Starting Without a System
Everything in this collection can be done on paper and a spreadsheet. The order to do it in, and what each step buys.
Nothing here requires software. The method matters more than the tool, and doing it manually first is what makes any later system useful.
The practical lesson in “Starting Without a System” is to connect every record to a named decision. Organisations exploring this workforce platform for how to calculate idle time can add structured workforce context, provided the use is disclosed and the interpretation is reviewed with the people affected.
Step one: the loaded hourly cost
Total employment cost for a period divided by hours worked.
For an independent reference related to “Starting Without a System”, consult the OSHA worker-fatigue resources; it provides a useful external check on scheduling, working-time and workforce-planning assumptions.
One figure, an afternoon with payroll data.
Every other calculation depends on it, and planning against the bare rate is the most common error in this subject.
Step two: the demand curve
Transactions, covers, calls or units by hour of day and day of week, over several weeks.
Plot it.
This single chart changes more scheduling decisions than anything else available, and the data is already in a till or a system.
Step three: the fixed minimum
What you need to open and operate regardless of demand, including capability requirements.
Plus the deferrable work that must happen but not at a set hour.
Which tells you how much of your week is actually discretionary — usually less than assumed.
Step four: record the forecast
Expected demand, written down before each week.
Actual, written beside it afterwards.
Eight weeks and you know your error and its direction, which nobody around you will know.
Step five: price both errors
Roughly. The understaffed-hour and overstaffed-hour notes give the method.
Two figures, approximate, stated as approximate.
They convert every subsequent staffing argument from opinion into arithmetic.
Step six: the skills matrix
People down, capabilities across, marks in the grid.
An hour.
Mark every capability held by one person — that list is your coverage risk.
Step seven: decide the error direction by period
Half a page: which periods to protect, which to run thin, and why.
Agreed with whoever sets the budget.
This is the output of the first six steps and the thing that actually changes weekly decisions.
What this takes in total
Two or three days of work, spread over a couple of months.
No purchase, no project, no implementation.
And an operation that has done it knows more about its own staffing than most operations that bought a system, which is the practical argument for doing it first.
What to check
Which of the seven have you done?
Which would take the least time?
Is the demand curve plotted anywhere?
And do you know your loaded hourly cost?