Most people think a shift schedule is effective if it does a good job with one of these 3 goals:

1. Better staff utilization – coverage that is consistent and matched with the workload
2. Reduced labor costs – lower wages and/or overtime
3. Greater employee satisfaction – more days off and/or more weekends off

Unfortunately, doing well with one goal often means compromising the other two.

Here's an example. Suppose the employees want a 10-hour shift schedule to get one more day off each week and possibly more weekends off. This would certainly help the third goal: greater employee satisfaction. But what would it do to the other two goals?

Since the 10-hour shifts would overlap for 6 hours a day, this would exceed the physical capacity of the work area. Employees from one of the overlapping shifts would be sitting around with nothing to do for 6 hours – every day of the week. This is definitely not a good way to use the staff.

What about labor costs? Well, since the 10-hour shifts would require the organization to work 30 hours a day (three 10-hour shifts), the additional hours of coverage would necessitate an increase in the staff size by 25%. This certainly would not save money.

So how do you find a schedule that satisfies all 3 goals? Simple. Instead of starting the search for a new schedule with a focus on Goal #3: Greater Employee Satisfaction, you start with #1: Better Staff Utilization. You then move to the second goal, and finally to the third goal.

Here are the steps we follow when designing a new employee shift schedule:

• Feasibility. We start by comparing your coverage requirements and scheduling preferences with your staff size to determine the feasibility. Sometimes the resources are inadequate, so different approaches may have to be considered.
  
  
• Possibilities. Sometimes, overtime may need to be built into the schedule to avoid gaps in coverage. Occasionally there may be more staff than necessary, so we'll show you different ways to utilize these "extra" resources.
  
  
• Work patterns. In this third step, we start the actual shift schedule design. Often we can apply common scheduling patterns as a starting point, and modify them to fit your unique circumstances.
  
  
• Options. We create several different shift schedule options to show you the range of possibilities, such as the number of consecutive days worked, different shift lengths, relief coverage, alternative patterns, and so on.

This process ensures that the schedules we create are effective with all three goals, not just one of them.