Working Hours

Submitted by It Work’d!

Salt Lake Community College

Communications 1010
August 2018

Table of Contents
Executive Summary ……………………………………………………………………….……. 2

Project Description ……………………..……………………………………………….………. 3

Methods …………………………………...……………………………………….……………. 3

Problem Question …....……………………………………………….…………………………. 3

Analyzing the Problem ……………...…………………………….…………….………………. 4

Setting Criteria ……………....………………………………….……………………….………. 7

Brainstorming Solutions ……………………………….…….……………………….…………. 8

Analyzing Solutions ……………………………………….………………………….…………. 9

Implementing Solutions …………..…………...……………….………………………….…… 11

Conclusion …………………………..………………………….…………………….………... 12

References ……………………………...…………………………………………….………… 14

Appendices
Appendix I: Team Contract ……………………………………………………………….…….
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Executive Summary

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Our team “It Work’d!” set out to create a work schedule that is fair to all employees and meets
their individual needs. This is a summary of our thought process on “how can we effectively
schedule all fifteen workers to accommodate needs of the employees and the necessary needs of
the company?”

We used a process of Dewey’s Reflective Thinking and Sequences in our face-to-face meetings
and personal studies of the subject. First we did research the characteristics of the case study
problem, stakeholders and who is going to be affected by this problem, the history of this
problem and example of those who have gone through this process in the past, policies and
practices that give general guidelines to what solutions we can do, and the resources and
references of those who have been in similar situations.

For our goal, we will create a rotating schedule that occurs weekly. This schedule will allow the
necessary coverage that will be needed for the open shifts. We will make sure that the rotation
will be treated fairly, and workers will not be over scheduled. There will be incentive given to
those workers who help out and pick up the unwanted shifts that need coverage.

We came to the solution by making a rotating schedule (Monday – Friday). The company is open
8Am through 8Pm. We attempted to make the scheduling as fair as possible by making up real
life problems for our workers, some employees are parents and have to take their kids to soccer
practice, some others work a separate night job, we also have a single dad who cooks, picks up
kids from school, and helps with homework, Oliver has a martial arts class he takes his son to at
nights. The people who we just listed REFUSE to work the night shifts, and they can’t work
around the companies’ schedule. The solutions started with three main ideas. We wanted to make
sure the night shifts were not last pick, so we came up with the idea of incentivizing the night
shifts with a pay increase. In the act of keeping things fair we wanted to make sure everyone was
treated equally based on the info we had received. We wanted to make sure there was a rotation
by month so those that are working evenings can rotate between a one night a week and a two
night a week schedule. This will rotate every month making it so once every 3 months two
employees that work midday and night shifts will be working only one night shift a week. We
also had the notion to keep everyone somewhat routine, outside of those that rotate monthly, we
have everyone else in set schedule, that will make it easy for them to know what shifts they have
every week and it is unchanging as the weeks months and times go on.

Project Description

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We are a group of 5 students that set up to answer the age old of questions of scheduling
conflicts in the workplace. We found it very productive to use the reflective thinking sequence to
solve this as a group. We found this process would help us to get rid of ideas that were less
useful while getting the best solutions possible. We met five times to decide what the best
schedule would be to present to the manager, in order to get an approval. In order to get the best
possible outcome we needed to get a large amount of participation and logical thinking, to get
this process to work. We were also very driven by the incentive to give the professor a response
he had never heard before.

It is important to find a solution to this problem as it affects employees’ jobs, and daily schedule.
Fifteen employees have to work four hours each day, with three shifts being covered. These
shifts must have five employees working per shift. The struggle is getting everyone satisfied with
their scheduled shifts. When you have certain employees putting their situations, lives, and
responsibilities outside of the workplace above others. You know there needs to be a better way.

We set out to make it fair and equal. Of all the solutions we had three very plausible that would
work, but it left some working hours they did not want and refusing to work. We came to a
conclusion using all three solutions to the ultimate great solution.

Methods

In our first meeting the team developed a team contract and team norms, these can be found in
the added sections of the report. The team contract and norms gives an outline of what each
member of the group decided themselves, what would best suit their skills and strengths as their
role in this process. These roles included task roles and relationship roles. This allows everyone
to be able to put their best self-up and give the group the best part of them. We also included
some norms in this contract. These norms included what what were the potential outcomes to
being loyal to the group and following the guidelines set. This included both negative and
positive consequences. The purpose of the process is to give everyone responsibility and to spark
the creative thoughts needed so desperately for this type of solution.

