I was challenged about my general slant against management when I highlighted around 50% of managers have little idea about the impact staff costs have on their business. Actually it was quite respectable research that gets released from time to time on management forums. So it’s nothing personal – I am ostensibly a manager myself.

Just to be sure I will redress the balance with an example I came across recently in the financial sector. Most banks run hard-pressed IT support 24/7 so when the task for a new shift pattern to drive efficiency and effectiveness from “up over” landed on the ICT Team Leaders desk it was given some attention. A review of current shift patterns, a look at the “nice to have” patterns, and the usual “horse-trading” in between soon generated a new plan approved by management.

Matching hours, and shift cover are not unreasonable objectives. However strange things happen to shift patterns when applied to the reality of days and dates. In fact the only difference between the old and the new here was cost. Additional staff deployment costs increased by 16% adding a further £36,600 to the operations bill whilst maintaining identical production hours and shift coverage. That does take a specially honed management skill (see comparison graph below).

Now what they should have done…

Proposing an effective but inefficient deployment strategy.

Research has found around fifty percent of managers make uninformed decisions without realizing the sweeping impact of staff costs - or if you like, they manage the business with the same outcome as flipping a coin. You hire qualified or staff with ability (they are not the same thing) but on balance they are the lifeblood of your business, working each day to represent your product, service, and brand in the best possible light.

Many approach shift pattern design with a narrow perspective unaware of the many complexities, risks, and unforseen consequences poorly designed and executed shift patterns can bring down on a business. One perspective however stands heads and shoulders above the rest. The relationship between staff costs and revenue. You do not delegate shift pattern design to someone who is ignorant, or for whatever reason, do not care about that relationship. If you do your workforce management strategy will be doomed to failure at the outset.

A business with around a 100 staff deployed on extended or 24 hour working will cost the business $5.74m (£3.59m). It can be higher, or lower, but this is based on the median weekly pay of a western developed nation. Deploying a bank resource of 100 nursing professionals at premium rate will be in the order of $81.1m (£54m) of assets a year. So if you are involved in shift pattern design, and ultimately workforce deployment, you will be managing a few million in assets for even a modest operation. You will thank me for the heads up and giving you a more than even chance of getting the edge at your next performance review.

It is the exponential nature of unplanned costs that create the ‘shock and awe’ for the unsuspecting manager at the exit interview. For example, depending on whether the shift pattern factors in paid 1 hour breaks or not makes a difference of over $0.5m (£342k). Being asked to design a shift pattern that factor in overtime hours for reasons other than they are needed (a prevalent practice in certain sectors) typically cost a further $1.7m (£1.1m). The costs for 100 staff is now $7.9m (£5.2m). You could test this by trying to induce a 28% business overhead without generating revenue at that performance review and see what happens. When you read about job cuts followed by profitability that is the only correction left open to them by that time. 

Paid breaks and factored overtime are simple concepts. Mention could be made about a mismatched staff supply demand match which can easily divert a further 30% or more of these costs into the ether with no appreciable benefit. I will leave you with the costs associated with baseline analysis about the impact of costs for 100 staff where a dedicated workforce management strategy is weak or non-existent:

Impact of Staff Costs

First, why do we have shift patterns, and what do they do. What is their function, their purpose. Well we use shift patterns to help us efficiently coordinate and control an effective staff supply usually over extended or 24 hour working.  How boring! – anyway HR do all that stuff. Well actually they don’t. In fact many businesses don’t have anyone doing it. That is why so many wander in the wilderness of rapidly diminishing returns,  inhabited by workforce review teams battling to configure performance matrices, talent management, performance working parties, succession planners,  and those skilled in the black art of  ’management by template’ and post event rationalisation.

The first goal is to decide whether you want a flat or variable staff supply. These are only two options (OK three if you combine them):

• Flat staff supply is usually needed in manufacturing, production, or wherever a process is driven by the capacity of a machine to make things. And we all know machines can just go on, and on, and on – but people can’t. A flat supply is also needed when a service is too important to risk a breakdown in delivery when a demand for it occurs – however unlikely or infrequent. A good example would be firefighters. They don’t know when a fire is going to break out, but when it does first response has to be fast and effective. 
• Variable staff supply is usually needed when people are dealing with people. Demand fluctuates over a time range depending on what people are doing or what services they want. If there is no demand then staff go home and return back to work when the demand picks up. Retails is a good example, healthcare another and just about anything where demand is based on past experience of consumer habits. (In a world of 6.5Bn people the demand curve is depressingly predictable and claims about uniqueness is an overprescribed placebo to induce importance).

