Services

What We Do — and How We Do It

We bring business requirements and workforce reality together—then design the schedule and policies, and guide the change process to create lasting operational capability, anchored in a schedule the workforce helped shape.

6
Core Services
~3 mo
Typical ROI Payback
30+
Years of Hands-On Experience
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Our Approach

Better Operations. Engaged Workforce. One Integrated Solution.

Operations and workforce performance are not separate systems—they rise or fall together. We combine data-driven analysis with structured workforce engagement to design and implement solutions that perform on the floor and hold over time. The result is a schedule that aligns demand, cost, and people—without trade-offs.

When the Schedule Is Right

A schedule built around how your operation actually runs—and what your workforce actually needs—changes more than the shift pattern. It changes the economics of the operation.

Lower Costs. Better Coverage.

A schedule built around actual demand—not historical habit—reduces labor costs without cuts. Overtime is directed to those who want it. Capacity trapped in outdated patterns is unlocked—without adding equipment or headcount.

Lower Turnover. Higher Engagement.

Employees who can build a life around their schedule don’t leave for competitors. Stability and engagement are the direct result of a schedule designed with their reality in mind.

Complexity Untangled. Operations Streamlined.

Multiple departments, misaligned start times, and hard-to-coordinate variations are simplified through the right schedule. Less friction leads to stronger supervision, higher productivity, and an operation that’s easier to run—every week.

The schedule is one of the most powerful levers in an operation—often underestimated in how far it reaches.

Operations leaders in discussion

Who We Work With

Running shift operations—but the system is no longer working the way it should.

Running shift operations—but the system is no longer working.

Overtime is rising. Turnover won’t stabilize. Coverage gaps keep appearing. The current schedule was built for a different operation.

We redesign it around the operation running today—built for what comes next.

Transitioning from 5-day to continuous operations.

The financial case is often clear. Workforce acceptance rarely is.

We define the business case, design the right crew structure, model financial outcomes, and guide the transition—so it lands as an improvement, not an imposition.

Managing complexity in multi-shift operations.

Too many schedules, misaligned start times, and departments that don’t coordinate well.

We simplify—reducing schedule proliferation, aligning coverage to actual workflow, and building standards that hold across shifts and facilities.

Core Services

Six Ways We Help 24/7 Operations

Every engagement is customized. These are the building blocks—most projects combine several into an integrated solution. We scope work before we price it, so you only pay for what your operation actually needs.

Schedule Design & Analysis

Custom schedules built around your specific coverage requirements, demand patterns, and workforce reality. We don’t pick from a menu—we design around what your operation actually needs.

8-hour, 12-hour, fixed, rotating, hybrid, semi-continuous, fly-in/fly-out, and more

Staffing Strategy

Right-size your workforce before committing to a pattern. We model headcount scenarios for hiring, attrition, and growth—so staffing decisions are grounded in the schedule, not made after the fact.

Headcount modeling, relief crew sizing, skill-balance analysis, vacancy planning

Change Management

This is the 80% that determines success or failure. Employee-centered implementation that builds buy-in before the first shift rotates. Communication plans, on-shift meetings, leadership coaching, and the employee choice process that makes the schedule theirs.

Communication planning, on-shift meetings, employee orientation, schedule selection facilitation

Employee Engagement Surveys

Our proprietary Work-Life Balance Survey™ is built for shiftwork—not adapted from generic surveys. It captures real workforce perspectives and benchmarks results across industries. Every result is benchmarked against our normative database—for informed decision-making. From hundreds of facilities across 16+ industries.

Customizable survey, normative benchmarking, demographic breakouts, trend tracking

Cost Analysis

The true, fully loaded cost of every schedule option—not just wages, but benefits, paid time off, training, and administrative overhead. Overtime projections, benefit impacts, and scenario comparison—across every schedule option. Numbers your CFO will trust because they account for what most analyses miss.

Fully loaded labor costs, adverse cost analysis, scenario comparison, break-even modeling

Policy Development

Schedule changes cascade into vacation accrual, holiday pay, overtime distribution, shift differentials, and call-off procedures. We develop the work and pay policies that align with the new schedule—and prevent the conflicts that erode trust after implementation.

Vacation and holiday policies, shift differential structures, overtime distribution, call-off procedures
The Tools Behind the Work

Built from Experience. Applied to Your Operation.

Proprietary tools developed through decades of engagements—built to uncover the patterns that drive cost, coverage, and workforce stability.

SBD Benchmarking Database icon

SBD™ Benchmarking Database

Industry-wide performance comparisons across hundreds of shiftwork facilities. When we say an overtime rate is high or a staffing ratio is off, we’re measuring against real operations—not theoretical benchmarks.

Work-Life Balance Survey icon

Work-Life Balance Survey™

Built specifically for shift workers, capturing the preferences and pain points that generic tools miss. Every result is benchmarked against our normative database for operational context.

Scenario-Based Cost Modeling icon

Scenario-Based Cost Modeling™

Full labor cost picture across multiple schedule options—wages, benefits, overhead, and overtime projections included. Leadership makes a confident, data-supported decision before a single shift changes.

