The aim of this book is to teach you how to calculate how many staff you need to run your operation.

The aim of this series of books is to provide a reference guide for t he types of available shift patterns by way of supplying a total of almost 300 unique shift patterns.

This book is about how to organise staff holidays so that they do not affect the operation. A Holidays Included Shift Pattern will accommodate everyone’s holiday in the shift pattern.

This book not only includes easy to follow examples of how to calculate your Absence Rate, but also shows you how to use your Absence Rate to predict how absences will occur in the future. This book has look-up tables which convert Absence Rate in to the number you would expect to be off shift.

Shift working is also more fatiguing than office hours working; this is especially prevalent if working nights. However this book is about minimising fatigue and the effects of fatigue so that you can enjoy the advantages of working shifts without being too fatigued.

Managing holidays are the bane of all managers. The aim of this book is to show you some simple techniques to relieve you of the burden. With a special section on Office Hours, this book is ideal for all managers.

Have you found that the year is just not  long enough to fit in all the holidays?

The aim of this book is to help managers with their shift operations. Holidays and absences can play havoc with most operations unless special procedures are in place. This book provides the solutions used by us when setting up a shift system.

These books and others are available from Amazon, simply search using ‘jezewski moore’.

All prices subject to vat for UK based organisations.

Questions About Shift working

BLOGS • Holiday Entitlements, • Cover Shifts, • Easter, • Fair Holiday Scheduling, • High Sickness, • Forward Planning, • Skiing, • Frosty Mornings, • 10-hour Shifts, • How Good is your Maths, • Unlimited Holidays, • Stagger Lunch, • Optimise Equipment, • Absence Management, • Christmas Presents, • Wedding Planners, • Bank Holidays, • Annualised Hours, • Inventory Modeling, • How Many Staff are needed, • Flexi-Time, • Cover for Sickness, • Global shift planning. • and many more

What are the health effects on Night Shiftworkers'? Problems include; short term; sleep disruption, stress, irritability long term; gastrointestinal disorders; loss of appetite, constipation, heartburn, stomach pains, flatulence, peptic ulcers, The above are caused by changes in central nervous system & endocrine mechanisms.(meal time change causation). More diabetes?? Possibly caused by irregular food intake and timing of medication. Epilepsy?? Possibly caused by sleep deprivation increasing the chance of a seizure. Coronary heart disease. Mortality?? maybe, very few articles with comparison data, but maybe rather than a definite no. Psychiatric Disorders, shiftworkers have more. Social isolation from family & friends. Good Points Working shifts does have many good points which go a long way to mitigate any effects of shift work at nights. Examples. Children related duties and child care is easier when both parents are working. Similarly, looking after aged or infirm relatives. Hobbies and activities that require day light, such as playing golf, fishing, gardening. Commitments such as doctor & dentist visits would not need a day off work Financially better off as shift working is usually paid more. What's the difference between a 'Staff schedule', 'staff roster', 'rota' or 'off-duty'? Staff Schedule or Roster?. the terms schedule and roster mean the same, its just that in England, the term schedule is never applied to humans, only timetables and machinery. In England,  we call a Staff Schedule three different names, it is known as; a 'staff roster', 'staff rota' or more simply as 'the off-duty'. The term 'rota' began in Roman times and meant a cycle, as in rotation. The first written evidence of using the English word 'rota' was about 1650. The term roster comes from the Dutch word for gridiron, hence a grid is a pattern of parallel lines. The word in American usage means a list of names, such as officers or regiments, first used around the mid nineteenth century. The English usage started this century. The appearance of a 'roster' as a grid has remained unchanged because it is the most efficient method of displaying staff names, dates and shifts. We have used that 'look' in VisualrotaX. A grid is very efficient at inputting information into the computer and for displaying the results. Organisations with hundreds of staff will have broken the staff into units, sections, departments, wards and zones. Visual Rota mirrors the organisation and has one file for each. The use of 'off-duty' was first used in the 1920/1930, as in, what people would do when they were 'off duty'. It became particularly applicable to nurses living in Nurses Homes.

What is a 'What If Analysis'? A 'What if' analysis is used to determine the outcome of a particular action or combination of actions. Examples would 'What if I increased pay rates by 5%, how much would it cost?' or 'What if we changed the shift start and finish times, would people still work their contract hours, or would we have to renegotiate?'. These types of analysis are carried quickly and easily using Visual Rota, because it has been specifically designed to do that task.

