Project RETAINS - 9-1-1 Issues - APCO International

Two out sick. We need 10 people per shift, but only have enough personnel for nine, and now we're down to seven. We have four squads- one just got off work, another arrives in a few hours. The third is at work. That leaves one squad to call to arrange shift coverage. The ones who often work overtime have already done so this week. Others can't. Still others won't-and with the plentiful days off a big perk of the 12hour plan, who can blame them? But the seven who work are slammed. Most don't get breaks. They leave exhausted and burned out. And the big topic of discussion was whether or not it would be better to go back to 8s.

Where We Started

Work schedules dramatically affect the lives of comm center employees. So schedule problems make other problems-like increasing call loads or escalating sick leave-seem worse.

We re-evaluated our schedule after 2 1/2 years of 12-hour shifts. Our call load had increased 35 percent in three years. Budget constraints meant we handled a 1997 call load at 1987 staffing levels. Like most centers, we usually had openings. Sick leave was soaring and burnout was rampant.

Many employees were asking to go back to 8-hour shifts, but it takes more staff to run a center on 8s than on 12s. And many of our employees still liked the 12s.

To see if the grumbling was isolated discontent or a symptom of a real problem, we devised a survey to determine employee satisfaction with the schedule and other issues affecting operations. The result was a nearly perfect 50-50 split between liking the 12s and wanting 8s. This meant half the staff was unhappy with its current shift. We needed to do better. We devised a plan that put half the staff on 8-hour shifts, half on 12s.

We started with 39 full-time and two part-time employees, of whom eight were supervisors, 29 (including supervisors) worked at least one radio position, and the rest were call takers. We had to staff five radio and three call taker positions at all times. We wanted a fourth call taker, the call load having outgrown the three we were required to have. We wanted each supervisor to have time during each shift where she was not working a position, but could function strictly as a supervisor-which didn't often occur on our straight-12 configuration.

These goals in mind, we made three 8-hour squads of seven each-one supervisor, four radio operators, and two call takers. The remaining 20 employees formed four 12-hour squads of five-a supervisor, two radio operators and two call takers on days (when the phone call load is highest), and a supervisor, three radio operators and one call taker on nights (when we have more special details needing a sixth radio operator).

The 12-hour squads would keep the 7-7 hours they'd been working. The 8-hour squads would work 0800-1600, 1600-2400, and 2400-0800. With five different roll calls, each supervisor would get some time devoted solely to her squad.

We calculated two 8-hour employees per shift would be on their regular days off. This left five 8-hour and five 12-hour employees working at a time, for a total of 10-one supervisor, five radio operators (including the other supervisor), four call takers. For the shifts that the part-timers were assigned, this number was reduced to nine for the shifts they didn't work.

We generated an extensive test schedule. With our current staffing-and if everyone work as scheduled-we achieved a free supervisor 97 percent of the time, and a fourth call taker 56 percent-a dramatic improvement. Other advantages were a smaller supervisor-to- employee ratio, increased teamwork, and a better distribution of "shift short" hours. On the 12-hour schedule, if a shift lost an member, that shift was always short (unless coverage was found) and the same group of people always bore the resulting extra work-load. On this schedule, because shifts overlapped five times a day and mirrored each other from week to week, each shift might be short a couple of hours, but no shift would constantly bear the hardship.

Handling Leave and Training

Two areas requiring thought were employee leave and in-service training. On the 12s, leave was first-come, first-serve, and people competed for it only with their own squads. That would change.

We approached the new schedule in terms of "time blocks"-the length of time in which two different squads work together. Each day had five time blocks: 2400-0700 (when the midnight 8s and night-12s worked), 0700-0800 (midnight 8s/day 12s), 0800-1600 (day 8s/day 12s), 1600-1900 (day 12s/evening 8s) and 1900-2400 (evening 8s/night 12s). Those wanting leave needed to be the first to request it for all affected time blocks, or would have to get coverage via posted overtime for blocks taken by someone else. For example, a day-12 person needed to be the first to request three time blocks-0700-0800, 0800-1600, and 1600-1900. If any of those were already taken, overtime would need to be posted.

To avoid the confusion of seven squads requesting leave from different supervisors, and the risk that too many would be granted the same time off, we set up a special intranet e-mail account, which has a calendar and time-stamps entries to it, for posting leave. Leave was sent to the calendar as appointments, and the first appointment sent for any time block was approved. The time-stamping feature would settle any disputes.

Supervisors also combine the squads working during any time block to form a position schedule. Because our employees don't all work the same positions, each block is scheduled separately to ensure that required positions are covered.