A proven change management framework and implementation playbook. Built and tested across hundreds of engagements, designed for complex shift schedule changes—where decisions take effect immediately across the workforce.

Results

What Our Clients Achieve

Most clients recover the project investment within three months through overtime reduction, improved retention, or asset utilization improvements. Here are the numbers that matter to operations leaders.

~3 mo
Typical ROI payback period
Most clients recover the engagement fee within three months—typically through overtime reduction or improved asset utilization.
Up to 40%
Capacity increase without new equipment
Moving from a 5-day to a 7-day continuous schedule can increase weekly operating hours from 120 to 168—a 40% gain using assets you already own.
Up to 30%
Reduction in off-shift turnover
When employees have a genuine voice in selecting their schedule, retention on nights and weekends improves measurably. Better schedules attract people to off-shifts—and keep them there.
Challenges We Solve

Where Operations and Workforce Challenges Typically Emerge

If any of these sound familiar, the schedule is likely part of the underlying issue—and it can be addressed.

Rising unit costs

Chronic overtime, excess headcount, and misaligned labor supply are driving up the cost of every unit you produce.

High turnover on off-shifts

You can’t keep people on nights and weekends. Competitors with better schedules are poaching your trained workforce.

Expanding to continuous operations

The leap from 5-day to 24/7 is the biggest workforce change most facilities face. Employees fear the unknown. We’ve navigated this hundreds of times.

Coverage gaps and absenteeism

Unplanned absences, FMLA, and skill imbalances leave machines idle and supervisors scrambling every week.

Too much schedule complexity

Too many schedules across too many departments, with misaligned start times and poor product flow. The schedule has grown into something no one can manage cleanly.

A past change went badly

You tried to change schedules before and it failed—or succeeded technically but destroyed trust. You need a different approach.

Seasonal or volatile demand

Fixed schedules can’t flex with your workload. You need a schedule that absorbs variability without burning people out.

Greenfield or expansion

New facility, new line, or consolidation. You have one chance to set the schedule right from the start.

Talk to Thomas, AI shift advisor

Talk to Thomas
“

We don’t believe in one-size-fits-all solutions. Every operation is unique, every workforce is different, and every challenge requires thoughtful analysis—and a process that gives employees a real voice in the outcome.

— Jim Dillingham, Partner, Shiftwork Solutions LLC

Frequently Asked Questions

We design the schedule—the underlying system that determines who works when, how many crews are needed, and what policies govern the workforce. Staffing firms fill positions within a pattern that already exists. HR consultants address policy and compliance. We address the architecture itself, then build the policies and change management process around it.
Both—and everything in between. We work with 5-day operations dealing with scheduling complexity, 24/7 operations with overtime or retention problems, and facilities making the transition to continuous coverage. The common thread is a schedule that isn’t performing as well as it should.
Management can—but it usually doesn’t hold. When employees have no voice in a schedule change, resistance is the default response regardless of how good the schedule looks on paper. When workers choose from viable options, acceptance rates are dramatically higher and the schedule they choose becomes theirs to defend, not management’s to enforce. The survey process also surfaces practical constraints—childcare arrangements, second jobs, medical schedules—that management rarely knows about and that can sink a well-designed schedule during implementation.
Union environments require additional care around communication, contract interpretation, and the sequence in which options are presented. We’ve worked in heavily unionized operations for decades. The process is structured to build trust with both labor and management—and to avoid the procedural mistakes that derail good-faith efforts.
We need to understand the scope: number of employees affected, number of departments, whether the operation is currently running shifts or transitioning, and what the primary driver is—cost, retention, coverage, or growth. We scope work before we price it. The first conversation is always free.
We conduct a post-implementation survey to measure satisfaction, identify issues, and make adjustments. Beyond that, we hand off a complete implementation package—policies, communication documentation, and schedule materials—so the operation runs without us. We don’t create dependency.
Scheduling software assigns people to shifts within a pattern that already exists. We design the pattern itself—the crew structure, shift lengths, rotation logic, coverage model, and policies that the software then operates within. AI tools can optimize a schedule; they can’t determine whether an operation should run four crews or five, whether 12-hour shifts serve the workforce better than 8-hour shifts, or how to bring hundreds of employees through a major change without losing the ones most needed. That judgment is what we provide.
Where to go from here

Ready to Talk About Your Operation?

Manufacturing and distribution operations running 24/7 typically have more room to improve than they realize. The first conversation is always free.

Free Consultation

Book a Free Meeting

No pitch, no obligation. We’ll listen to what isn’t working, ask the right questions, and tell you honestly whether and how we can help.

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AI Advisor

Talk to Thomas

Got a question about your shift operation right now? Thomas is our AI advisor—available immediately, no appointment needed.

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Complete Guide

The Shift Schedule Design Guide

How shift schedules are designed, what distinguishes patterns that work from patterns that fail, and the factors operations leaders most often overlook.

Read the guide

Questions? Call us directly: (415) 265-1621