Time Management in Shift Work Operations
Time often seems to move differently at 3 AM when you’re finishing your shift and haven’t slept in 18 hours and it’s hard to see through the glaze over your eyes, from at 4 PM when you’re relaxing in your house and the sun is bright and you can’t hold on to the minutes for long enough. Time is certainly relative. This problem applies to shift work managers as well, when the day time shift can seem so efficient and goal-oriented, until everything falls apart at night. Many executives make the same mistakes about their night shifts and extended hours workers, causing the company to waste time and money. Managers need to put greater priority on training night shift workers, arranging specific goals for the night shift, and arranging clear methods of communication between shifts.
Time management is important to all businesses, but those with shift work operations face unique time management challenges. Usually, a business may struggle to manage time efficiently because it is hampered more by external interruptions, such as telephone calls, meetings, visitors stopping in or computer/system complications vs. internal challenges. In a shift work operation, the challenges impacting time management are most often internal.
Some examples of issues that impact time management within a shift work operation include:
- Lack of access to information – Critical information is usually more accessible to daytime managers and employees than evening and nighttime workers.
- Unclear objectives and lack of planning – Company planning processes are usually done in conjunction with senior operations management personnel, who usually work only during the day time.
- Attempting to do too much at the same time using people who may lack the relevant skills – The most skilled members leaving the unskilled workers to work the evenings and nights.
- Poor scheduling – Scheduling is complicated for shift work operations because of the need to consider both business requirements and employee needs to balance work and life demands.
- Failure to set priorities – Many times the shift work operation is disconnected from priority setting; priorities are set during day time planning meetings.
- Inadequate communication – The handoff from day time to evening to night shifts is often loosely managed so important information may not be fully communicated.
- Crisis management – Crisis management planning is usually done during the day with out full consideration to unique evening and night time constraints.
All of the above issues can cause the shift work operation to operate in a crisis mode on a routine basis. So, what can be done to improve time management within a shift work operation? Time management problems usually result from poor work habits. So, if you or your team has not been able to accomplish what needs to be done, start by analyzing how you spend your time. For several days, keep a log, listing your activities and accomplishments, keeping track of how much time you spend on them. After a few days look at the log to determine which major activities or events caused you or your team to be ineffective when using time. Use this list of activities and events to work backwards to get to the root causes of wasted time. Create a matrix ranking the activity and events that you could not accomplish efficiently against the following potential root causes:
- Access to necessary information was lacking.
- Activities were not planned properly; goals and objectives were unclear.
- People with the required skill sets were not available when you needed them.
- Scheduling was poor.
- Activities and events were not assigned the right priority so focus was misdirected.
- Communication broke down.
- A true crisis could not be adequately diverted or managed.
Share the result of your matrix with your manager, peers and team members. Develop plans to address the significant, recurring root causes to minimize, if not eliminate them. Delegate the necessary corrective measures both up to management and down to your team so that everyone works on the solutions. Don’t expect to solve all the problems at once. Continually re-assess by keeping your log current; this will allow for continuous improvement.
When time is used efficiently, the business will benefit and so will the employees, who will feel a greater sense of accomplishment. No one gains when a business is regularly operating in a firefighting, crisis mode.
Tags: Productivity, readiness for work, training
