The Key to Strategic Shift Design
Understanding Operational Demand
If you don’t have work patterns and flexibilities that match your operational demand, then you’re throwing away money.
The first stage is to really understand the profile of this demand which comprises of all the forces that may impact on your business. You need to consider external forces such as changes in the market and competition, legislation, and the political and economic environment.
These forces translate into internal demands such as customer requirements, performance expectations, unit cost targets, quality and service standards, asset utilisation, operating methods, equipment and process running options, work practices, operational windows, and not forgetting the culture you want to engender, alongside employee requirements and aspirations.
Only when this is all understood as a whole, showing how different areas should interact, can we assess how well your current ways of working fit. Together using our experience and your local knowledge we can consider change requirements, whether by simple shift pattern alteration or using flexible methodologies, such as Annualised Hours.
We collaborate with you and your people to determine new smarter shift patterns, team structures and working practices, matching the available hours of employee work teams to this evidence-based demand for products and services. Of course, we have to build in absence rates and patterns, training requirements and flexibility expectations. We model the necessary requirements by time and skills, enabling you better understand how to assign people to skill positions or identify where and when any skill gaps exist.
Our consultants have the experience to help you through every step of the process from analysis to design and then implementation of these new ways of working. Together we can help your organisation become more effective, productive, and resilient.