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