Part I: Problem Question

When defining our problem, it was important that it was defined in an open-ended question to
avoid starting the process already having a solution in mind.

In agreeance, our group determined that the question we that needed answered is “how can we
effectively schedule all fifteen workers to accommodate needs of the employees and the

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necessary needs of the company?” Six of the fifteen employees have refused to work night shift
at the company. Our goal is to create a solution where we can find coverage for these necessary
shifts while keeping in mind the employees needs/ requests, as well as maintaining a positive/
healthy work environment.

Part II: Analysis of the Problem

Before we could start coming up with solutions and getting more information about how to make
the decision, we had to come up with an open ended questions. This allows us to understand the
problem in it’s full glory. Without this understanding we can’t make the correct decision as we
will not understand what is being asked of us. We can determine this decision by looking into the
past to help us with our future goals.

As we dissected the problem, we took the following into consideration: The characteristics,
stakeholders in the problem, the history of the problem, and the policies and practices of the
problem. We also made sure to come up with resources to make sure we had outside influence on
our own thoughts and ideas. This allowed us to gain a broader perspective.

A. Characteristics (Buka): Case study problem indicates that some of the married employees
protesting not to work on evening shifts because they need to spend more time with their
significant others, and pushing the shift to the unmarried employees who would like to
study and socialize in the evenings, and the manager wants the employees to decide and
figure it out the schedule on their own.
a. Company has 15 employees, each employee works 4 hours a day, 5 days a week,
on one of the three shifts.
b. Creating solutions to our problem is not that difficult, in order to make every
employee happy, and not to hurt companies operations, we need come up with the
fair schedule and module for everyone.

B. Stakeholders (Kolby): The effect of these hours being distributed, ranges to many levels
of people. To start off you have the groups involved; the workers themselves, the
company needs all hours to be filled and maintained in order to function, and the family
members of the employees. The employees are affected and are the ones that have to
work the hours. The families of the employees are being affected in the amounts of time
seeing their family members. Not only is the family life affected but the social lives of
the workers are also affected in what time the employees have to see their friends and
have social lives outside of the hours they need to work and extracurricular activities. The

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 company is needing to get the hours staffed in order to keep the company functioning.
The attrition rate is important we want to keep happy, healthy, satisfied with their work
employees. This also adds to the company hours needing to be met and staffed properly.
If the hours are met and the staff is happy and satisfied with the shifts they have, then
there is a smaller turn over rate. This will allow the company to continue to flourish with
experienced workers. This will allow the stakeholders in the company and the consumers
of the product being produced, to be happy with the services provided. To conclude there
area man working part and pieces in this problem and we need to make sure that all
parties are satisfied with the result. As we keep everyone satisfied the company will only
be better off.

C. History (Chad): In the late 1800’s the industrial revolution was taking off. With the
making of the light bulb, textile mills, iron factories mills work hours began to change.
The industrial revolution gave people jobs year-round because they were able to work
indoors and in artificial light, allowing them to work longer hours. The owners and
managers of these companies came up with a rotating schedule to get more production
out of the day. Most workers would work thirteen 12 hour shifts and then work one 24-
hour shift then work thirteen 12-hour night shifts and finally have a 24-hour period off.
This was the first operations of a 24/7 business. In 1886 the union was created. The union
wasn’t recognized until 1933. Because of the efforts of the union, the work hour was
shortened to 10 hours a day 5 days a week. They also started paying workers who worked
more than 40 hours in a week. In 1960 the 12-hour work day began to come back for
employees working the weekends while other companies gave their employees 8 hours a
day for the week.

The 40-hour work week was first put into place with the Ford company in 1926. Henry
Ford started implementing this new schedule because he believed that “workers working
too many hours was bad for production”. The role of the Trade Union’s collective
bargaining and progressive legislation helped cut the work week in half of that they
originally were and helped turn them into law.

The development of the staggering work week is more a new concept developed by
modern companies. The purpose is to reduce the congestion of traffic on the roads,
reduce the amount of emissions put in to the air at one time, reduce overcrowding on
public transportation and reduce crowding in the business with everyone showing up,
taking lunches and leaving all at the same time.