How does the program save me money,Opportunity costs, perishable hours? The key to this question is over-manning and opportunity costs. Staffing hours are a perishable item. The staff schedule allocates staff to tasks. If the task does not materialise or disappears, or there are excess staff to perform the allocate tasks, then the staffing hours can be regarded as perishable. The money spent on these perishable staffing hours is wasted. This waste can be compounded by artificially allocating tasks in order to use the 'excess' time productively. The tasks allocated often involve resources, such as training, supervision and materials. If these tasks do not increase value, productivity or turnover, then perhaps there is a better way of using these perishable staffing hours. The program will immediately show you if you have excess staff on any shift. Action can immediately be taken to reallocate staff elsewhere. If you are regularly over-staffed, then this can be scheduled and used. Most organisations are undermanned at certain times of the year, such as school holidays and over- manned at other times such as between holidays. A lot of effort is then spent reorganising the work to fit this oscillating pattern. Therefore, at times of under-manning, equipment is left idle, wards are closed, etc. and at times of over-manning there is never enough equipment or materials to go round. This oscillating pattern shows an organisation in a bad light and hence artificial names are given to cover it up. We introduce training, special cleaning, sorting, filing and catching up with the paperwork sessions on full days and blame personnel or finance on empty days. Opportunity cost is an important concept for decision making purposes. Although often difficult to measure, the concept is of great importance because it emphasises that decisions are concerned with alternatives and that the cost of the chosen plan of action is the profit foregone from the best available alternative. An example, a nurse is late on duty by one hour. The other staff members have coped well enough and the schedule has not been delayed by the absence. The nurse volunteers to work through lunch, or stay behind to make up the time. The best plan of action in this sort of scenario is to accept the offer of making up the time but to reject the lunch or after work period until there is a real need. There will be at some point in the future an occasion to use the hour when someone else is late on a following shift and you need someone to stay at work to cover. Also, it is worth while investigating why an absence at the start of a shift did not hold up the schedule and perhaps make it a permanent feature of that shift. Over-manning falls into two categories, hours worked and personnel numbers. We sometimes talk in terms of full-time equivalents when we have a mixture of full-time, part- time, students and agency staff. There are some very large long term savings by reducing overall numbers of staff. The following list of 30 items are costs associated with employing more part-time staff rather than fewer full-time staff. Uniforms, Meals, Drinks, Supervisors, Training, Presents, Information distribution, Communications, Bank Holidays, Accommodation, Staff rooms, Electricity, Gas, Water, Equipment, Accountancy, Furniture, Advertising positions, Telephone calls, Transportation, Insurance, Litigation, Stationary, Office costs, Administration, Statutory sick pay, Statutory maternity pay, Lateness, Excessive staff breaks, Agency labor costs, Pensions. It is possible to establish the cost of each item and include that cost into everyone's pay rates.

What-if? On the left is a flowchart of the parameters involved in setting up a new shift pattern (or used as a check of the existing shift pattern to see if it works.) Each parameter can be changed and the results flow through to produce an outcome. By trying out different values of the different parameters, one can ascertain how they affect the results. For instance, if you increased staff holidays and reduced their hours, how would that affect the outcome. Or, with the current staff parameters, how much work could be done. A decision has to be made whenever there are two. or more, possible options. The what-if analysis would evaluate the outcomes of both, or all, decisions. Then the decision is from a point of known outcome, rather than ‘a feeling’ or intuition. A major decision is often whether to use 8- hour shifts or 12-hour shifts. This choice sets up two completely different ways of operation so you can assess the features of both systems and the problems associated with both options before making the decision. A major decision is whether to expand the business by increasing the operating hours or increasing the work space and having more equipment. So, do you go for: keeping the capital expenditure and work space as is, or going for 7-day working (+40% output), or a double shift (+100% output), or 24/5 (+200% output) working or 24/7 (+420% output), 7-day on 12-hour shifts (+210% output), or some other combination? Or expending the workspace and buying more equipment, or a combination of both of these. Each option is a what-if analysis that reviews all possible combinations of inputs to finally arrive at the best overall solution.

Opportunity Costs. If you are in New Zealand anyway, the cost of watching whales is small compared to specially going to the other side of the world to watch the whales. This is the ‘opportunity cost’. Cruise ships rely on this type of revenue, as do the passengers. A win- win scenario.

Perishable Hours Koalas are known for sleeping 20 hours a day. A koala bear asleep cannot be foraging for food, seeking shelter, defending its territory or looking for a mate. The time not foraging, etc. can never be regained. Its’ a good job they are cute.

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