime hours.

Note the use of the term “replace.”

In most cases, reducing overtime means adding straight time.  From a cost perspective, the two are nearly identical.  Straight time costs include wages AND benefits as well as taxes.  Overtime costs include a premium rate and taxes.  In the end, they typically cost the company the same.  What this means is if you say, “We can eliminate $1 million a quarter in overtime costs with a better schedule!”  It is very likely that your next sentence should be “However, we will also spend $1 million a quarter in additional straight time costs.”

This is not to say you should not keep a handle on your overtime.  Too much will certainly cost you; often in disastrous ways (as noted above).  However, overtime should not be seen as the “low hanging” fruit on the road to reduced costs.

If you want to reduce your costs – increase your volume.

There is no simpler way to do it.

By the way, most companies, with level production levels find that an overtime rate between 5% and 15% is just about right.  Keep in mind, in a typical workforce, 20% of your workforce avoids all overtime.  20% of your workforce loves all the overtime they can get.  The remaining 60% will work what they feel is a fair amount.

If you want to know how your workforce feels about overtime… Ask them.  Don’t guess. Or…

 Call Us and We Can Help

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.