In the past, work hours have seemed to be one sided in the favor of the companies
compared to the worker. That is until more recent organizations fought to make the some
changes. These old solutions worked well for the companies in the late 1800’s and early

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 1900’s. Not so much for the worker that got one day off every couple or weeks. But when
Henry Ford created the 40-hour work week and gave his employees more time off, both
the company and the worker benefited. They had more energy to be more productive at
work but was still able to enjoy their personal time off. Before the Union was
recognized, things were much harder for the worker and not as rewarding. The scales
were leaned in favor the company.

I found out my company I work for sends out hours to the stores, and then my boss has a
weekly schedule for the team. We usually keep it pretty consistent with the time and days
the employees work for. If an employee is not happy with a certain shift they are
scheduled to work, it is their responsibility to find a co-worker to take the shift for them,
or they can request the date off in advanced to have better chances of getting it off. If the
employee requests a day off, but the store is expected to be busy, there is a chance that
the employee who requested a day off, might not get that day off.

We found the best way to schedule employees is to make a fair schedule that everybody
can agree on. This usually is followed by making availability date sheets a month in
advanced, this way, the schedule won’t stress out the manager or employing manager.
Most companies require more than one employee working at all times, to keep things
smooth and organized.The companies that do the best schedule wise, are the ones who
hire people who are committed to the job, and won’t quit after 5 months. They will check
past working history, and see how well how they did at the last job they attended

D. Policies and Procedures (Paige): Policies are designed to influence and determine all
major decisions and actions placed within the boundaries set by them.Procedures are the
specific methods employed to express policies in action in a day-to-day operations of the
organization. The policies and procedures are explained in detail to each employee during
their first week of employment with the company.Company policies are placed to protect
the rights of the workers as well as the business. These policies also are in place to help
protect the hours an employee can work.Every company should have these certain
policies put in place; Employee Position Descriptions, Personnel Policies, Organizational
Structure, Disciplinary Action, Safety, Privacy, Confidentiality.
a. Employee Position Descriptions- Define the role of every employee, including
their level of responsibility, amount of authority for decision making, and
achieving goals/ tasks.
b. Personnel Policies- Clearly state business hours, terms of employment, wages/
salary, insurance/ benefits and PTO/retirement.
c. Organizational Structures- Create a chart with each employee's name and title
showing how each person fits into the structure of the organization.

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 d. Disciplinary Action- Address issues of honesty, performance, safety, misconduct,
and violations of the company policies.
e. Safety- Use industry best practices and relevant local, state and federal laws as
guidelines to create rules on safe behavior, and learn how to report hazards.
f. Privacy- Protect employees, the company and your customers by creating a policy
that encourages trust with your customers.
g. Confidentially- Protect sensitive information, and be sure to cover your
relationships with vendors, customers and other suppliers.
After investing time and resources into creating these policies, it is important to make sure your
employees read, understand, and apply them to their daily job responsibilities.

E. Resources (Mac): Managers usually make a template for the business for the month, the
company sends out hours to the local stores. If you’re the manager of the local store, you
are suppose to have all your employees fill out an available sheet to avoid complications
before they start. Having hours for your employees decreases the turnover rate.
Management should try their best to not get in the habit of copying the schedules from
the previous weeks without reviewing how the schedule went last week. Most companies
make the schedule 2 weeks in advance, so they can let the employees know beforehand
when they work. This lowers the rate of issues to pop up. The manager responsibility
requires him/her to step up and cover the shift in need.
a. Based on life experiences, everybody in the group has had a part time or full time
job before, we got our information based on how our managers sent out the
schedules in the past, and how they got everyone to agree on a schedule they can
follow.

Part III: Criteria

In order to get the best results, it's crucial to make sure we have a solid outline of what criteria
need to be met. This criteria is defined by the case study and our own criteria we wanted to be
met. This allows us to get rid of biased opinions and helps us all stay on the same page.

We began the process by taking the criteria stated in the case study. With this criteria
information gained in the analysis section, we determined two other criteria we wanted to meet
in order to keep our solution in line with the over all goal.

A. General Goal:

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 a. Our goal was to implement a solution that will provide a company with 15
employees full staffing at every shift. While maintaining satisfaction amongst the
employees for the schedule assigned.

