Jim | Shiftwork Solutions LLC - Shift Schedule Change Management

How to Engage our Services

There is a book by Malcolm Gladwell called Blink, the Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

In a nutshell, he talks about how too much information is not always a good thing. We often make better choices with less information rather than more.

I sometimes worry that our site offers too much. We really want visitors to our site to be able to find answers to their questions. We want them to know how we can help and we want them to contact us if they have questions. To this end, we have packed this site with as much information about ourselves and shiftwork in general as we possibly can.

And still, when people call us the first question is nearly always, “What is it you guys do?”

This tells me that we have “too much” stuff to sort through to get to that bottom-line issue. In this blog, I’m going to talk about how to find the answer to that question.

If you call me needing help, and I don’t have to pick up a pencil, I will help you for as long as I have the time to spend, without any fee. So, call with your questions and don’t worry about being on the clock.

Our core business is helping companies to change schedules. Companies range in size from a couple of dozen shift workers at a single site to thousands of shift workers at sites around the world.

Most often, companies need to expand from a 3-crew, 5-day operation to a 4-crew 24/7 operation. I would estimate that this makes up about 70% of our business.

We work with every type of industry including nuclear power, call centers, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, refining, packaging, distribution, semi-conductor, shipping and many, many more.

About 80% of our work is in the United States.

A typical engagement process begins with an initial call from the client to us. On this call, we discuss our process, usually very briefly. If the potential client is interested in learning more, we offer an on-site visit. This is typically a 2-hour meeting with the local management team. During this visit, we discuss our process in detail while addressing their current situation. We do not charge a fee for this but the people that invite us out typically pay for travel expenses.

Once this initial meeting is over, we mapped the client’s needs and they learned about our services. At this point, the client typically assigns a few days to internally discuss what they have learned in relation to how it meets their expectations. If they decide to go ahead we send them a proposal and work typically begins within a few weeks after sign off.

I will use a few more posts to discuss our services in a “broad stroke” type of view. However, if you can’t wait for those posts, the information is on our site, among all of the other stuff you might be looking for.

And remember, you can always call and ask “What is it you guys do?”

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.

Covering a 12-hour Vacancy

There is no doubt that shift workers prefer 12-hour shifts over 8-hour shifts. It’s not that they like being at work for an extra four hours. They like the additional 91 days off a year.

Therein lies the problem.

With so many days off, it seems that the crew you need to get in touch with for absentee coverage is always gone.

8-hour shifts offer the following two conveniences: First, you can always ask an 8-hour person to stay over. They are already at work so contacting them simply means walking out to their work station and tapping them on the shoulder. Secondly, they are at work on 75% of the days of the year. If you need to change their schedule on a specific day, the chances are good that you just go out onto the work floor and tell them. They are probably there.

12-hour shifts have neither of these advantages. You don’t want to ask a 12-hour person to stay over for 4, 8 or even 12 hours. Also, they only work 50% of the days in the year. So, if you want to go out on the floor to tell them their schedule is changed, there is a 50/50 chance that they are on a day off and not on the floor.

The single biggest reason, by far, that companies on 12-hour schedules contact us is because of problems with absentee coverage.

People are on their days off when you need them. Your supervisor makes one call after another until someone answers their phone and is willing to come in. This is a time-consuming process that takes your most expensive asset and turns it into a telemarketer.

There is a solution.

Shiftwork Solutions and Shifthound have partnered together to develop software that greatly simplifies absentee coverage on 12-hour shifts. While it works with all types of shifts, the 12-hour schedule tends to have the biggest problem and would thus have the biggest benefit.

The program takes advantage of the overwhelming prevalence of cell phones, text messages, and the internet.

For example, if there is a last-minute opening, a supervisor can send out an overtime request to an entire crew that is scheduled off. Instead of making one call after another, everyone is notified in moments.

We know that about 20% of all shift workers will work all of the overtime they can get. If an entire crew is notified of an overtime opportunity, the positive responses should come in quickly. They can accept overtime via text messages, email or online through the Open Shift Management program.

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

Making Shift Assignments

It’s human nature to not like change. There are a lot of reasons for this, among the biggest is the fear of the unknown. People “know” what’s going on now. They “know” how things work. Anything different is unknown.

