About

Fifty notes on the economics of putting people on shift.

Who it is for

Whoever answers for the labour line: a manager of a site, a shift or an operation, who reconciles hours against revenue and explains the variance.

Not written for schedulers, HR or system buyers — there is plenty elsewhere on how to build a rota and how to run a system. This is about what the decisions cost.

The position

Overstaffing lands in a report with a name on it. Understaffing lands nowhere. Operations therefore err consistently in the direction they believe they are guarding against.

A schedule is a forecast, and its accuracy is measurable in eight weeks with two columns.

Headcount is not coverage.

And most of what arrives as a scheduling problem is a process problem or a commercial decision landing at the wrong desk.

What is deliberately absent

System and vendor names.

Figures for average savings from implementation, because those come from the people selling the systems.

Nothing here is legal advice

Working time rules, predictable-scheduling requirements and contract law differ substantially by jurisdiction and are moving.

About this domain

This address previously carried an educational technology podcast that ended in 2015. There is a page about that.