B. Specific Criteria
The best solution:
a. All three shifts must be covered and fully staffed.
b. Each employee must ONLY work 4 hours a day.
c. Maintain satisfaction throughout the workplace.
d. The 6 employees refusing nights, getting nights off.
e. Fair and equal for all.
f. Level of routine”ness” in schedule.
g. Manager approval.

Part IV: Brainstorm possible solutions

Our next step is to internalize the solutions and deeply think about the task at hand. Each
member of our group gave the ideals they had on the topic, in conjunctions with feedback on
others ideas for potential solutions. We didn't provide analysis of the actual ideas being given
throughout the group, other then common interest in potential ideas.

Our list of potential solutions procured

1. Rotating schedule, work the same shift every day, rotates every week.

2. Bidding system based off seniority.

3. Incentivize the after hours shifts, by a certain percentage.

4. Monthly Rotation (2 month with 2 nights a week/ 1 month with 1 night a week) rotte
every month

5. Splits shifts:
Same three people work morning shifts every day of the week.
Same three people work afternoon shifts every day of the week.
Same three people work night shifts every day of the week.
Remaining workers rotate through and rotate every month.

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Part V: Solution Analysis
This is where we defined our criteria and we compared our potential solutions to the individual
criteria in order to make the best decision for our case.

We took our top five solutions and we put them to the test with our criteria. We did this on the
grading system. Our system was not perfect but it was the way we determined the best way to
meet all criteria.

A. Final list of our solutions

1. Rotating schedule, work the same shift every day, rotates every week.

2. Bidding system based off seniority.

3. Incentivize the after hours shifts, by a certain percentage.

4. Monthly Rotation (2 month with 2 nights a week/ 1 month with 1 night a week)
rotte every month

5. Splits shifts:
Same three people work morning shifts every day of the week.
Same three people work afternoon shifts every day of the week.
Same three people work night shifts every day of the week.
Remaining workers rotate through and rotate every month.

B. Chart

We were given a chart to fill out in order to determine the best possible solution. We used this
chart to determine the best solution by assigning points based on our determination of criteria.
We pinned each criteria in the chart and put our solutions to the test. The grading system we used
was 0,3,and 5. This was not defined as we ended up using some 4’s as we felt there were not
quite a 5 and better than a 3 in some cases. This was he best way for us to get a gage as to what
potential solution was best. In our system 5 was the highest and 0 being the lowest. After
assessing the criteria with the potential solutions we totalled the points to give us the best result

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based on the total points given. From there we determined the results and factored in all aspects
of the case. We also took into consideration what your professor mentioned about giving a result
that still works but would be different then he had seen before. He extended this challenge and
we wanted to give him just that. A solutions that meets our criteria and is different then he had
ever seen the past.

There is a disclaimer with this chart andour processes. We did not use the chart to give us our
answer but to give us the best options based on the criteria. We still took the information
received from the results and used it to formulate the best solutions.

C. Final Solution

From the data collected we showed that solution 4 had the highest points with a grand total of 27
points, solution 5 had the second highest with 26 points, and solution 3 had 25 points. Our other
solutions did not get nearly as many and just weren’t as close as these three were. They were all
within 2 points of each other. This was simply because our last criteria was manager's approval
and we wanted to rank the five solutions on a scale of form highest to lowest. They were all three
very similarly ranked by the group.

Knowing that these were our best options and had the best overall score pinned against our
criteria, we wanted to incorporate all of them in our final solution. We felt this to be best as they
are were very close on our grading scale. We figured it would give us that edge of not having this
particular solutions being done before. It also went in line with our research, we had done before
in the information obtained in our analysis section. We were able to implement much of what we
learned from that section in our solution.

Combining the best solutions we came up with, incentivizing the night shift for a pay increase
for those working that shift. We will have 3 people that always work night shifts, there is a
rotation of those that are willing to work nights but not every night, that rotation would have 2
months of 2 nights a week on, and 1 month of 1 night a week on. The remaining shifts will be
split out by availability.

These solutions out did the others because of the following:

a. It gives those who refused the night shifts the opportunity to avoid them completely.
b. It gave those that wanted to work nights incentive to do so.
c. It gave those that didn't want to work every night but were willing to work some nights a
monthly rotating schedule order to give them the flexibility they needed, to give other
activities and social lives time throughout the week.
d. It made it so every employee is satisfied with the work schedule and made it possible to
fill all shifts.

