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MUST LISTEN: Berg on Savage Radio « The Obambi.com Blog www.obambi.com

MUST LISTEN: Berg on Savage Radio « The Obambi.com Blog www.obambi.com

Is Employee Turnover Costing You "Big Bucks?"

Is this what you experience? A new hire completes training, begins work, and quits a short time later. Do your exit reveal that the employee quitting says they just cant handle the shift schedule, whether the problem was an inability to sleep during the day, conflicts with family responsibilities, or another reason.

Shift work and turnover seem to go hand-in-hand. Turnover is almost three times higher at shift work facilities than the U.S. average. It costs 24-hour facilities dearly when an employee leaves. An estimated cost of replacing an employee (including recruiting and training costs) the average replacement cost is $24,100 per an employee.

Most companies currently have no programs in place to prevent turnover due to shift work-related problems (i.e. adapting to schedule, work-life balance, sleep, health, etc.) there exists a great opportunity to achieve significant savings for shift work operations.
So what can be done to lower turnover rates at your operation? Below are some some of the best practices you can consider for implementation. Best practices for reducing turnover rates:

1) Provide shift work lifestyle training to new hires.

2) Shift schedule selection method. Not surprisingly, an employee’s attitude toward their work schedule plays a significant role in determining their morale level and likelihood of leaving.

3) Overtime. When overtime rates climb above 20%, there is significant decrease in morale and productivity and a spike in absenteeism and turnover rates. Therefore, companies must be careful to monitor average overtime rates for their workforce and take caution when overtime rates start to creep into the high teens.

4) Pay. Not surprisingly, the most common program used by shift work facilities to reduce turnover is a periodic increase in salary.

Staffing Combined With Scheduling Software

Hatrak Associates is working hand and hand with a major staffing software provider: TKO Systems. TKO Systems has a large client base of both small and large staffing companies.

The goal for these organizations exploring coming together is to explore each others software for potential merger of key functionality to provide the marketplace with a new and better Staffing and Scheduling solution.

Among the functionality being explored for possible merger is on-line employee work preferences submission and employee self-scheduling. The goal is to map this data to the Hatrak Schedulers Scheduling Engines.

Reports to third party time and attendance systems and SMS Text Messaging using Microsoft's Outlook (both provided and offered by by TKO Systems) are currently being incorporated into Hatrak Schedulers software.

Recently, a large and well funded biometric (fingerprint) time capture and time reporting software application has expressed an interest in exploring being included in the software merger. The addition of this application along with Hatrak Associates Proportional and Non-Proportional Labor Demand Analysis functionality and consulting will make this the most powerful application available.

Stay tuned for more information. Contact us as 702.869.8900 or email us at info@hatrak.com.

For the best Staffing Software available today please contact Susan at TKO Systems631.699.3500 or susan@tkosys.com.

Open Source Functionality

There are two ways to install our Hatrak Schedulers.

WAMP

Wamp stands for Microsoft Windows, Apache (a free and very powerful web server), MySQL (a free and widely used database and server,and PHP (a free an very powerful language).

For those looking for powerful open source web servers Apache is about as good as they get. The MySQL database and server is also open source and is fast becoming on of the leading databases used on the web. Finally, PHP is rated by some as having captured 30% of the web scripting language in use today.

WIMP

The only difference in this install is that the web server used is Microsoft's Internet Information server.

As we move along in development we now offer clients the use of any of the popular databases they prefer ( instead of free MySQL) will be finished.

Bob Hatrakbob@info.com702-869-8900

Proportional Labor Demand Analyses

IT'S TIME HAS COME!

HATRAK ASSOCIATES

HISTORICAL AND FUTURE STAFFING DEMAND AND SUPPLY ANALYSES

Over the years Hatrak Associates has provided staffing and scheduling software to organizations where workload fluctuates mostly predictably hour by hour over the 168 hours in the week. These organizations use what is referred to as non-proportional staffing and scheduling. Equally staffed fixed shifts are efficient for some organizations but not for others. Some organizations are more fluid in their staffing requirements than others. Police, Fire, EMS call centers, manufacturing and casinos for example need reliable methods to proportionally staff their operations. Proportional staffing and scheduling is more complicated than required for by non-proportional staffing and scheduling!

