If you’ve already got Schedule24 Standard, here is a quick guide to the new features:

• iCalendar enables shift times, assigments and vacation information within Schedule24 Standard to be sent via email to staff’s personal calendars, such as Google, Yahoo and Outlook.
• Scheduling breaks within shift times is now possible in Schedule24 Standard. Breaks can be included or excluded from hours and time calculations. Helping you see and track the ‘true’ cost.
• Advanced business reporting is now available in Schedule24 Standard choose from 15 new reports; time sheets, sickness, vacation, block schedules and many more.
• Import staff information into Schedule24 Standard from other applications  and sources. Support for Quickbooks, CSV and other formats.
• Flexible licensing only pay for what staff you schedule. Schedule24 Standard now supports as little as 25 staff per schedule and up to 400 staff per schedule. Remember, you can create and modify unlimited staff schedules within every version of Schedule24 Standard.

More information and a fully functional trial is available from the intellicate website.

We hope you enjoy using Schedule24 Standard 4.6, and look forward to hearing your feedback.

The Schedule24 Team

Police overtime is no different to any other kind of overtime, but in the public sector it can develop an institutional shell that becomes very resilient to normal business-like intervention. The first danger is drawing attention to something when you have no intention of doing anything about it. For example a joint report by the Chief Constable and Treasurer of the Northumbria Police Authority in February 2003 set out the procedure to reduce the overtime bill in accordance with National Guidelines. A modest Police Negotiation Board (PNB) target of 15% reduction with the usual exemptions and exclusions followed. Four years later the Northumbria police overtime stood at a little over £23M, or put another way during a ten year period it had increased by 549% – the biggest increase of any UK police force.

On average police overtime nationally has increased by 100% to stand at over £440M. This is in addition to other invested costs which has grown police resources during the same period by between 12%-30% depending how you do the counting. The report by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS) makes some sense of the number crunching that goes on. It also highlights the disconnect between increasing resources by over half, while hiking overtime (a strategy when resources are insufficient) into the stratosphere.

So here we are again. Attention is focused on reducing the police overtime bill, the similar PNB 15% is being targeted as a respectable attempt to rein in costs, and as mentioned earlier a raft of factors (that have little or no impact on overtime anyway) need urgent review. So what will happen now? Given the police overtime is currently running at 48.3% we know it will total over £656M by 2016. If the same institutional shell of the past 10 years is allowed to harden further it will be much worse. Changing a few health and safety culture issues, notice periods on days-off changes and even shift patterns (an old favourite) will not dent this shell. We will see new forces enter the field as the operations frontline will extend all the way back to HR, perhaps even an e-HR, and beyond. Intelligence-led or otherwise all this will do is make police resources more reliant on process that only drive up costs.

Police overtime, like all overtime, is not a bad thing thing. It is bad when it spirals out of control; and happens when the scheduling horizon of staff resources is too short. I don’t mean 12 month rosters – that’s not planning that’s a pattern. Nothing more nothing less. When police deployment is being pushed around in spreadsheets – pencil behind the ear – in monthly chunks, or worse by a system no one understands, high staff costs are assured – and ripe for exploitation at any level.

Demand-led deployment? Already been done – Accenture and Home Office Circular 2002. Dedicated police resource managers – already recommended a decade ago. Variable shedule arrangements? already done to death but 12 hour shifts are popular. The latest initiative surrounding workforce modernization produced a useful 101 social science paper on research methods, and a web site shadow peppered with broken and outdated links from a time there may have been belief. In fact there is a rich seam of research that any “pan-handler” having the energy can sift through for any nugget of argument they want. Some are still talking about a 10 year plan – they don’t even have 10 months.

So what would be a sensible thing to do?. First a visit to the City of London Police, Norfolk and Northamptonshire Police and find out what they are doing. Three forces that not only kept overtime costs down to pre 10 year levels, but reduced them even lower. Second, when staff costs of a modest police unit of 35 sworn officers costs over £2M in assets a year, lets start treating this as a serious operations management skill not an admin function – and that does not preclude civilian staff delivering those skills. If you can scale the management skill so much the better. Finally extend the scheduling horizon at least 6 months ahead of the game, 9 months or longer even better – even fewer suprises! Coordination, communication and control delivered by those closest the problem I guarantee will transform the way you do business.