A schedule change is probably the biggest change your workforce will go through in a generation. As you might expect, there will be some resistance. About 5% of your workforce will resist simply because it’s in their nature to be negative. The other 95% will have varying degrees of concern; almost all of which will be centered around not knowing, with complete clarity, what is going to happen.

What will the new pattern do to their lifestyle? How much money will they make? What opportunities, if any, will they lose when the change is made? Will they still get all of their benefits? What will happen to vacation? Can they be on the same, or different, shift as their spouse?

This list goes on an on. Your goal should be to create transparency. The more open and informative your process is, the less stress will be put on your workforce.

The one statement that you don’t want to hear is – “That is not fair.”

This is not a statement that comes from change and not “knowing.” This is a statement that often comes from a complete understanding. This is not a statement about “change”. This is a value statement; one which must be closely investigated as soon as it comes up.

Why? Because whoever said it might have a point.

No other issue is more likely to bring up the idea of “fairness” than shift assignments.

If you go from a 3-crew, 5-day schedule to a 4-crew, 24/7 schedule, you will have to redistribute your workforce. When this happens, people will first become concerned that they will not be assigned to the shift they want. Once they know their shift assignment, their internal “jury” will take over. This jury is not concerned with whether or not they got the shift they wanted. This jury is only concerned about fairness.

For example, take two employees. Both want to be assigned to the Day shift. Employee #1 started last week. Employee #2 started 30 years ago and is the most senior person at the plant.

If both of these are assigned to the Night shift, they will have very different reactions. Neither wanted to go to nights, but employee #1 understands how being new means he won’t get his first choice. Meanwhile, employee #2 is going to march straight to the H.R. office and say the dreaded, “This is not fair.”

Without getting into the multitude of ways to assign shifts, I am going to list a few guidelines that, if followed, will greatly reduce the instances of “not fair” resulting from your schedule change project.

Do not realign the entire plant. There will be those that say, “Every job is being changed so we should all be allowed to bid for every job in the facility regardless of whether or not we are trained for the job.” This position needs to be confronted with the practical and economic reality of shutting down the facility to potentially retrain 100% of your workforce. It’s not going to happen.
Minimize change. If someone is on a particular shift, they have the first right to stay on that shift. A person on an 8-hour day shift should have first shot at staying on day shift, even if that shift is going to 12-hours, regardless of seniority. This is easier than you may think since going to 12’s will generally result in twice as many day shift positions.
A typical policy statement will include language like “We will use seniority among those that are currently in the department followed by seniority among those that are outside the department but already trained to do the work.”
Use seniority whenever possible. This is a very defensible position (as opposed to making assignments alphabetically or by height or shoe size.) Seniority, while important, should not override all other considerations such as the current skill set or shift assignment. Typically, it is used as a tie-breaker.
Do not allow bumping unless a job is eliminated. Bumping means that I can take your job because I’m senior or more qualified. In this instance, there is a clear winner and loser. The loser will then go bump someone else who then bumps someone else. Don’t do it.
Once the dust has settled, you may find that one shift is particularly weak and needs a senior person from one of the more desirable shifts. This may result in your taking a senior person and putting them on a shift that they normally wouldn’t be assigned to. If this happens, take that person aside and explain that you need their help. Also, tell them what you will be working on to rectify the situation (including how long they should expect to be on the undesirable shift). You will be pleasantly surprised at how helpful people are willing to be if you don’t simply take their compliance for granted.

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.

Draft Day – Assigning shifts on Your New Schedule

As supervisors and managers go through a process to change the shift schedule, the workforce will experience several different emotions; mostly in a predictable sequence.

First, there will be a surprise, fear or even anger as the news breaks – “We are going to move to a 24/7 schedule.”

Depending on your project’s process, the workforce will likely start to experience less and less anxiety along with an increase in anticipation. This comes from education; the removal of the speculative or unknown factors associated with a new schedule.

At this point, you will be narrowing down your final choices. Hopefully, the workforce has been participating along the way. Things will appear to be “all downhill” from this point.

Then the final schedule will be selected – and everything changes.

