Doing more with less – we’ve all heard that old adage is the key to lean operations, but what does it mean? What does doing more with less look like in the real world? For operations, doing more with less means having information at your fingertips that will allow you to make quick, informed decisions about your staffing, output levels, resources, equipment and current priorities. This can range anywhere from payroll and shift coverage information, to manufacturing data or inventory numbers. Having visibility into all parts of your organization is paramount and can be the difference between lean, efficient operations and a complicated, tedious situation.
However, this information and your decisions don’t magically appear in the minds of your supervisors – you need automated systems in place to help you access information instantly and be able to make changes at a moment’s notice. The current pandemic has taught us that we can in fact maintain business continuity with adjusted shifts, remote work and unusual work groups – but it isn’t easy to manage all of the changes, especially if you have manual processes in place. By giving back some autonomy to employees regarding accepting work on new shifts, swapping regular shifts and submitting PTO or time off requests, you can avoid the countless hours of emails and phone calls for your HR groups and managers on duty. By automating shift coverage and management, you can instantly make calls to your entire workforce, in the right order according to your union or business rules, and fill shifts within minutes. This can also help if you need to get creative with your staffing or work groups, as these days many employees are looking for freedom and a semblance of control over their schedules, especially during these particularly trying times when we are reducing the chance of virus transmission
ARCOS can help you have that transparency and also make non-traditional shifts to cover all of your productive hours. With ARCOS, you can reduce some of the unnecessary costs that come with manual administrative work, quickly notify your employees of a company decision, and free up your supervisors to focus on important tasks and not time off requests, shift trades, or sick leave. You’ll have transparency with your employees and can also make non-traditional shifts to cover all of your productive hours, and increase the safety of your employees. Did we mention that it also automatically is compliant with your current business or union rules, eliminating those costly grievances that happen with improper staffing? Handing your schedules correctly alone could save your company tens of thousands of dollars in unneeded grievances, disputes and paperwork.
The reality is the benefits of automation to your bottom line can be significant. From reducing productivity or service disruptions due to inadequate staffing or resources, to keeping managers on task, ARCOS can help you utilize your workforce efficiently and effectively.
