Workforce management
All notes
Everything here, grouped by subject.
Overstaffing
+6h
On the labour report next week, at full loaded cost, with a manager's name attached.
Visible
A variance somebody has to explain. Immediate, precise, personal.
The response
Hours come down. The error that gets counted is the error that gets corrected.
The line between what is measured and what is not
Understaffing
?
The customer who left without buying. The queue nobody will tolerate twice. None of it appears in any report.
Carried over
Work not done, which will be done later at overtime or at the cost of something else.
The leaver
One person who decided that week to start looking. The cost arrives three months later with no name on it.
6
Six causes sit ahead of the schedule when a variance goes adverse. The schedule gets blamed because it is the only one the manager controls and the only one with an obvious remedy.
What the money is made of
Labour is the biggest line anybody can move weekly, which is why it attracts pressure that belongs elsewhere.
The schedule is a bet
Every published rota is a claim about next week, and claims have an accuracy that can be measured in eight weeks.
Pricing both directions
The cost of being short is treated as unknowable and therefore as nothing. A rough figure changes every decision.
Headcount is not coverage
Five people in a shift, none of whom can do the thing that is needed, is zero people.
Reading what happened
Six causes sit ahead of the schedule, and it gets blamed because it is the only one with an obvious remedy.
People in the arithmetic
The same hour is a cost on one side of the ledger and somebody's rent on the other.
Doing it
Everything here fits in a spreadsheet, and doing it manually is what makes any later system useful.
Reference
Terms, and where to start for the common situations.
The short version
Count something on the side nobody counts
Know what an hour actually costs. Write the forecast down before the week and check it afterwards. Decide in advance which direction to err in for each period. None of it requires a purchase and all of it fits in a spreadsheet.