Suddenly, the change will become very, very real. With hiring and training going on, the workforce will begin to realize that this is really going to happen. Most importantly, they are going to think “Hey, where am I going to end up once this change is made?” They worry about getting put on the wrong shift or about being put on a crew that they are not familiar with. They speculate about how their vacations picks will change and they will wonder about the nature of their job; will it change or even still exist.

In some cases, it will appear that some are brainstorming things to worry about.

It’s important to understand that this is perfectly natural. It happens all of the time. The good news is that the cure for this period of High Anxiety is simple – answer all of these questions as quickly as you can.

This brings me to today’s topic: Draft Day

Draft Day is the day where you assign people to their shifts and crew. Here is how I prefer to do it:

Let the workforce express a preference for shift assignment (Days or Nights etc).
Let the workforce add extra considerations (“I want to be on the same shift as my wife” etc)
Use a pre-established plan, making sure it is applied consistently in all instances. This plan is made public in that the workforce knows what it is and they know before they express any schedule preference. Typically I recommend something like “We will use your date of hire, your preference, and your current work area to make assignments.” While it is often more complicated than that, I think this gives you a feel for how we approach assigning people to shifts. You don’t want to have to cross-train your entire plant so it is important that you do not treat this as “We are creating X new positions and we will be using our current bid procedure.” If you do, it could take months to fill out your crews, not to mention the expense of retaining everyone.
If you are going from a 5-day schedule to a 24/7 schedule, you will be basically hiring the 4th crew. This will represent a 33% increase in staffing in the affected area. Clearly, you can’t hire an entire crew and put them all together on the least desirable shifts. While you will get some experienced people that want to work the Night shift, you may still find yourself short of skills on Nights if you use pure seniority. If it becomes necessary to put someone on a shift that their seniority says they should be able to avoid, it is important that you talk directly to that person. Tell them why you are putting them on the shift they don’t want. Also, let them know it is a temporary placement until the new hires can stand on their own. If you talk to them, there will be no problem. If you don’t talk to them…big mistake.
Once you have all of the preference sheets from the workforce, hold a Draft Day. This is where the first-line supervisors and managers get together to “slot” everyone in. I like doing this with everyone in the same room at the same time. This helps to ensure a consistent application of the policies used to put people on the crew. (Order lunch in).
After everyone has been assigned to a shift, take a look at the 15% to 20% that didn’t get their first choice (Yes, most will get their first choice). Review each decision made to ensure that if an individual comes to ask “Why?” you are able to give them a good answer.
Once you slot people in by Preference, Job and Date-of-Hire, you can go back and look at the special requests. Do not use a special request to bump a more senior person off of a shift. However, if you have two 12-hour Day shifts and Bob wants to work with Tim, you should look to see if they are both on Days and if you can accommodate their request based on skills. In short, this is a lower priority but if you can do this, then you should.
Once all of the above are satisfied, you may still have holes in your schedule. This is likely to be the case if you are moving quickly with the change and the local labor market is tight. It can take a long time to find and hire an entire crew. By this time, you will be able to tell your new hires what openings you have on each shift.

As a final note: Do Not implement before you have your crews staffed and trained to a point where they can stand on their own. If you implement too early, others will have to come in on overtime to

supplement your poor skill sets on some shifts. This will feel like a betrayal to those that thought they were going to a new schedule that would give them a lot of time off.

Timing is crucial. Try to get this done within 2 weeks of announcing the new schedule. Until this final step is done, your workforce will be on High Rumor Alert which is never helpful.

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.

The Cost of Time

Suppose I asked you the following question: “Will an employee make more or less money when they work overtime?”

You might quickly answer: “Yes. They make anywhere from 50% to 100% more when they are being paid at the overtime rate.”

And you would be right.

Now, suppose I asked you, “Which costs you, the company, more to pay: overtime or straight time?”

This question is much more complicated and has a surprising answer.

When you take into account the cost of straight time, you must consider the additional cost of medical plans, retirement, vacations, holidays, etc. While overtime and straight time both have payroll taxes, only straight time is burdened with all of these other costs.

The fact is that the cost to your company for an hour of straight time or overtime is probably about the same. My experience is that they are nearly always within 5-10% of each other; sometimes straight time is more and sometimes overtime is more.

The math says that the higher your hourly rate is, the more likely it is that overtime will be more expensive. Conversely, the lower your hourly rate, the more likely it is that straight time is more expensive.