Hatrak Associates Proportional Staffing and Scheduling

Staffing and then scheduling the right numbers of employees at the right place and at the right time requires complex analyses of a number of Demand variables. Some organizations may require analysis of Demand variables for each individual hour in a day, for each day of the week, seasonally, by work location, by special event or emergency.

It is hardly a secret that scheduling more staff to work than required can be costly. Under-utilized employees not fully occupied or engaged by continuous work assignments leads to inefficiency. Too few staff can result in excessive overtime costs and make it difficult to provide relief staff when scheduled employees’ are not deployable for whatever reason. Absenteeism “spikes” usually occur when understaffing is continuous (constant). However, some overtime is better than paying fringe and other benefits to new hires.

In proportional staffing and shift scheduling the first requirement is to analyze historical staff demand data using a complex set of algorithms to determine, in some cases, hourly staffing demand. The calculated demand is then used to model shift patterns that are both employee-friendly and efficient. Including employees in the shift pattern analysis process helps with employee acceptance.

Hatrak Associates has recently developed a tool (which will eventually be included in their Employee Shift Scheduling Software) that analyzes proportional staffing requirements. The tool analyzes and calculates the efficiency of current and proposed staffing plans and related shift schedules. The analysis includes a Labor Efficiency percentage. This is a percentage of time that the end user has exactly the right amount of personnel. Any percentage less than 100% means that there is possible overstaffing (more payroll costs than would otherwise be required. The algorithms applied use allow staffing (relief) factors that allow for scheduled absences such as vacation, holiday and other scheduled absences relief and also unplanned absences (emergencies, etc)

Periodic reanalysis uses recent historical demand and supply forecasts help the end user to keep the information reliable. Reanalysis formation offers the end user the ability to revise schedules as necessary to maintain the desired Labor Efficiency percentages.

What’s Next

Hatrak Associates is working with a staffing software provider to large and small staffing organizations http://www.tkosystems.com/ to analyze and merge key features from each application into one fully integrated one. Among the functionality being explored for possible merger is employee work preferences submission electronically. This data will map to the scheduling engines. Reports to third party time and attendance systemsand SMS Text Messaging using Microsoft Outlook have been provided by TKO Systems and have been incorporated into the Hatrak Scheduler. Additional funtionality mergers are being evaluated dhmerger is also being explored (among other additional functionality). The goal for this merger of two excellent software applications is to have the most effective staffing and employee shift scheduling solutions available in the marketplace.

Please contact Hatrak Associates (702.869.8900) (info@hatrak.com) to learn more about how you can get these tools or to arrange for our consulting staff do do an analysis for your organization.

News You Can use

The following is a copy of information provided on the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The link to this site follows:

http://www.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/ctt/col0400.html

Corrections Telecommunication and TechnologyF. Warren Benton, Ph.D.John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNYReprints from a series published in Corrections Managers' Report.Access the entire collection at the CTT Web Site.
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Internet Tools for Managing Time

Correctional staff and offenders both have strong reasons to be concerned about managing and using time for prisoners because they have too much of it, and for staff because they have too little. This column will focus on Internet and computer resources available to improve how correctional professionals can manage the use of time.

Shift Schedule Management

A core problem for correctional facility managers involves the administration of the work schedule, a process called "roster management." A supervisor must comply with wage and hour laws and labor agreements, track time worked and leave taken, while assuring that workers are efficiently deployed and receive scheduled days off and vacations. All this has to be accomplished while trying to minimize the use of overtime and involuntary double-shifts, and while trying to stay within budget constraints.

Good places to start on the Internet are provided by GoCrawl at http://gocrawl.com/ or HotBot at http://www.hotbot.com/, or Yahoo and http://www.yahoo.com/, if you search on the terms "Personnel and Scheduling." These sites maintain and update a listing of web sites related to roster management. Some of the sites offer free services and software, including the following:

Schedule-Me offers an online calculator for a work schedule. You tell the calculator how many employees you need on each of the 7 days of the week, and it will work out an optimized solution for how many employees can have Saturday and Sunday off, how many can have Sunday and Monday off, and so on. Winmetrics offers a free web-based scheduling service. The hitch is that, if you want more advanced services, you have to pay. However, for a small organization, their free service is worth considering.