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D. Possible negative consequences

1. If you refuse the night shift you will miss out on the additional pay.
2. If you refuse to work certain time frames, your options are limited.
3. Flexibility in this workplace is much better for everyone and it keep everyone on a good
routine and having a great day to day shift.

Part VI: Implementation of the solution

A. We had to start off with an outline of what our overall schedule would look like. We have
it broken down into a weekly schedule, by person, and for those that rotate monthly what
their schedule changes to every month.

B. We went through and made sure that we used the proper information that was given to us
about the employees. We had six workers that refused to work nights and we made sure
they got only morning and afternoon shifts.
a. We then took the three employees that would only work night shifts as it fit there
schedule best for school and social life. This was easy as they only had night
shifts(we filled the spots to see what we had left).
b. We then took those six employees that only wanted morning and afternoon shifts
and assigned them out first with this we made sure to give a total of five of them
at least one shift in the afternoon each week.

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 c. We then took the remaining six employees and gave them some night shifts and
the rest afternoon shifts. We didn’t want someone working a night shift and thena
monrignshift the next day so those that worked night shifts only had afternoon
shifts after that.
d. We made sure to get them on a rotation so we new and could keep track of who
worked two months with two night a week and vice versa.
e. Once we assigned out all the shifts we made sure that everyone was schedule
everyday and that there were no holes in the weekly schedule
f. After we got it all scheduled out we took the one months schedule we had just
created it and made sure to use it as a guide for the remaining months rotations for
the six employees that would rotate each month in order to meet the goal of two
months of two nights a week and one month with one night a week.
C. Once we had it all assigned out we made sure to color coordinate the results we had in the
schedule in order to make it easier to read understand. We did this for the weekly
schedule and the rotating monthly schedule

Conclusion

Our team recommended a solution for 15 employees to be assigned the 3 shifts a day, for 5 days
week. Only allowing each employee one shift a day and staffing all the available shifts. We used
reflective thinking, and we brainstormed all the results we could come up with. We studied how
our own personal jobs handle this type of problem and the history of other companies. We also
took into consideration the results of why other companies schedule their employees.

After we finished our brain storming, we made 6 criteria to use to narrow down our results with
what was the best solution. We scored these solutions on a scale of 0,3,4, and 5, in order to give
a better representation of what criteria was met. Each problem was then counted and added to
total of points in order to give us the actual result of what met our criteria.

Our recommendation was to incentivize the night shift for a pay increase of 5% for those
working that shift 4pm-8pm. We will have 3 employees that will only night shifts, there is a
rotation of those that are willing to work nights, that rotation would have 2 months of 2 nights a
week, and 1 month of 1 night a week. The remaining shifts will be split out by availability.

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 Cited Work

Employment Policies and Practices. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://greenwaldllp.com/law-clips-

topics/employment-policies-and-practices/

Policies and practices. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.thephoenixgroup.com/corporate-

responsibility/workplace/policies-and-practices.aspx

(n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.circadian.com/

http://www.E.H.net-encyclopedia

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 Team Contract

Team Member Roles

Task Roles
· Leader: Kolby
· Recorder: Paige
· Editor: Mac
· Organizer: Buka
· Computer Transport/ Interpreter: Chad
Relational Roles
· Listener: Chad
· Harmonizer: Mac
· Sensor: Buka
· Tension Reliever: Paige
· Keep it together: Kolby

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Team Norms
Relational Norms
1. Be respectful and patient with everyone in the group.
2. When giving feedback, try and keep it positive. Allow constructive criticism
when needed.
3. Complete tasks in a timely manner.
Task Norms
1. When we are in class, make sure we have something to present. Be ready to give
feedback and participate in the group.
2. If a group member is planning on being absent for a class period, allow the group
timely notice.
3. Preparing a plan at the beginning of class to stay on track and organized.
Consequences of Breaking Norms
1. Extra work and responsibility will be given to peers if the other members aren’t
putting in their full efforts.
2. Lower participation scores will be given towards peers if efforts aren’t made. This
will result in negative feeling from team members and trust problems.
3. No mystery gift will be given if team members miss a class period.
Consequences of Keeping Norms
1. Receiving an A on the assignment.
2. Showing up on time will show the other members of the group respect.
3. The group leader will bring in a mystery gift if the whole group is present and
participating.

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