This is a rather fortuitous result. When your wages are low, you can use overtime to enable your employees to enhance their income. In doing so, you may actually be lowering your hourly labor cost.

If you have any questions regarding this or any other shiftwork issue, please give me a call.

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.

Help is on the way.

There is no such thing as a perfectly staffed shiftwork operation. Sure, there will be days when the number of people that show up is exactly the number of people that you need. It happens, but not often enough.

What does a typical day or week really look like?

The workload varies. This could be due to product mix, changeovers, maintenance or just seasonality.

The workforce varies. Vacation preferences tend to bunch up around holidays and summer. Sickness, STD, LTD and FMLA all add to the uncertain nature of daily staffing; not to mention the occasional flat tire.

If you throw skill sets into the mix, then you end up with a very complicated scenario. Sure, you only let 10% go on vacation at a time, but you better make sure that the 10% that off does not represent 100% of a skill set you need to operate.

When the workforce does not perfectly match the workload in both numbers and skills, action must be taken.

If you are overstaffed, you may need to send people home. This usually entails a supervisor walking the floor and asking people if they want to go home. Failing that, you could force people home (not a recommended option) or you could find “work” to keep them busy.

Over staffing is a very expensive proposition, one that is hard to correct once it has occurred.

What about under-staffing?

Absenteeism and changes in production conspire to make sure you don’t have the right people in place (numbers and skills) without action being taken.

That action usually means tapping people on the shoulder and saying, “Remember when you thought you were going home at the end of the shift?” or placing a call after call, hoping that someone will answer their telephone.

Absentee coverage has become even more problematic with 12-hour shifts. With extended hours, all overtime is covered by people at home being called in on their days off.

There are ways to make this a little easier. Daily and weekly lists are posted, telling people what days off they will be giving up. Volunteer lists enable people to sign up for vacancies that may or may not exist. The idea is to give overtime to those that want it or assign it to those that don’t.

There are several major problems with all of this.

1. It takes a lot of time every day to manage to under staff and over staffing issues.

2. There is no real-time way of determining what the staffing needs are. Often, the best guess is used.

3. There is no real-time way for the workforce to indicate if they are available or even prefer overtime.

4. There is no real-time method for matching staffing needs with employee desires.

5. The coverage policies, whatever they are, are imposed on a workforce resulting in blame, resistance and a feeling of unfairness.

Help is on the way. Soon, we will show you how to make all of these problems go away. Everything will be done in real-time. Supervisors will have hours of time freed up every week. Employees will actively participate. Costs will drop as you match the workforce to your exact needs for that shift.

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

Where did all of the 8-hour shifts go?

In today’s work environment, compressed workweeks, telecommuting and competition for labor have conspired to make 8-hour shifts a vanishing breed.

Twenty-five years ago, 8-hour shifts were everywhere. Today, they are an anomaly – especially in operations covering 24/7 in the United States.

I stress the “United States” because our national labor laws allow for compressed workweeks (longer shifts with more days off) that some other countries, such as Japan, are unable to offer.

There are three reasons that 8-hour shifts (in 24/7 operations) have become the exception rather than the rule: (1) Overtime laws that only require that overtime rates be paid in excess of 40 hours in a week, (2) 8-hour shifts must rotate or, if they don’t, you must contend with supervision, staffing and cross-training issues (3) people like longer shifts if they result in additional days off.

Let’s look at these one at a time.

Pay after 40 hours: All 24/7 schedules take the 168 hours in a week and divide them among four crews. This comes to an average of 42 hours per crew. If you work 8-hour shifts, you will average 42 hours of work and 43 hours of pay regardless of whether or not overtime is paid after 8 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week. On a 12-hour schedule, if overtime is only paid after 40 hours in a week, you will get 44 hours of pay. However, if you get paid overtime after 8 hours in a day on a 12-hour schedule, you will average 49 hours of weekly pay. This means, that if a company must pay overtime after 8-hours in a day, they will have to pay 49 weekly pay-hours for a 12-hour schedule but only 43 pay hours for an 8-hour schedule. This is why you won’t see 12-hour schedules in places like Japan (or California) where overtime must be paid after 8 hours in a day – they are just too expensive to implement.

