Shift Schedule Support: Expanding/Contracting Hours
CIRCADIAN provides specialized assistance to plan and facilitate 5- to 7-day plant expansions (or any initiatives where the working hours will change). These support services will help you realize the full benefits of the change, and achieve the desired return on investment.
If This Is Your Situation:
- You run 24/5 but want to reduce forced weekend overtime by implementing a 24/7 schedule.
- You are investigating the cost benefits of expanding your hours of operation versus the capital expense of more equipment/machinery.
- You have already determined that you need to expand work hours to 24/7.
- You are analyzing your staffing levels to determine whether you have the resources to cover 24/7.
- You are consolidating production lines from one or more plants to maximize efficiency and reduce unit costs.
- You are rebalancing labor requirements to better align with workload demands.
How CIRCADIAN Can Help Your Operation Expand/Contract:
We provide technical and facilitation support to management, unions, employees, and internal task teams on how to properly plan, develop and implement a new work schedule to meet desired operating hours through a human involvement process, including:
Operational Analysis And Planning
CIRCADIAN consultants review your operating policies, practices, and procedures, as well as labor contracts/employee agreements, to understand your business needs and to identify opportunities and problem areas. This includes assistance with:
- Assessment, planning, and strategy development.
- Where to employ 7-day operations in your facility.
- Determining the business justification.
- Determining the employee justification.
- How to present the change and involve the employees in the change process.
- Resolving the numerous implementation issues.
We guide you through this planning process, challenge assumptions, and provide you with the benefits of our extensive experience. Why reinvent the wheel and expose the operation to avoidable mistakes, unnecessary costs, and potential alienation of the workforce? After 25 years of facilitating these complex changes, we work with you closely to ensure the smoothest possible transition and achieve the optimal 7-day schedule.
Education And Consensus Building
Politically or arbitrarily derived shift schedules are problematic: they adversely affect morale, employee relations, absenteeism, turnover, and plant performance. CIRCADIAN can help you to avoid these problems by achieving consensus between managers, supervisors, union officials and shift workers as to:
- The business needs for the change.
- A proven method for determining the best alternative schedule.
- Involvement of the employees in the selection process.
The best way to accomplish this is to provide scheduling education so that all parties have the same facts. CIRCADIAN provides seminars, training workshops, and diagnostic instruments for just this purpose so that your people can make informed decisions rather than emotional or irrational ones.
Developing And Implementing The Optimal 7-Day Work Schedule
CIRCADIAN serves as a neutral, third-party expert to facilitate a proven process that will yield the optimal work schedule every time. It turns out that the best shift schedules are site-specific phenomena, as each workforce has a unique demographic composition and local culture. As a technical specialist, CIRCADIAN brings the expertise to help both labor and management sort through these issues. Given that we have no vested interest in the outcome, CIRCADIAN is well-positioned to objectively facilitate such joint initiatives and help you achieve win-win resolutions.
Contact A Shift Scheduling Expert
If you're thinking about expanding your operation to 24/7, or have already expanded and are running into problems, we'd be happy to put you in touch with one of our experts. They can answer your questions and share best practice information.
- Call us at 781-439-6300 auto-dial
- Email us at
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