Alternatively we can all wait for a public debate about priorities and choices.

Certainly most of us are aware expectations have been firmly pushed into the ”more demand for efficiencies in the workplace” debate. So what is efficiency? Well on its own nothing much. The ultimate state of efficiency is where no energy is expended. So closing everything down is about as efficient as it can get, but that doesn’t really help. We will however hear about efficiency ad nauseam and it will become synonymous with cost-cutting, which in turn will become welded to job cuts. For business to be both efficient and effective may well involve job cuts, but carrying out job cuts does not make a business efficient and effective. Often businesses continue just as inefficient and ineffective as before – just smaller.

Efficiency can only have meaning when associated with our effectiveness to achieve something – a business or management goal for example. It may be worth bearing in mind you can be effective yet inefficient, and efficient yet ineffective. Efficiency and effectiveness are siblings of reason. You need both.  A much over-used phrase of late is the statement ”We will do whatever it takes”.  A hallmark of someone who has bypassed the faculty of thought if ever there was one.

Efficiency measures the amount of time and cost required to achieve a goal; and effectiveness measures whether that goal has been reached. The best outcome is to achieve a given goal in less time and cost than by alternatives means. The hardest task for the drive for  more efficiency is not reducing cost, that is easy – anybody can do that. Defining goals  and recognizing at what point they have been reached is much harder.

Leaving aside whether goals are defined and agreement when they are reached, another  relationship exists that many will try to bend in the name of efficiency but only succeed to break . The cast-iron relationship forged  between staff-cost, staff-count, and staff-hours is complex and the consequences often underestimated. Without the means to manage all three contexts simultaneously few ever get it right.

As budget-conscious companies look for creative ways to reduce employee turnover, cut back on training costs, and boost team morale, phased return to work (PRtW) has become a quickly growing trend. Billed as a progressive workplace benefit, PRtW is designed to smooth the transition after an employee has been out of the office for an extended period of time due to illness or injury.
With PRtW, the employee resumes his or her work schedule in increments. With approval from a supervisor, HR department, and/or physician, work hours are gradually increased over a pre-defined time frame.

In March of 2010, Intellicate added a PRtW service to their repertoire of workplace management services. As a leading provider of top-notch workforce solutions, the London-based company specializes in effective schedule management. Their flagship product, Schedule24 Professional, helps employers achieve maximum efficiency in staff allocation and management. With PRtW, Intellicate expands their offerings to accommodate this new development in workforce optimization.

Benefits of PRtW
A growing number of organizations, HR professionals, and medical providers are recognizing the long list of benefits that can be achieved by PRtW. When an employee resumes his or her workload gradually, he or she is less likely to suffer a relapse or enter a state of “burnout”, resulting in enhanced efficiency and productivity.

In a time of heightened awareness of labor rights and a surge of lawsuits, implementing PRtW helps to reduce the frequency of litigious employees and workplace discrimination claims. Phased return to work also ensures a higher level of accountability and knowledge for all parties involved.

“HR chiefs believe the note will inevitably lead to disputes between employers and staff,” says Tim Mills COO of Intellicate “Our PRtW services at phasedreturntowork.com significantly reduce the probability of conflicts.”

How Intellicate Can Help
By adding PRtW services to their offerings, Intellicate has allocated the resources and expertise to help small and mid-sized businesses manage all aspects of the process:

• Customizing a flexible but clearly defined PRtW program for each company
• Counseling employers on how to offer PRtW without compromising their existing operational policies or goals
• Balancing employee capabilities with organizational needs to minimize risk
• Creating detailed written PRtW plans for re-entry after a period of sick leave

As proven leaders in workforce scheduling strategies, Intellicate works with companies to create effective phased schedules designed to benefit the interests of all parties. Their expert HR outsourcing team provides insights and guidance along the way. “Dame Carol Black, the health expert who advocated this revolutionary approach, warned the fit-note won’t work without more detail,” Mills notes. “We’re providing the employer and employee with the kind of detail they can action together in the workplace”.

About Intellicate
With partners in Australia and the United States, Intellicate provides software and services to clients around the world. Schedule24 Professional is a registered trademark of Intellicate. Learn more about their world-class workforce solutions at www.intellicate.com.