8’s must rotate: People frequently think that rotating shifts are a “choice” as opposed to a necessity. This is almost never the case. Shift workers will choose fixed shifts over rotating shifts by a margin of 9 to 1. However, if you have 8-hour shifts, you will be rotating. Why is this? Think about it this way – In a continuous operation, there are 4 crews but only three daily 8-hour shifts. If one crew is assigned to days and one is assigned to afternoons and the other is assigned to nights; then where does the 4th crew go? The answer is that this crew would rotate quickly between all of the shifts as the crews take different days off.

There is a way to make 8’s work as “fixed” shifts, however, there are some significant complications that you will have to live with. Instead of having 4 crews, use three crews each of which is overstaffed.

For example: Suppose you need three people to show up. Instead of having four crews of three people (a total of 12 people) you will have three crews of four people (also a total of 12). Since a crew has four people and you only need three, every day, one of the four get a day off. To ensure that every combination of 3 gives you the skills you need, cross-training will be required. Also, this only works if the required crew size is a multiple of 3. If you need 17 to show up, then the 8-hour fixed will not work (however, 18 works and so does 24 as well as any other multiple of 3). Supervisor scheduling will no longer be able to match the crews they supervise since they will need days off to which means someone will have to cover for them.

I know this sounds complicated so give us a call if you need more detail.

People like longer shifts: Actually, they don’t like longer shifts, they like the additional days off. How many more days off? If you work a 24/7 schedule with 8-hour shifts, you will work 273 days a year (75% of all days). If you work the exact same number of hours per year on a 12-hour schedule, you will work 182 days per year (50% of all days). This means you will work longer days but get an additional 91 days off per year. While people are often wary of the longer shifts before they try them; after they have been on a 12-hour schedule for a few weeks, you would find it difficult to find someone that would want to give up their newly found bonanza of extra days off.

As you may have noticed, I tried to minimize the amount of “math” behind the various issues. However, this does not mean the math is not available to you.

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

Staffing and Scheduling – The Compressed Work Week

This posting is the first in a series of posts that will examine the relationship between the schedule your employees are working and the number of people it takes to staff your operation. Today, I will focus only on a scheduling practice commonly referred to as a Compressed Work Week.

A Compressed Work Week (CWW) schedule is one in which people work more hours on the days that they work so they can have more days off.

I’m going to look at this several different ways because of the impact of a CWW change, depending on your situation.

Scenario #1: I have one employee and he trims trees for 8 hours a day, five days a week.

In this case, we can be almost indifferent about our employee’s schedules. He probably shouldn’t work at night but, so long as he spends 40 hours a week trimming trees, we don’t care if he does it in 10-hour or 8-hour chunks. We do care about 12-hour chunks because, in order to average 40 hours a week, he would have to work ten 12-hour shifts in a 3-week period. This means that at least one of those weeks will have 4 days of work in it. This means 48 hours of work in a single week which will increase costs when you pay overtime for all hours worked over 40 in a week. Note: No extra staffing is needed in this case.

Scenario #2: I have one employee and he is a receptionist for my office which is open for 8-hours a day, five days a week.

In this case, a CWW will actually hurt you. If you only need a person for 8 hours in a day and they are there for 10 hours, you are paying for 2 hours that you don’t need. Furthermore, this person is now only working 4 days a week while your office is open for 5 days. This means you will have to use overtime for the fifth day or hire a part-time employee or do without a receptionist for 1 day a week.

Scenario #3: I have five employees working 8 hours a day for five days a week. My business only needs four employees at a time and I need them for 10 hours a day.

No problem here. Put everyone on 10-hour shifts. They each work four days a week and they each get a different day off. In this way, four show up every day for 10 hours and no overtime is incurred. This example is made to work out perfectly. However, imagine that you have 7 people and need only five to show up – the number just won’t work out. Basically, if you are 20% overstaffed on a daily basis and your daily coverage is 20% less than it needs to be, you can change your schedule from 8’s to 10’s without a cost. Anything else will be problematic.

