Scheduling Flexibility Optimization

Stop playing TETRIS with your service schedule. 🎮 It’s not a game—it’s your customers’ experience and your revenue on the line. Service Schedulers try to be clever by asking customers 20 questions before they can book a service. The idea was to diagnose the issue upfront, assign the perfect technician, and slot the job just right. Sounds great.... except it doesn’t work in real life. Here’s the reality check: • 🙅 Customers bail. No one wants to fill out a long interrogation just to get an oil change. The more complicated the form, the more likely they abandon it or choose a local shop instead. • 🔧 Self-diagnosis fails. Drivers aren’t mechanics. Expecting them to correctly identify a mysterious clunk or warning light via an online form is wishful thinking. Bad info in equals bad planning. You end up scheduling the wrong work, with the wrong tech and time. • 🧩 The schedule falls apart. That “perfect” puzzle of appointments can’t handle real-world surprises. One walk-in customer or an unexpected repair and boom—your tightly planned calendar collapses into chaos. The fix? Simplify. Let’s make it easy: allow customers to book a basic time slot and leave the detailed diagnostics to your team. Triage is best performed with the patient present! • ✅ Give a few, simple choices: ask customers if they need express service (quick maintenance) or the main shop (bigger issues). That’s it. No more twenty-question games. • ✅ Advisor triage: when the car arrives, your service advisor greets the customer and diagnoses the issue on the drive. Human-to-human interaction, real diagnostics in real time. Upsell face to face! • ✅ Flexibility: with a simpler schedule, you have buffer for the unexpected. Fewer surprise walk-ins throwing off the day because you’ve made room to adjust. What’s the payoff? Happier customers who actually complete the booking and show up. A smoother flow in the service lane—because the right work goes to the right tech at the right time. More cars through the shop, more ROs completed, more revenue in the till. And your team isn’t constantly scrambling to rearrange a Tetris puzzle of appointments. Bottom line: It’s time to ditch the Tetris scheduling mentality. Simplify the process and trust your people to triage. You’ll boost customer satisfaction and throughput—and your bottom line will thank you. Game over (in a good way). 😉 #FixedOps #ServiceManagement #CustomerExperience

There is no one ideal approach to flexibility, there is only the ideal approach to flexibility. This is a subtle yet monumental distinction that The J.M. Smucker Co. nailed! 👉 Their approach is not a prescriptive RTO mandate (I choose for you) then made creepy by having to ‘lure’ people somewhere -- rather it’s an RTO strategy (You choose for yourself) that’s based on aligned incentives. This feels new. The Nuts & Bolts 👇 🟣 Core Weeks = Designing for Intentionality by Pre-Scheduling (Genius!) 👉 There are 22 core weeks that people must show up for - these weeks are pre-scheduled one year in advance (can’t say you didn’t know) 👉 There are two core weeks each month, except for July and December (realistic and human-centric) when there is only one core week 👉 People are expected to spend 25% of their time in-office, together. Office time is reserved for team-based tasks (strategy, product launches) and social activities -- leaving WFH time free for individual focus work   🟣 WFA (Work from Anywhere) = Your Dime, Your Time 👉 You can live anywhere in the US that you want to but must be willing to travel to HQ for pre-scheduled core weeks – on your dime. This is the essence of choice and flexibility.  This means people have skin in the game, and to live this **work lifestyle** you have to pay in your time and cash for the reward you receive personally for being a supercommuter.  You can also choose to not make these sacrifices and live locally, using your time and dimes differently! 🟣 The leadership team at J.M. Smucker are mere mortals that face the same challenges that you do, namely 👇 ✔️ This strategy applies to 1,300 (18%) of the 7,300 people employed globally - the approach for the balance of workers is unclear ✔️ They didn’t flip a switch – they launched the strategy in January 2019 and have been designing, testing, and measuring since then whilst acknowledging that the strategy may be pulled back if the core business suffers ✔️ It’s not perfect - some people grumble about the arrangement (expected) and some people put more work in on core weeks (a win) but most have adapted 💡 The brilliance in this strategy is about using consensus-based decision making to align incentives - that gives people a direction and NOT a destination! The J.M. Smucker Co., @ChipCutter #futureofwork #hybridwork #flexibleworking

