Capacity Flexibility
Businesses need to be able to respond to market demand faster than ever before. Demand is getting harder and harder to predict and organizations, be they businesses, hospitals or public bodies, need to be able to respond quickly and efficiently. If a business does not respond quickly, they lose the order, if they do not respond efficiently, they lose money, if they do not respond, they will go out of business. If a hospital does not respond to new demands for services, patients will go untreated and some will die unnecessarily. If a public body, be it a council or government department does not respond, the public will lose confidence in the authority and vote it out of office, or even worse go to the newspapers.

Getting the right people in the right place at the right time, and being able to change the staffing flexibly and quickly depends upon many factors. Being able to predict demand is one such factor, being able to react to the predicted demand is much more difficult. If the demand is variable and uncertain, the planned reponse must also be variable and cover each element of uncertainty. This will involve short and long term labour planning.

One traditional solution is to use overtime and temporary labour to cover fluctuations in demand. In many situations this response is adequate and a 'pool' of workers are on stand-by. Unfortunately, this approach is not flexible enough in the new market conditions. There is only a finite level of extra capacity this can deliver in a given situation, and there are many hidden drawbacks to relying on using overtime and temps. The overtime tends to become institutionalised and abused, and becomes a fixed cost rather than a flexible cost. Temps need training and the constant need for training to use continually changing technology can make them more expensive than having full time staff.

Multi-Strategy solutions require IT methods and resources. Flexible working that meets the flexible workload requires a variable planned response where all the elements of using labour are utilised. Having a pool of multi-skilled and specialist, full-time workers, part-time workers, annualised hours to vary the working week, overtime and temporary labour on variable contracts, are all used to expand and contract capacity to meet the demand curve.

A recent report on official statistics shows that nearly 10% of all UK employees working for less than 45 hours per week want to work more. This figure only reflects those who want to work at basic rates and excludes the sizeable number who would work at overtime rates. This means that you could get more work out of your employees without having to pay them a premium. The statistics also revealed that more part-time than full-time employees wanted longer hours. And of this group, those in the 35-49 age group wanted longer hours the most. This is ideal if you are looking to increase production or provide a greater range of services - by considering part-timers first, you are less likely to have to pay overtime and won't have to worry about exceeding the 48 hours per week limit.

VisualrotaX and C-Desk Technology gives you that flexible capacity capability.