You may hear someone talk about staff supply demand match (SSDM) analysis. And what they are talking about is matching the numbers of staff to do the workload. Years’ ago it was called ‘Time and Motion’. If you bear in mind “there is nothing new under the sun…” you will find it less intimidating and be able to work out you do not use a shift pattern delivering a flat supply for a variable demand and visa-versa.

If you do these are the outcomes:

1. Using a flat staff supply for a variable demand will mean your business is almost always over or understaffed.
2. Using a variable staff supply for a constant demand will mean the business is certainly inefficient, and probably ineffective.

Both occur when the practice of staff management is delegated and handled by people who are unaware of the many complexities, risks and missed opportunities. When your business wants this:

Variable staff supply

… you don’t want a shift pattern design that does this!

Flat Staff Supply

I said it was blindingly obvious. However just check out what is going on just to make sure – there is no harm in that. After I have dealt with the question of value in the context of your shift pattern design and staff schedule management, I will cover the sorts of things that make us ignore the blindingly obvious and embrace the just plain dumb.

Browse and download hundreds of shift patterns at www.shiftpatterncentral.com

Here we are going to take a look at the types of shift pattern.  Like most things in life people have different descriptions about how they see things and this is ours.

A shift pattern is a sequences of shifts in the context of each other and in the context of days-off. At a more primitive level it can be described as a day-on day-off pattern. All shift patterns have a sequence, but not all sequences are based on the same factors. Some are based on days of the week (easy), others are based on days-on days-off independent of days of the week (harder), and others are based on a group of factors which must always succeed to generate a pattern (very hard).

Arguably you can have a shift pattern that is totally random but that is hard in practice. It will not be the first time I have been told “…they work whatever they want when they want…and there is no pattern”. You usually can identify a pattern in around three to four weeks which proves remarkably robust for the remainder of the year – it’s just they can’t see it. And before you blog me with examples of random shift patterns generated by a computer, the key words I use are hard in practice. The reason is because we all virtually live our lives in patterns of time. It’s just a simple question whose pattern (or schedule if you like) wins – usually the one that can’t see the pattern loses.

I was chatting to a cable guy who was fixing my TV about his new shift patterns being worked out ( a coincidence although I do bore for England on this subject). I uttered some words of sympathy about the 24/7 community and globalization affects us all. Not a bit of it. “They are still working it out he retorted …and as I already have mine they took one look and said that looks good, now everybody has to work it.” I was impressed and asked him how he went about it.  “Easy, I know the away matches for Arsenal and I can still fit their home matches in so the wife can still do her part-time job”. 

So a whole workforce deployment strategy is being being driven by the FA Premiership fixtures and Arsenal football club away matches with a little help from the wife’s part-time job – but only he could see the pattern. So take the time to understand shift patterns and you will elevate yourself above mere mortals to a higher plane. On the other hand if you feel it’s not that important – good luck!

Back to the shift pattern types. There are three:

1. Weekday Generated Sequences (WGS) is a shift pattern that references the days of the week for its structure and design e.g. repeating days-off always occur on the same days of the week in rotation, or the Wednesday and Thursday of the third week is the afternoon shift etc. The most obvious is always having the days-off at the weekend. These patterns are always structured in multiples of seven e.g. 7, 14, 21 because that is a week.
2. Pattern Generated Sequence (PGS) is a shift pattern that uses a sequence of day-on day-off which is independent of the days of the week. For example 4 days working followed by 5 days not working. These patterns rarely fit into multiples of seven. They also give rise to the notion of the “eight day week” when the sequence is eight days long. It doesn’t help because a week is seven days not eight days.
3. IA Generated Sequence (IAGS) No not AI for artificial intelligence, but IA for intelligent agents. We use intelligent agents to automatically generate shift patterns when one or more factors are well-defined. Thay are very good at knowing when a goal is reached and when a solution fails it remembers where it is and doesn’t start from the beginning again  which is a big time saver. You can find all the shift patterns that succeed and chose the one you want,  if there is more than one ( or modify it manually if you want to ruin it). The advantage – apart from being fast – is the knowledge you have all the possible shift pattern solutions. If seven shift patterns suceed there will not be an eighth lurking around. The search space invariably involve very large numbers of shift patterns.