Opting out of legislation e.g. European Economic Community Working Time Directive (EECWTD) does not mean you opt out of health and safety issues or duty to exercise care. This catches a lot of employers out. Recording working hours for payroll is a post event process for accounting. It has nothing to contribute toward exercising a duty of care. In short a company that wishes to discharge a duty of care has to demonstrate working hours are planned and scheduled not simply recorded. Scheduled work hours can be used for payroll, but not the other way round.

The irony is companies who say they use payroll records for working hours management when things go wrong probably don’t realise these records are the first port of call for the prosecutor not the defence.

An optimized schedule is the best possible solution available. First you need know all the factors that will define the pathways to be optimized to reach a defined goal. The more factors the bigger the problem to be solved. Even a handful of factors can generate a problem space that is measured in orders of magnitude. Put another way, defining the optimization model can be harder than doing the scheduling in the first place. Second, because there may be more than one solution you need to know all the solutions that are possible. These kinds of problem can take a very large computer a very long time to do this.

Another problem is we may decide what an optimum model is for staff headcounts and how they are distributed over a time range. Alternatively there may be a series of desirable goals for a staff day-on day-off working pattern. As more constraints are added the problem becomes easier to work out but the net result is what we considered optimum for one category is ruled out as new constraints for another category of information is added.

For example, the following goals ‘had to be’ achieved for a clients workforce deployment strategy. Not because they were desirable, but they had negotiated and signed off union contracts before realizing whether it was even possible:

• between 4 and 6 consecutive work days
• between2 and 3 consecutive rest days
• an exact number of days off in a pay period
• one weekend off and one weekend working in 4
• and at least one weekend day off in 3
• reduced staff at weekends

This occupied an HR team for a period a little over 7 months with no result. Using an intelligent agent designed to understand among other things the problem space of weeks in the context of week days and weekends completed the problem in 35 minutes. Out of a problem space of unknown size 4,712 candidates were identified as possible solutions. Only 13 of those solutions succeeded for further consideration.

Contraint scheduling can be contrasted with heuristic scheduling which promises to provide very good solutions most of the time. And a lot quicker and a lot more cheaply but that can be discussed another day.

Two things in conclusion.

• Don’t agree to something you don’t understand in the context of workforce schedules, you will invariably underestimate the problem; and
• When it comes optimization you probably are not getting what you pay for.

For more information about you staff deployment strategies contact Group Senior, Workforce Scheduding at Intellicate

However the effort and time to achieve something as familiar as the workplace schedule can be as different as ‘chalk and cheese’. It is workflow that makes the difference in the quality of workforce scheduling. If someone told you they had a ’system’ that was totally flexible, gave you complete control to do what you wanted, and above all cheap – even free – most jump at it. That’s exactly what a spreadsheet offers. However there is nothing stopping you doing something dumb. In fact you can even make a staff schedule that can’t possibly succeed look good – until someone else, usually operations, use it.

If all you are bothered about is just getting something out, and ultimately it’s someone else’s problem on the day (so much the better), that might be OK for some managers – though in a business serious about operating costs they are not managers for long.

The relationship between staff hours, costs and timing of shift patterns allied to a business requirement is complex. Without workflow you are unlikely to arrive at a satisfactory solution. Worst of all you are destined to deliver different workforce scheduling outcomes even when the problem remains the same. With workflow you get flexibility, without it you get confusion.

The aim of the study was to find out if night shifts actually increased risk. Development of MS was found to be significantly higher in night shift healthcare workers than in daytime healthcare workers. And it’s not about getting more sleep, which may also be associated with the syndrome. It appears the evidence is pointing to irregular sleeping patterns rather than sleep deprivation as a contributing factor.

The study was carried out on heatlhcare workers, and this study cannot be generalised to other workplace activity. However there was large participation to the study, involving almost all eligible workers and a very stringent selection criteria which ensured only subjects without any component of the syndrome were included.

The findings will have a strong impact on health policy for shift workers. Policy goals would likely include counselling staff working night shifts, appropriate medical surveillance and, if necessary, changes in work schedule for workers in case of persistence or progression.

