A refinery’s call-out overtime had become its own line item — predictable, growing, and structurally unmanageable. A purpose-built relief pool reduced it substantially without adding net headcount to the operation.
Refining · Coverage ModelA US refinery running four-crew continuous operations had seen its call-out overtime line grow approximately 70% over a three-year period, reaching a point where call-out costs were tracked as a separate budget item and the supervisor time spent managing the call-out process had become a measurable operational drain. The redesign created a dedicated 22-person relief pool, qualified across the most-frequently-called positions, working a 4-on, 4-off pattern that delivered predictable coverage. The relief pool was constructed from the headcount the operation was already paying for in call-out hours, callbacks, and structural slack — net operations headcount did not increase. Call-out overtime fell substantially, the supervisor time consumed by the call-out process returned to operational work, and the total cost envelope moved modestly downward.
A US refinery running multiple processing units in continuous operation, with approximately 340 operations personnel across the operating crews and the dedicated maintenance organization. Four-crew, 12-hour rotation pattern in place for over a decade. Unionized workforce. The refinery had a strong technical culture and a tenured workforce, with retention historically high but absence patterns — sick days, family emergencies, training conflicts — running at industry-typical levels and creating routine coverage demand.
Call-out overtime had grown roughly 70% over a three-year window, reaching a level that finance had begun tracking as a separate line item from regular overtime. The call-out process itself had also become structurally unwieldy: supervisors were spending substantial hours per week working through a call-out roster to find available operators with the right qualifications, and the call-out roster had degraded over time as operators near the top of the list had begun declining calls in favor of preserving their off time. The operation had drafted a proposal to add 12 production operator positions to the four-crew complement as a way of reducing the absence-driven call-out load, at a projected annual cost of approximately $1.7M.
The 12-position addition would solve the immediate coverage problem but at a substantial ongoing cost — and the addition would distribute the absence buffer evenly across the four crews, which the absence pattern data suggested was not the most efficient allocation. Leadership wanted to know whether a more targeted approach could address the call-out problem at lower total cost while also resolving the structural friction of the call-out process itself.
Phase 1 · Business Assessment
We rebuilt the call-out cost picture in full. Direct call-out labor hours and premium pay were the visible elements, but they were not the only ones. We added the supervisor time consumed by the call-out process (which we measured by sampling supervisor activity over a representative four-week window), the cost of qualification verification on each call-out, the secondary fatigue cost of operators working additional shifts on top of their regular rotation, and the safety-incident frequency associated with called-out coverage. We also mapped the absence pattern itself: which positions were called out most frequently, what time of week, what time of year, and what qualifications were needed for each call-out. The pattern was not uniform — it was concentrated in specific positions on specific units.
Three findings shaped the redesign. First, the total cost of the existing call-out approach was approximately 1.6x the direct labor line once secondary costs were included — a substantial multiplier the operation had not been pricing against the 12-position hiring alternative. Second, the absence pattern concentrated on roughly eight positions across the operation, with the remaining positions called out infrequently enough that they did not justify dedicated coverage. Third, the headcount required to cover those eight positions through a dedicated relief pool was approximately 22 operators — substantially more than the 12 positions in the original proposal, but the cost picture inverted once total cost was accounted for. The relief pool, sized correctly, came in below the 12-position addition on labor cost and well below it on total cost. And the source of the 22 positions was already in the operation: existing call-out hours, callback hours, and structural slack converted into predictable pool positions.
Call-out overtime is one of the most expensive forms of labor an operation buys — not just on the premium line, but on the secondary costs the labor budget never sees. Converting those hours into a predictable relief pool typically lowers cost and improves coverage at the same time.
— Dan Capshaw, Senior Partner, Shiftwork Solutions LLC
Phase 2 · Workforce Assessment
We engaged the operations workforce on call-out experience, relief pool interest, and the qualification distribution that would be required in the pool. The feedback was direct. The existing call-out process was widely disliked — operators near the top of the roster were under chronic pressure to take calls, the unpredictability of being called interfered with personal life, and the cycle had been deteriorating over years. A meaningful subset of the workforce indicated active interest in relief pool positions if the pool was structured with predictable schedules and a premium structure that recognized the flexibility being asked of pool operators. The pool was widely understood as preferable to the existing call-out approach by both pool candidates and the regular-crew operators who would be relieved of call-out exposure.