As a general rule the best approach is not to try and use one shift pattern to manage complex working arrangements. It is better to design simple shift patterns that each achieve a goal, and then combine them together in one schedule. You can even combine the different types of shift pattern above in the same schedule.

 The schedule being greater than the sum of its shift patterns  ;-)

See: Shift Pattern Glossary

Though shift pattern design is not easy knowing the basics does help. For example, people may call them by different names but there are only four shift configurations:

1. Meeting – continuous shift that terminates at the start of another shift.
2. Overlap – continuous shift that has a period of time which overlaps another shift.
3. Before and After  – worked in two discrete time periods.
4. During – shift that is completed within the time period of another shift.

However with these four shift types you can create complex patterns of shift working. In the context of 24 hour working another level of description has been added in this diagram: core, intermediate and flexible to describe the role of the shift in relation to each other. This is covered in another section.

The relationship of the four shift pattern types in a 24 hour context.

Constrained by a 24 hour period meeting shifts typically have an 8 or 12 hour duration. That’s easy. So are twelve 2 hour shifts but more difficult to source staff who will work them. In the military six 4 hour shifts (or watches) are not uncommon. If you dispense with the notion of the 24 hour day you can have meeting shifts of any duration e.g. submarine crews under the polar ice cap for 3 months or remote exploration teams. Now life is quickly becoming complicated. Welcome to the world of shift pattern design and the first basic principle: Always have a clear goal about what you want from your shift pattern.

Today, we successfuly completed integrating Scribd previews into our shift patterns. We think this makes a great improvement in the usability when navigating through the vast array on shift patterns . You can now partially preview the actual Microsoft Excel spread sheet(s), shift patterns, shift times and distribution graph analytics.

ShiftPatternCentral’s Team

At ShiftPatternCentral our passion has always been creating accessible and easy to understand shift patterns that people really want.

As we move forward we’d really like to hear from you with ideas on how we might improve. Need more shift patterns of a particluar type: 12 hour, 8 hour, rotating, continental, fixed..? What other shift pattern resources not currently on ShiftPatternCentral would you like to see?

ShiftPatternCentral.com

So, go on! Tell us what you’ would like. We look forward to your suggestions and comments.

ShiftPatternCentral’s Team

We have had quite a few requests for 4-on 4-off 12 hour shift patterns that deliver a variable staff supply during the day. These can be contrasted with similar 12 hour 4-on 4-off patterns that generate a flat staff supply. You need more groups to get a variable supply. We will be posting a series of these in the next couple of days. These have an increasing staff count during the day and reducing through the small hours and the rest of the night. We will look at varying the staff supply during other times of the day if we get sufficient interest in that.

ShiftPatternCentral’s Team

London, UK October 13, 2009 — Intellicate has announced the launch of a new online shift patterns catalogue which will enable businesses to provide the latest flexible working solutions to achieve their management goals. Available in Microsoft® Excel (versions 2003 and later) these professionally designed shift patterns can be incorporated into effective resource management strategies and HR working hours policies. The shift pattern designs are available online at www.shiftpatterncentral.com priced from $39.

“Companies are constantly looking to adopt new ways of working, enabling them to compete more effectively,” said Tim Mills, COO of Intellicate. “Our shift patterns catalogue give businesses access to the knowledge expertise of experienced workforce managers, without the expense of hiring consultants.”

The shift patterns are designed by a team with over 20 years experience in workforce management, and have been validated by computer simulation for specific business operations. The shift patterns display clear graphical and detailed information about staff supply, working hours, types of shifts, day-off ratios and fatigue and risk impact upon staff.

Intellicate hope that their new online catalogue of shift patterns will allow management and HR teams to bring workforce ideas to the table without budget constraints. “More and more businesses are relying on in-house talent working with office software that they are familiar with, especially Microsoft® Excel.” said Tim Mills. “Giving these managers a wide range of shift patterns with high specification content saves time and provides the solutions and ideas they need.”

Read more…

Okay, today we have been busy adding additional 8 hour and 12 hour shift patterns for a lot of people who seem to be working 24/7. Some of these shift patterns have been designed with some nice long breaks. It is always about trade-offs, but it seems people really like the idea of good long breaks and don’t mind working hard in between. The longest break we have seen used is a nine day break in the shift pattern cycle and still only 42 hours a week – a mini holiday! Check it out yourself here.

ShiftPatternCentral’s Team