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Welcome to Warehouse and Operations as a Career, I’m Marty and we appreciate you visiting with us again today! Its State Fair time here in Texas, where we don’t take this particular fair lightly. Our State Fair runs for 4 weeks and is a big deal around here. Last years attendance was a little over 2.2 million people and it rained 11 of those 24 days. Fair Park, where the State Fair is held sits on 277 acres, there’s more to see than you can take in in 1 day I assure you. Anyway, this week overtime came up so many times that I thought we’d talk a little about it today. Overtime is great, at times, and Overtime is bad at other times. This week I’ve heard about 8 individuals that walked off their jobs because their shifts were working longer hours than normal. These individuals were in different industries and were all involved in getting vendors ready and stocked up for the State Fair. On the flip side of those stories I heard from 12 others that loved this time of year because they knew they could count of a lot of o/t during the next 4 weeks. One lady told me this is when she makes all her holiday money each year!
In the distribution fields, you’ll find many positions marketed as 6 a.m. to finish or 5 p.m. to finish, especially with our productivity driven positions, or where we’re selecting product for local shipment’s to be delivered. Those case counts are driven by how many customers have ordered and how much product those orders contain. If we have our own delivery fleets their going to be delivering to a customer’s delivery window, or an optimal time, chosen by our customer that they can receive our orders. So, our warehouse can’t shut down at a specific time, it’ll be when everything is loaded out. But let’s say everything is shipped out with a parcel service or an LTL carrier, or as less than truckload freight we may be able to have a shift of say 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. because the delivery has not been guaranteed to arrive on any specific day or time. Take an internet storefront, we could get our order anywhere from 2 days to 2 weeks depending on the method of shipping the vendor uses. We’ll usually find the same in the production or manufacturing fields. Most operations can have a set shift time as it may not have an immediate need for X number of units to be produced each day. If they do though, you’ll typically find that we need to stay until that production number of units are produced. In our chosen field, overtime is going to come up from time to time or maybe even daily. I had a young man refer to his old position, the one he left to make more money, and he explained that he was used to a set schedule and didn’t understand why he was having to stay 2 or 3 hours late every day. I asked him if his hiring agent had informed him about the overtime and he said yes, but I thought it would be like if you wanted to stay.
You’re going to find that overtime is a part of our business. Either occasionally or daily. We’re going to get paid for it, it’s going to be expected and it is a part of our jobs. I don’t think, or I hope at least, that it’s not going to be a surprise to us. Entering the fields of distribution or production will require that we’re their on-time, for every shift and that we stay until the workload is complete.
Another thing we should probably mention is the shifts, I guess. Take the distribution arena. If our company delivers it’s own product with its fleet of trucks locally or even with some stretch miles we will probably be working on Sundays. I know of several distribution centers that Sundays and Thursdays are the biggest shipping day for the facility. We could be off every week on Saturday but our second day off could be any other day of the week. Just this week I heard about an individual that started a new job, was doing great. His employer really liked him, his immediate supervisor thought he was going to make a great selector. Well he approached them and stated that he couldn’t work on Sundays, that was the only day he had to spend with his family. He quit. The employer was quite puzzled why that never came up during the hiring or orientation process? I assure you that there will rarely ever, be exceptions made for an established shift. Now, at this facility they do work a bit of over time, usually somewhere between 3 or 10 hours over, it makes for a long week. But that is the job that we agreed too, and more importantly the shift that we agreed too. It’s the job that we agreed to do!
I’m quite big on the family and time off myself. However, as you know, I love operations. The hours are going to be long, the work is hard, but oh so rewarding, for those like me at least. I think that’s why I didn’t go into the retail field, or banking or an office position. Those jobs work with set hours and set shifts. I’d honestly go stir crazy behind a desk with set hours though. It’s great for those that enjoy that kind of thing, I wish I did, but I like the warehouse work and along with that there is going to be overtime.
We’ve mentioned headcount before and how our headcounts are figured with Productivity. When the case counts exceed what we can physically do productivity wise within our shift’s parameters, we will run into overtime. When our companies % of overtime increases to a certain number they will hire additional headcount. We’ll always have call offs or people scheduled off so that headcount may always be 1 or 2 people heavy, even heavier in the larger facilities. Those cases have to be produced or and shipped. Ever had your supervisor or seen him or her get concerned when too many people have called off? Over time is something a company keeps under control too, I assure you. If there’s a lot of O/T, there’s a reason for it. You’ll see o/t go up and down sometimes with a seasonal business or when a new account is picked up by our company.
I mentioned earlier how we’ve agreed to the position and the overtime associated with it. I am a strong believer that we need to understand our jobs, know what is going to be expected of us and be up front about what we cannot commit too. There is nothing wrong with asking our hiring agent something about the overtime associated with this position. But let’s do it in the right way. Maybe say something like how many hours, on average, is this shift working each week? Not something like I don’t expect to work only 8 hours a day, I don’t mind staying until the jobs done. Nobody really likes overtime! Yeah, we like the money overtime brings us but be honest, we don’t like staying late and those longer hours! I mention this because I had a candidate say just that to me this week. I told them that’s great, the shift averages between 48 and 50 hours a week but you can work a little more if you’d like. You can volunteer to come in on Saturdays even for more hours. It’s great to be positive and upbeat with our recruiters but keep it real, this isn’t their first rodeo. It’s only going to make us look bad if we over promise, right? Anyway, after talking a little more my candidate decided this wasn’t going to work for him and actually asked me if there was another position available that did not require over time.
No matter which side of the fence you fall on, Love O/T or hate O/T, if we’ve taken a position that requires it that’s our job for the time being. If we love it, great it’s perfect for us. If we hate it, let’s be positive about it and use it as a steppingstone to where we want to go or that next position in our career!
I’m the first to tell you that a work and life balance is important, very important. We here at WAOC always encourage you to do your research when looking into a new company, know what our duties and job descriptions are and what is expected of us. If we’ve done that, committed to the position lets work our way through it. That experience we’ll gain will be useful in our next position!
Well, I’ve rambled on too much about over time today so we’ll wrap it up. If you have any thoughts about O/T share them with us at host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com Maybe we’ll start a short discussion on Facebook or Twitter, use that @whseandops and we’ll see you there!
Until next week, be safe out there, especially if you’re working overtime, get our rest and be safe in all we do, Safety is our priority one!