Roosters with an eye for people
Where efficiency and human limits meet
Many 24/7 organizations are under pressure. Fluctuating volumes, downsizing, or rising costs often lead to adjustments in work schedules: fewer shifts, less structure, more customization. Logical on paper, often painful in practice.
Because a schedule is never just a plan. It affects health, recovery, and safety, influences motivation, and often triggers resistance to change. Irregular work also leaves its mark at home. Yet scheduling decisions are often made based on staffing and labor costs, without clear insight into the consequences for productivity, errors, absenteeism, and turnover. A cheaper schedule can thus become a costly intervention.
The healthy schedule does not exist
Many organizations manage schedule design using rostering tools and ergonomic frameworks. These provide a theoretical indication of workload and valuable guidance. Science, legislation, and practice offer design principles such as short cycles and forward rotation. But no schedule is without strain!
The real question is not: is this schedule well designed?
The question is: what does this schedule do to the people who work in it?
The greatest variation is often not between schedules, but between employees within the same schedule. Individual differences in vulnerability and recovery capacity determine whether workload leads to complaints, absenteeism, incidents, or turnover.
The focus shifts from merely adjusting the schedule to measuring impact and managing it in a targeted way among the people within the schedule.
That is why we measure the human within the schedule
We don’t just measure the schedule, but above all how employees experience it. With data on performance, recovery, and health, we make visible what scheduling choices truly deliver—and what they cost.
Organizations come to us to find out:
- how demanding their schedule is compared to other organizations (benchmark);
- which groups of employees are most vulnerable;
- where hidden risks and savings lie.
How this works
We start with a practical training for employees: the Shiftwork Lifestyle Training. Employees learn how to better manage irregular shifts, recovery moments, and fatigue. During the training, they complete short questionnaires. This creates recognition, dialogue, and immediate reflection on their own schedule.
Because the measurements are part of the training, we achieve a very high response rate and collect reliable data on workload, recovery, and performance.
We translate this data with the ShiftScan into four manageable risk domains:
Absenteeism risk
Safety risk
Productivity risk
Turnover risk
In addition, we identify underlying factors, such as sleep behavior and metabolic disruption.
What does this deliver?
Within a few weeks, you will have:
- Insight into the actual workload of 24/7 operations, based on data from your own employees;
- Concrete starting points to make schedules healthier, safer, and more future-proof;
- Better substantiated scheduling decisions that increase support rather than trigger resistance.
Case: the hidden costs of an additional night shift
What an additional night shift can really mean
At an international organization in the petrochemical industry, Dag & Nacht Vitaal examined the impact of adding one extra night shift. On paper, a cost saving. In practice, this decision proved to be associated with:
- approximately 9% productivity loss;
- a 10–15% higher absenteeism risk;
- increased safety risks during the night shift.
Together accounting for €2.25 million in additional costs per year per 100 FTE.
Based on these insights, we guide this organization with targeted training and specialized coaching towards reduced absenteeism, lower turnover, increased safety, and preserved productivity.
Smart scheduling choices don't start with schedules, but with people.
Do you want to know the risks of your current schedules? And know if lower absenteeism, lower turnover, higher safety, and maintained productivity are possible?