Original research: Incidence of metabolic syndrome among night-shift healthcare workers. A Pietroiusti, A Neri, G Somma, et al. Occup Environ Med 2010 67: 5457

With a UK Government committed to clearing over a million people off the benefits list back to work and businesses generally looking very hard at reducing staff costs, it is not difficult to see where the crosshair focus is going to fall. What is certain, simple expedients about ‘fit to work’policies, stated or otherwise, will expose a clumsy business to risk. Even the proposed ‘fit note’ to be issued by GP’s might or might not facilitate clearer defined thinking about phased return to work strategies.

The support for the principle of PRtW is probably universal. Take the case of Mrs A for example:  

Mrs A is a 55 year old administrator. She is contracted to work 37 hours/week over 5 days, mostly seated at a workstation using display screen equipment, with one or two on-site meetings to attend each week.  She is returning to work after an eight month absence for cancer.  During this time she underwent major surgery followed by several months of anti-cancer treatment. She is keen to return to work.  Her doctor supports this and writes to the employer advising that she still suffers from fatigue and would benefit from a phased return to work…

No one I know would hesitate one moment to support Mrs A back to work. However, when the letter lands on the employers’ desk it will not be a person that decides on the PRtW that leads to a good outcome. It will be policy. And while policy does not have to be complicated just about everything suggests this will be, especially when we continue to use simple expedients.

For example, because it’s habit, we almost always think about weeks in even numbers which extends the time away from work. Because non-standard work patterns are hard to implement and maintain, it is easier to “let go” or worse still decide on a PRtW that is easy to manage rather than being any good. From the available research findings it seems the psychosocial factors are set to be the greatest obstacle to PRtW than the medical factors.

First, feedback communication will modify the habit of rounding up weeks in even numbers reducing the time away from work and alienating the employer. Second, access to working patterns which can be integrated into standard working practice, and which facilitate PRtW strategies for a range of biomechanical or medical factors can be made available. When validated by an occupational physician they can form part of policy robust enough to help reduce time, costs and even the kind of uncertainty for Mrs A we do have power to do something about.

Consensus about the importance of employer’s policy on PRtW was also found to be weak among those likely to be involved. This is not unsuprising given what policy is available is ambiguous and relies largely on individual opinion; and in particlular, there was strong disagreement that advising on PRtW is primarily a management/HR function.

Therefore communication can quickly breakdown when implementing PRtW, especially when ownership is either claimed or thrust onto one group (e.g. it must be an HR problem), or process  excludes another (e.g. their manager).  Research has consistently demonstrated, unless measured, managers expressing a policy about what they say they do often bears little resemblence to what they do in practice. PRtW may be a strategy waiting for HR to take the lead. The workplace is being re-defined by market forces, government policies and labour laws. PRtW is a people thing and that alone is a good enough reason for HR to get this right.

The author of the original research Dr Matthew Mills BM BS MRCS(ed) AFOM is a Consultant Occupational Physician at Premier Occupational Heathcare.

Some years ago a colleague – a very conscientious hardworking staff member – was boldly declaring she enjoyed 50 leave days a year! Naturally as everyone else only had 25 days leave a year I wanted to know what was going on. She pointed out somewhat dryly that she enjoyed not only her own 25 vacation days but a further 25 days at work when her boss was on vacation. As her “boss” I had to admire this stoical point of view.

We are approaching that time of year where many are thinking about vacation and holiday. It is also the time managers get caught out when discovering key personnel are away presumably enjoying themselves. Of course “key” redefines itself at this time. It won’t be the first time the absence of the quiet conscientious worker in a “small” part of the process brings the whole system to a grinding halt. In the main “weightier” process is brought into sharp focus as auto-responders hit the network heralding re-alignment of project schedules and business goals. They also reveal the staff who could keep things on course also “jetted” out a few days earlier. Workplace tension increases, blame culture kicks-in and the unstated implication of the “I’ve already paid my deposit” riposte is uttered in hushed tones over the water-cooler.

