Building work days: LP-Shift

Building timetables for work days is a key phase of the human resources planning process. It is actually the time when planners attempt to get the best fit between the workload needed to satisfy customers’ needs and the working capacities of the company’s staff in compliance with binding labor regulations. In organizations where the workload varies significantly during the day and from one day to the next, productivity and customer service quality issues can be crucial. If employees’ attendance hours can be advantageously adjusted so that they are available when customers need them, not only is more cost-effective by reducing the number of unproductive working hours but it also improves customer satisfaction.

The challenges faced

The LP-Shift optimization component is dedicated to building daily employee workday schedules for organizations whose workloads vary at different times of the day and are characterized by very short tasks or tasks that can be interrupted at any time without impairing service quality. An example of this is the work carried out by motorway toll collectors – each transaction is very fast and an employee can be relieved by a colleague at any time without interfering with the smooth running of the toll booth. The main deliverable of the LP-Shift component is a list of daily working schedules with all their characteristics: work start and end times, break times and work content. This list is then used as input data for building the employee schedule which can be carried out by tools such as LP-ShiftPlanner (individual schedule) or LP-Roster (cyclical rosters).

Why choose our component?

• Potentially high productivity gains
• Results delivered in a matter of minutes
• Possibility of examining new types of working times: shorter, longer, cut, and so on
• Possibility of examining new employment contracts: part time, weekend, and so on
• Throws light on the ideal workforce sizing 
• Component usable from an Excel spreadsheet
• Component easy to interface with other systems

Main features

• Allowance made for all types of statutory constraints
• Simultaneous management of several activities
• Allowance made for employees’ skills, versatility
• Possibility of clearly describing the possible working schedules 
• Simultaneous management of groups of employees with different characteristics (skills, employment contracts, headcounts, statutory constraints, etc.)
• Time discretization can be configured for the workload