This posting is the first in a series of posts that will examine the relationship between the schedule your employees are working and the number of people it takes to staff your operation. Today, I will focus only on a scheduling practice commonly referred to as a Compressed Work Week.
A Compressed Work Week (CWW) schedule is one in which people work more hours on the days that they work so they can have more days off.
I’m going to look at this several different ways because of the impact of a CWW change, depending on your situation.
Scenario #1: I have one employee and he trims trees for 8 hours a day, five days a week.
In this case, we can be almost indifferent about our employee’s schedules. He probably shouldn’t work at night but, so long as he spends 40 hours a week trimming trees, we don’t care if he does it in 10-hour or 8-hour chunks. We do care about 12-hour chunks because, in order to average 40 hours a week, he would have to work ten 12-hour shifts in a 3-week period. This means that at least one of those weeks will have 4 days of work in it. This means 48 hours of work in a single week which will increase costs when you pay overtime for all hours worked over 40 in a week. Note: No extra staffing is needed in this case.
Scenario #2: I have one employee and he is a receptionist for my office which is open for 8-hours a day, five days a week.
In this case, a CWW will actually hurt you. If you only need a person for 8 hours in a day and they are there for 10 hours, you are paying for 2 hours that you don’t need. Furthermore, this person is now only working 4 days a week while your office is open for 5 days. This means you will have to use overtime for the fifth day or hire a part-time employee or do without a receptionist for 1 day a week.
Scenario #3: I have five employees working 8 hours a day for five days a week. My business only needs four employees at a time and I need them for 10 hours a day.
No problem here. Put everyone on 10-hour shifts. They each work four days a week and they each get a different day off. In this way, four show up every day for 10 hours and no overtime is incurred. This example is made to work out perfectly. However, imagine that you have 7 people and need only five to show up – the number just won’t work out. Basically, if you are 20% overstaffed on a daily basis and your daily coverage is 20% less than it needs to be, you can change your schedule from 8’s to 10’s without a cost. Anything else will be problematic.
A few notes about compressed workweek schedules…
- As you can see from the three examples above, your conditions will determine if this is a good idea or not.
- Even though they might not realize it, your employees will love a CWW schedule after they have been on it for a few weeks. They might not like the longer days but they will love the extra days off. There are two things that result from this: (1) Retention will go up as schedule satisfaction goes up and (2) Retention will go down if you take away their new schedule which they have come to love – so be sure it will work for you before you implement it.
- Although it may seem counter-intuitive, your employees will average more sleep on a CWW schedule than on one with 8-hour shifts. The reason for this is that people sleep slightly less on days they are working longer shifts AND they are sleeping significantly more on days that they don’t have to work.
- In the United States, we see CWW schedules implemented most often in operations that run 24/7. There are two reasons for this. The first is that people love the extra days off. The second is that an 8-hour schedule that covers 24/7 must rotate (Trust me on this one. Give me a call if you want more details as to why.)
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