Phase 3 · Solution Design
The redesigned relief pool comprised 22 operators working a 4-on, 4-off pattern on 12-hour shifts, with the pool population qualified across the eight most-frequently-absent positions identified in the business assessment. The pool operators received a flexibility premium reflecting the requirement to deploy across multiple units and crews on short notice, plus a guaranteed shift count that protected their pay regardless of where they were deployed in any given week. Pool deployment protocols were documented: how the operation would dispatch pool operators when an absence occurred, how qualification verification would be handled in real time, and how the pool would handle the small number of multi-absence weeks when demand exceeded pool capacity (in those cases, the existing call-out roster would be used as a backup but was expected to be rarely needed). The pool was staffed from existing-headcount conversion plus selective new hiring — 18 existing operators voluntarily transferred into the pool, and the remaining 4 positions were filled through hiring against the existing-overtime budget rather than as net headcount addition.
Phase 4 · Implementation Preparation and Rollout
The implementation manual documented the pool structure, the deployment protocols, the premium and guarantee mechanics, and the qualification training program that brought pool operators to the cross-position qualification profile. The qualification training was the critical-path item: bringing 22 operators to the right qualification distribution across eight positions required roughly 14 weeks of training and certification work, all of which had to be completed before the pool went fully operational. Union leadership was engaged early and endorsed the pool structure as a meaningful reduction in the call-out friction that had been a long-standing grievance source. Rollout took fourteen weeks from manual approval to full pool operation, with the qualification training running in parallel with administrative preparation.
Measured against the client’s stated objective:
| Metric | Before | After (12 months post) |
|---|---|---|
| Annual call-out overtime hours | ~28,600 | ~4,200 |
| Supervisor time on call-out process | ~14 hrs/week site-wide | ~2 hrs/week site-wide |
| Net operations headcount | ~340 | ~340 (unchanged) |
| Relief pool positions | 0 | 22 |
| Total coverage cost (incl. secondary) | Baseline | ~6% lower |
| 12-position hiring proposal | In progress | Withdrawn |
The call-out process, which had been a source of chronic friction for years, became a peripheral mechanism used only for rare multi-absence weeks. Regular-crew operators reported that the reduction in call-out pressure was the single most visible workforce improvement in years. The pool operators themselves reported high satisfaction with the schedule predictability and the variety of unit exposure the role provided. Voluntary turnover among regular-crew operators returned to historical baseline after climbing for several years. Plant leadership, which had received the 12-position proposal as the obvious answer to the call-out problem, came to view the relief pool as a structural improvement that the hiring proposal would not have produced — the pool addressed the call-out process itself, not just the coverage need underneath it.
The Design Principle: Call-out overtime is a symptom of a coverage model that does not have a dedicated mechanism for absence. Adding headcount to existing crews distributes the absence buffer evenly across positions that don’t experience absence equally. A purpose-built relief pool, sized to the actual absence demand and qualified across the actual call-out positions, addresses the demand directly — usually at lower total cost and with substantial improvement in how the workforce experiences coverage.
The pattern in this engagement repeats across refining, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, and other continuous-operation industries with tenured workforces and routine absence demand. The call-out approach is the historical default for handling absence — it requires no structural change, leverages existing crew qualifications, and is easy to administer in the abstract. But the call-out process accumulates friction over time as operators near the top of the roster begin declining calls, supervisors spend more time managing the process, and the secondary costs of fatigue and incident risk grow. By the time call-out overtime has become a separate budget line item, the operational habit is producing more total cost than a redesigned coverage model would.
A second pattern: the relief pool model is specifically valuable when absence concentrates on a small number of positions rather than distributing evenly across the workforce. In operations where absence is concentrated, the relief pool can be sized substantially smaller than a uniform headcount addition would need to be, because the pool covers the high-frequency positions directly while leaving low-frequency positions to the existing crew structure. The qualification distribution within the pool is the key design parameter, and it deserves explicit attention rather than being treated as an administrative detail.
If your team is looking at growing call-out overtime and the proposed solution is a headcount addition to existing crews, the most useful first step is the absence-pattern analysis — which positions are called out, how often, and what qualifications are needed. The pattern almost always concentrates more narrowly than a uniform addition would address, and that concentration is what makes the relief pool model substantially more efficient than the uniform alternative.
Shiftwork Solutions LLC has guided hundreds of engagements across refining, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, and other continuous-operation industries over more than three decades. Visit shift-work.com to start a conversation.