Another good general resource is provided by Winfiles. This site is a collection of free and shareware software packages relating to scheduling and calendar management.

Leading commercial programs in this area include "Relief Factor Management," offered by Hatrak Associates at Hatrak Associates. They offer software packages that support the process of designing and administering a work schedule. A competing product is offered by ScheduleSoft, and another competing product is offered by Positive Solutions Incorporated.

Calendars

For many correctional professionals, the challenge of time management is not the work schedule itself, but rather the management of appointments and meetings within the work schedule. Most computers arrive with software packages that include some time management applications. However, for these applications to function in coordination with other colleagues requires a networked application. On the web, a new category of calendaring service has emerged, provided free personal calendaring with the ability to develop and display a group calendar, and the ability to access the calendar from any web browser. Some examples of these free services include:

JointPlanning Netscape Calendar MyEvents PlanetAll When.com

Obviously, for correctional facility managers and planners, JointPlanner would offer the unique advantage of endless puns and word play associated with the name. There are many similar web sites, and a good way to find them is to search on the term "Personal Web-Based Calendars" in Yahoo.

Group Project Applications

For a small group that collaborates on projects, a new category of web services is emerging the virtual office suite. These are web-based services that include standard applications for word processing, database management, and other standard functions, as well as group collaboration packages such as calendars. Several of these products can be evaluated on the web.

WebOS offers the HyperOffice. This product is free, and it includes free file storage space on their site. It permits a team of workers to share drafts of documents, conduct simultaneous and threaded discussions, and jointly schedule their time, meetings, and activities.

A similar product is MyFreeDesk. This product is similar to HyperOffice, but the calendaring application does not seem to be as developed.

NuoMedia offers a similar application suite, with an emphasis on compatibility with handheld personal computer devices such as a PalmPilot. Once again, the service itself is free.

ThinkFree provides a similar service. Their application includes programs that you download to your computer so that you can work offline and then connect when necessary.

These are applications that might be useful for short-term projects when a group of workers are collaborating on a project from separate locations. For example, a team of Deputy Wardens from several prisons might be drafting a revised procedure, or a team of correctional officers might be jointly evaluating a security product.

Coming Soon: Open Calendaring Standards for the Web

Internet planning and policy organizations are working a uniform standards for calendaring applications, with the following general goals. Applications should: inter-operate and schedule with other open standards-based C&S systems allow users to choose a calendaring program regardless of their calendaring server software integrate desktop applications with each other and with handheld or portable devices.

A good source about the evolving standards is a paper titled Overview Of Calendaring And Scheduling Standards. Another more technical article is "How Calendaring and Scheduling Are Joining the Web Revolution. In both cases, the articles discuss how web site and network designers can plan calendaring applications so that calendars can be shared across organizations, and between people using different brands of software.

In most bureaucracies, the principle applies that "work expands to fill the time available." In correctional facilities and programs, work seems to expand regardless of the time available. Fortunately, there are some resources on the Internet that can help correctional managers to make the best use of available time.

When Employees Are Not Deployable

How often do your managers find themselves shutting down positions, reducing services, or scheduling overtime work to fill positions left open because employees assigned to perform work are not deployable?

Since the workforce may not be deployable 10% or more of their scheduled work hours each year, covering those hours can be very challenging. Part of the complexity centers around the many reasons for employee non-deployable. Additional complexity presents itself when an employee is at work but not deployable to a position.