In-service training was easier to arrange. On 12s, it occurred on Thursdays from 1800-2000. Each shift attended it one Thursday and held over or came in early on the other so that its partner shift could attend. On the new schedule, we'd hold training twice on Thursdays, from 1500-1700 for the day and evening 8s, and again at the original time for the 12s. We would videotape it for the midnight 8s, instead of making them come in, and 8-hour people whose days off fell on Thursday could also watch the tape instead of attending. Those who watched the tapes were required to turn in written material to verify that they'd comprehended it.

We presented the proposed schedule to the supervisors. Then we surveyed the staff to determine where everyone should be placed on the new schedule. We asked five questions: were they interested in trying it? Which did they prefer, 8s or 12s? If 8s, rank the three shifts by preference. If 12s, rank the two shifts by preference. Which mattered more, the length of shift or the time of day they worked? The last had a note that it might be used to determine placement if a first choice could not be met. However, because of the 50-50 split, we planned to give as many as possible their length of time choice. In retrospect, we should have listed all five shifts and had them ranked; it would have saved disagreements later.

Employees were placed by seniority and grade-that is, each shift required a supervisor, which meant some supervisors, although senior, didn't get their first choice. We used three grades- supervisors, radio operators and call takers. Some newer call takers won choice slots ahead of more senior radio operators, because equivalent radio operator slots were already filled. We permitted trades if the trading employees could work the same positions. No bumping was allowed -no one could promote or demote to take a coveted slot from another.

Ultimately, 29 people got their first choice, and of the other 12 (including part-timers), only one had to be placed without regard for preference. In this, we were probably lucky.

The schedule was set. Implementation would occur Feb. 15, 1998. Now, to see if it worked

Six months later...

August 1998. We're six months into the new schedule. Like most new programs, it has benefits and drawbacks. The big drawback is the amount of front-end management it needs. This schedule - like any - requires supervisors and management to proactively review it several days in advance for coverage. Also, because all of our personnel are not cross-trained for all positions, it has required extra work from the supervisors, who've had to do position schedules far in advance to predict whether someone could take leave. The managers did the first month or two's position schedule and handled the leave requests for that time.

However, the supervisors are so busy that it is difficult to find time to work ahead on the schedule. For a while, our supervisors each took a month's worth and worked out the entire schedule for that month, 24/7, complete with leave. But, because this arrangement was informal, confusion arose over who was responsible for posting overtime etc., and some employees became angry when their supervisors couldn't evaluate leave requests because that month's schedule hadn't been finished yet by another supervisor. To avoid these issues, I recommend management do the position schedule for the first six months, including planning for leave requests and posting overtime, and let the supervisors take it from there.

We also didn't put enough thought into the forms, and didn't standardize their use. We didn't realize how hard it is to get a 24- hour schedule for seven squads and 40 names onto one piece of paper! We wanted to keep it to one sheet if possible, and have all names on it so we could list scheduled overtime, or mark whether someone had been called to cover sick call-outs, etc. The problems arose from not standardizing who would transfer names from the overtime sign-up log to the position schedule, and where on the schedule those names would be recorded. Several times supervisors scrambled for coverage because the posted overtime names hadn't been transferred, or were written in an odd place and overlooked.

We did realize some benefits. When considering them, note first how hard-hit our center has been since starting this schedule. Of the 41 people we had, one switched to part-time administrative work for medical reasons, two took leave to attend the academy, one resigned, one went part-time to work in her family business, one went to the road, two experienced problematic pregnancies with one taking extended maternity leave, one adopted an infant and took maternity leave, one washed out of training, and one took surgical leave and is on light duty-no typing! -for the forseeable future. We were confronted with one daunting schedule crisis after another. We hired replacements, but the lag time due to training left us severely short-and we couldn't fill temporary leave vacancies.

Worse, many who took extended leave were qualified to work every position. To train people to cover for those on leave, management stepped in and did accelerated positional training with several people, assisted by the employee on light duty. The supervisors got solidly behind management in this and accelerated positional training on their shifts themselves, despite the difficulty in doing so when short-handed.

Overtime soared. For months it was 75 percent higher than at the same time last year-not surprising, as we were eight or nine people down. The call load rose, each monthly report showing a 3 or 4 percent increase over last year. We were again ripe for burnout.

Yet, in the first seven months of 1998, sick leave dropped 42 percent-even with the medical and maternity leaves.

Forty - two percent. Despite all that had gone wrong that six months, something, somewhere, had gone right.

Editor's Note: Before taking the assistant editor's position at the Public Safety Communications/APCO BULLETIN magazine, Jennifer Hagstrom worked for 12 years in a comm center, 11 on the floor and one in management. Since writing these articles, she has learned that outside concerns have caused her former agency to consider shifting schedules once again, although the floor employees she has talked to are still satisfied with it.