When staff encounter large chunks of leave, “ring-fenced” several months, if not a year earlier, for popular holiday periods they feel aggrieved. Facing little pity from others who got their vacation schedule sorted “in good time” only makes resentment worse. Nevertheless managers learn to live with a few irksome weeks of leave “grabbing” and figure out how to make up later. Eventually the popular holiday periods are out of the way, staff get back and settle down to business. If only it was that simple. Staff who have worked all through the holiday period now take their banked vacation for an out of season group soirée. Vacation and leave scheduling can be an all round year nightmare.

Poor vacation or leave scheduling can raise staff temperature that will keep them warm right through the winter months and into the following year. If that isn’t bad enough it can be more serious for the business. Missed deadlines, extended time to market and frustrated customers. Without a proper system of vacation scheduling managers may learn to ignore staff resentment, or even the wrath of senior management. Few managers however can learn to ignore the pincer grip of both.

Being caught like this need not happen. Good vacation or leave scheduling involves planning ahead and that much seems obvious. It is the context of other business goals and workplace scheduling that is often missing which leads to these conflicts. Simply recording a vacation balance against a staff leave entitlement is not good enough. All that does is tell you when someone can’t have anymore vacation or leave. Similarly the easy to use 10% rule doesn’t really help. The vacation or leave criterion can be met but a combined absence from the same key group can still paralyse those left behind until staff get back.

The following suggestions hammered out of workplace experience can make a big difference for the manager assailed throughout the year with vacation and leave conflicts. First make sure it is your job. There is a simple test for this. Do staff put vacation or leave requests to you for approval? If the answer is yes it is your job, if the answer is no then it isn’t. The practice of submitting leave requests through line managers that do not approve leave is a confusing and useless practice. Managers who manage approve leave. Summer is approaching so get it sorted at the next management team meeting.

Get a vacation schedule in place
You need to align your vacation scheduling alongside other information about staff organization and workplace schedules e.g. departments, teams, shifts, and assignments. It doesn’t have to complicated and will provide a proper context for approving vacation or leave.

Make sure public holiday dates are flagged well ahead of time
These are traditional magnets for leave requests. They often get overlooked, especially by staff that don’t have children of school age around providing a constant reminder about the annual holiday schedule. When staff suddenly “discover” they have an “extra day off” it is commitment, for the manager it is inconsiderate. A pity when you are working just as hard simply not to notice.

You need to know how many staff are requesting leave at the same time
The only thing going for the 10% rule is it’s easy and has the appearance of fairness. Ironically it is usually present when there is nothing else. Looking at dates is useful, knowing which days of the week is better. Dates are used for records; days are used for planning, so use both to get proper context. If you must use a 10% rule be prepared to be flexible. There is nothing more frustrating for staff than to be denied a vacation or leave opportunity that does not impact the business.

Identify leave requests as first round and second round choices
When it comes to vacation or leave at popular times of the year staff want to know they are being considered. A system of first round choices followed by second round choices enable more staff to enjoy some of their vacation during popular holiday periods. Staff will often work out arrangements with colleagues before even involving you. What hurts is when they don’t get considered at all and fall victim to some ill-thought out “seniority” policy, or 10% rule that can be both inflexible and unfair.

You need more than an outstanding leave balance
A simple calculation about leave taken and leave outstanding is not that useful. You need to track both leave that has been taken, and when leave has been scheduled but not yet taken. This will avoid a rush of unplanned vacation and leave requests toward the end of the year as time runs out. Hard working staff just may not realise how much leave they have left. Even if they don’t thank you they will understand the sense of what you are trying to do.

View vacation and leave status by defined group
For a manager it is more important to view vacation or leave status by department, team or job groups rather than by individual staff. Even when the overall number of requests is within limits approving staff leave from one particular team or job group can severely impact the rest of the business.

Make it a routine not an anniversary
You need to have access about the status of vacation when you need it. It should be part of your weekly if not daily management routine. Not two or three times a year when it is already causing a problem that takes several hours if not days to sort out.

Vacation is important and for many it is special. It doesn’t just affect the staff themselves but the people they plan vacation and leave with. Vacation and leave scheduling directly affects how staff think, feel and perform for the organization well into the following leave year. On the other hand don’t expect staff to point out the reasons why their vacation or leave shouldn’t be approved. As a manager you may not please everybody all of the time when it comes to approving vacation and leave schedules, but you will earn respect when making better sense of it.