A few notes about compressed workweek schedules…

As you can see from the three examples above, your conditions will determine if this is a good idea or not.
Even though they might not realize it, your employees will love a CWW schedule after they have been on it for a few weeks. They might not like the longer days but they will love the extra days off. There are two things that result from this: (1) Retention will go up as schedule satisfaction goes up and (2) Retention will go down if you take away their new schedule which they have come to love – so be sure it will work for you before you implement it.
Although it may seem counter-intuitive, your employees will average more sleep on a CWW schedule than on one with 8-hour shifts. The reason for this is that people sleep slightly less on days they are working longer shifts AND they are sleeping significantly more on days that they don’t have to work.
In the United States, we see CWW schedules implemented most often in operations that run 24/7. There are two reasons for this. The first is that people love the extra days off. The second is that an 8-hour schedule that covers 24/7 must rotate (Trust me on this one. Give me a call if you want more details as to why.)

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

Staffing, overtime and your schedule

One of the most common and misunderstood issues surrounding schedules is the relationship between staffing, overtime and the schedule itself.

The reality is that a schedule has no impact on the quantity of overtime your site is experiencing.

Overtime is a function of (1) How much work is there to do and (2) How many people do you have to do that work.

Your schedule only tells you “when” the overtime will occur.

If you take a look at all the hours it takes to get a job done, and then look at how many people you have to do the work, you will know how many hours per person will be needed.

If you have 4,200 hours of work to be done next week and 100 employees to do it, then everyone will average 42 hours of work for an overtime rate of 5%. Notice that the schedule played no role in determining this figure.

So where does a schedule come into play?

In most cases, a schedule will tell you “when” the overtime will occur.

For example, if your schedule has short shifts (i.e. 8 hours or less), the overtime is typically worked before or after a regular shift. There are two reasons for this. First, the shift is short enough that you can add hours to it without adversely impacting safety or productivity. Secondly, the shorter the shift, the more days of work your schedule will have. This means you have fewer days off. The fewer days you have off, the more you want to protect them. Therefore, if you have to work overtime, you’d rather do it on a day when you are already at work rather than giving up one of your preciously few days off.

If you have longer shifts (i.e. 10-hour or 12-hour shifts) then overtime is much more likely to occur on a regularly scheduled day off. There are two reasons for this. First, the longer the shift, the fewer hours you can add before the shift become too long and begin to adversely impact alertness, safety, and productivity. Secondly, longer shifts have many more days off. More days off has the impact of lessening the value of a day off, (In much the same way that diamonds would be less valuable if they were laying around everywhere.) This means that it is less painful to give up a day off when you have a lot of them.

There is one condition where the schedule can play a role in the “quantity” of overtime – When you have the wrong schedule to begin with.

The wrong schedule can cause you to take the “perfect” number of people and put them in less than perfect locations. For example, if you have the right number of people but your schedule causes you to be overstaffed during some time periods; you will then be understaffed during other time periods. This will cause overtime. More importantly, they will cause Idle Time when you are overstaffed along with the Overtime for when you are understaffed. Both of these conditions create high avoidable costs that can be eliminated with the right schedule.

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

Call Center Scheduling

There is a big difference between creating a shift schedule for a manufacturing plant and a call center.

More often than not, manufacturing tends to have steady workloads throughout a shift. While there may be someday to day variations or even seasonality, these are relatively minor compared to what goes on at a call center.

Like all scheduling projects, we need to consider the needs of the workforce as well as the needs of the company.

For call centers, the needs of the company can be complicated. We look for answers to the following types of questions: When do the calls come in? How long do they last? Is it better to staff lean and miss a call or two or is it better to over staff and answer every call on the first ring? Answers to questions like these will create a mathematical model for schedule design.

To fit such a model, we often find that covering 24/7 with a simple 4-crew schedule does not offer a very good fit. Instead, we tend to find that several schedules, sometimes one per person puts the right number of people in the right place at the right time. We frequently resort to a variety of shift lengths that create gaps and overlaps at the appropriate times.

Just trying to do this for a single day can be very complicated. Doing it for an entire week while ensuring the workforce is not over/underutilized can take time, but the payoff will be significant.

If you pay an employee $20 an hour, overstaffing will cost you about $70,000 per year per extra person. At the same time, understaffing will result in either high overtime or poor customer service.

The right schedule can make sure that you are staffed as optimally as possible.

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