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.