10^30000 scheduling combinations. 50 hours per week in Excel. If you've lived inside traditional WFM tools, you know this headache. Assembled's new AI-powered Schedule Generation does it in minutes. Here's the breakdown: 1,000 agents. 5 shifts each. 8 hours per shift. That's 5,000 shifts to schedule. Each shift needs: One productive event (chat, email, or phone). Two breaks. One lunch. One meeting. Discretize 8 hours into 15-minute blocks and you get 32 options. For non-productive events alone: 32 × 31 × 30 × 29 / 2 = 431,520 combinations per shift. Multiply by 3 productive event options. 1,294,560 combinations per shift. Now do that for 5,000 shifts. (10^6)^5000 = 10^30000. That's a number with 30,000 digits. At 2,000 digits per page, it takes 15 pages just to write it out. The “nurse scheduling” problem is a classic NP-hard problem. This is what workforce managers are solving with spreadsheets. Assembled's AI-powered Schedule Generation feature handles this in minutes. Agent needs Thursday off for a doctor's appointment? Old way: Submit request. Wait for approval. Hope it doesn't conflict. Assembled's way: Integer linear programming for coverage optimization. Constraint programming for breaks, lunches, and labor law compliance. Decomposition to break 34,000 weekly shifts into 50 parallel subproblems. 2 hours becomes 10 minutes. Agents can also browse available swaps directly in the system. AI ensures swaps follow your rules: Matching skills Queue compatibility Channel requirements. Our schedule Layers prevent coverage gaps entirely. It has three intelligent layers: Productive work Meetings/breaks Time off. When a training cancels, productive work surfaces automatically underneath. One global payments company told us: "This replaces our hideous spreadsheet where we export schedules just to flag compliance issues. Programming rules directly in is chef's kiss." AI handles 10^30000 combinations. Managers can now handle strategy. Kudos to the team on this big, NP-hard launch. Antony Phillips, Claire D., Jack Gleeson, Malfy Das, Nicole Pan, Zach Clark, Chancie(Qianshi) Zheng, Charlie Rotholtz, David Patou, Devon Berger, Todd Bergman, Dan Hertz

🚖 Healthcare Staffing Needs an “Uber” Moment 🚖 If we’re serious about fixing healthcare’s intractable workforce crisis, we might need to stop looking inside healthcare for answers. The old playbook just isn’t working. 🔥 Burnout continues to skyrocket. 🩸 Turnover is bleeding healthcare providers dry. 📆 Traditional scheduling models are failing frontline workers. We recently did a survey of hundreds of healthcare workers about why they left their last job. By far the number #1 thing that made them leave was not the lack of higher pay. It wasn't for lack of better benefits. It was a lack of flexibility. The gig economy- whether you love it or hate it- has one thing figured out. It’s Flexibility. Think about Uber. They don’t just throw all drivers into one big pool and hope for the best. They segment. 📍 Some drivers want weekend shifts. 📍 Some want short rides, others long hauls. 📍 Some respond to surge pricing, others care about consistent earnings. Uber doesn’t treat drivers like one-size-fits-all employees—it builds a dynamic, flexible system around their behaviors and preferences. So why is healthcare still clinging to rigid, outdated workforce models? 💡 Workforce segmentation—tailoring scheduling, incentives, and engagement to different staff groups—is the game-changer we’ve been ignoring. The numbers prove it: 📊 A UK hospital using a data-driven segmentation approach saw record-high staff engagement and lower absenteeism. 📊 Providers that offer self-scheduling tools see up to 88% better shift coverage and reduced turnover. 📊 Studies show that flexibility alone can cut turnover by nearly 45%. The gig economy cracked the code on matching labor supply to demand efficiently—and we’re still running hospitals on a 1990s staffing model? It’s time to rethink everything. Not just how to recruit more caregivers, but also how to deploy them smarter. Not just raise salaries, but rethink flexibility, incentives, and engagement. 🚀 The future of healthcare staffing won’t look like the past. It’ll look a lot more like the gig economy.

The Perfect Schedule: Myth or Reality? 🤔 As SVP Alliances and Employee Value at Legion Technologies I speak with our customers and product team every day. One thing is clear: building the perfect schedule isn’t just about filling shifts—it’s about creating a balance that works for both businesses and employees. But what does it take? 🎯 Smart labor forecasting – Predicting demand with precision to ensure the right coverage at the right time. 🙋♂️ Employee-first scheduling – Factoring in skills, availability, preferences, and performance to keep teams engaged. ⚖️ Compliance & fairness – Meeting labor laws, company policies, and ensuring equitable scheduling. 💰 Business constraints – Staying within budget and optimizing resources efficiently. The truth is, manual scheduling (how most managers are scheduling their hourly teams) just can’t keep up with all these factors. That’s where AI-powered automation changes the game. 🧠⚡ Legion AI processes thousands of scenarios in seconds, adapting in real time to create schedules employees love—delivering proven results that meet the needs of the business and employee preferences 96% of the time! Plus, managers cut scheduling time in half while staying compliant and efficient. 🔎 Still relying on outdated scheduling methods? It’s time to make the switch. Let’s chat! 💬  #AI #WorkforceManagement #Scheduling #Automation