Typically, the reasons why employees are not deployable fall in one or more of the following categories:

1. Predictable occurrences
2. Not Predictable occurrences
3. Scheduled (planned) occurrences
4. Not Scheduled (not planned) occurrences
5. Controllable occurrences
6. Not Controllable occurrences
7. Administrative occurrences
8. Serious Emergency occurrences

Covering Not Deployable Occurrences Organizations need to establish policy that directs the process for providing coverage, including alternatives to overtime, for employees that are not deployable.
Among the options available to shift managers are:

1. Use an automated shift scheduler to manage schedule assignment changes
2. Develop and implement strategies that maximize employee time off especially during that time of year employees consider prime time (summer months, breaks from school, holidays, special events like hunting season, etc)
3. Provide incentives to the workforce to use their vacation time when the workload is low. For example, give employees an extra day of vacation for every week of vacation taken during low production periods. From a financial perspective, there are many situations where this is a very good way to cover vacation time.
4. Staff your operation with the number of precisely calculated relief positions required to replace employees not deployable.
5. Use overtime to cover vacancies as they occur. While this is a very good use of overtime, it works best in an environment that does not experience large fluctuations in workload from week to week. However, overtime can be abused. When it is the result is fatigued employees, lower productivity, and increased costs.
6. Use temporary personnel.
7. Smooth out the variability of controllable absences using pre-determined limits. This places some of the burden on the workforce to spread out their absences and makes it easier to cover absences with fewer resources.

ALTERNATIVE WORK SCHEDULES

Alternative work schedules are those that include work hours that are normally outside the traditional 8-hour workday or 40-hour workweek. Alternative schedules are often used to allow workers to earn a living while having the flexibility to take care of their children, relatives and other personal situations. Typically alternative schedules are designed to:

1. Tighthten control over mandatory overtime,
2. Offer lexible work days (Flex Time),
3. Compress the workweek,
4. Accomodate shift and days off swapping and
5. Provide opportunities for telecommuting.

The emerging needs of the contemporary workforce and a changing make alternative work schedules important for working families trying to balance their jobs with family responsibilities. Did you know that:

1. More than 1 in 4 working-women work evening or weekend shifts.

2. Nearly 1 in 5 full-time workers work nonstandard hours. More than 1 in 3 are women.

3. Workers subjected to mandatory overtime work have higher rates of alcohol use, stress and absenteeism.

4. Among working parents, 66 percent of fathers and 51 percent of mothers are unhappy with the amount of time they have to spend with their children.

5. Some 46 percent of women married or living with someone work a different schedule than that of their spouse or domestic partner.

Limits on Mandatory Overtime

Being forced to stay at work past the regularly scheduled end time can be very stressful. Many working parents do not have backup arrangements for child care or cannot afford backup care. Provisions in union contracts making overtime voluntary protect employees from this loss of power over their daily schedules.

Flexible Work Hours

Flextime agreements allow employees to vary the start and end of their workday as long as each employee works within a specific range of “core” hours and works the prescribed number of hours each day or each week.

Compressed Workweek

Examples are schedules that allow workers to work four 10-hour days for an extra day off per week or eight 9-hour days and one 8-hour day for an extra day off every two weeks.

Part-time work with Benefits

Part-time work can give working people flexibility to take care of family needs while still receiving an income. It is important to maintain benefits when negotiating for part-time work.

Telecommuting

Telecommuting is working from a site other than the central worksite, usually at home. Unions traditionally have opposed telecommuting because work done at home is difficult to regulate and easily could become “sweatshop” labor. Another union objection is that workers who telecommute can become isolated from one another and are difficult to organize. However, unions have been successful in bargaining for telecommuting provisions that benefit workers.

Job Sharing

Under a job-share agreement, two part-time employees share one full-time job. The two employees divide the full-time salary between them according to hours worked. Benefits and seniority often are prorated according to hours worked, although in some job-share situations both may receive full benefits and/or seniority. Union contracts can protect employees’ right to enter into a job-share arrangement and can establish standards for job shares.

Shift Swap

A shift-swap provision in a union contract allows workers to voluntarily exchange shifts or workdays to accommodate such family needs as attending school events or medical appointments.

Shortened Workweek

Unions have bargained for shorter workweeks for their members with full compensation. Some unions also have used shorter workweek provisions with less compensation as an alternative to layoffs.

Voluntary Reduced Time

Voluntary reduced time allows an employee to reduce the number of hours she or he works in a week in order to have extra time to take care of personal or family needs.