Staffing, FTEs, and other management measurables

Importance of accurate staffing: Direct effect on labor costs Indirect effects on employee satisfaction, absenteeism, overtime (not to mention stress!!)

Here’s a question for you: Staff of a tray-assembly line produce four trays per minute and 180 trays each meal. Three meals are served each day. The line has six employees. How many labor hours are needed to staff the trayline? A. 2.25 B. 4.50 C. 6.00 D. 13.50

Another one: Calculate the minutes of labor needed per meal for a facility with the following data: Position Cook I Cook II Relief cook Aide I Aide II Relief aide Supervisor Hrs worked 80 64 Number of meals served Jan 1 to Jan 14 = 2,505 meals

These are often quoted benchmarks: Meal equivalents/Labor hours Minutes labor/total meals Total meals served/day divided by labor hours/day Trays/minute Payroll cost/meals served Sales/square foot FTEs/day or FTEs/week Food cost % Labor cost % Clinical consults/patient day

Productivity indicators you want to remember for RD exam. FTEs, one FTE = 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, 2080 hours a year. Some foodservice indicators: Labor hours per meal = Number of labor hours/number of meals Labor minutes per meal = Labor hours per meal X 60 minutes per hour Meals per labor hour = Number of meals served/Labor hours for same time period. Food cost %; Labor cost % Cost per serving Clinical productivity indicator: Patient contacts per hour worked = No. of patient/resident contacts per clinical labor hours worked.

Calculating FTEs How many people do you need to feed 100 people, 3 meals/day? (Industry suggests you should be able to produce 3.5 meals per hour) 3.5 meals per hour = 17 labor minutes/meal (60 divided by 3.5 = 17) 300 meals/day X 17 minutes/meal = 5,100 minutes/day. 5,100 minutes/day divided 60 minutes/hour = 85 hours/day needed to produce 300 meals.

Then… 85 hours per day divided by 8 hours/day = 10.6 positions needed or 11 FTEs. Workers are only supposed to work 8 hours a day or get paid overtime. One FTE = 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, 2,080 hours a year. So 11 FTEs… Is this really enough? Maybe not. If you want to make sure there are benefits for all, it is not. Then you might multiply 11 x 1.55 = 17 positions.

Classification of labor hours Productive hours: Worked hours Overtime On-call hours worked Continuing ed Orientation/training Non-productive: Vacation Holiday Sick time Jury duty Work injury Paid leave Paid hours include both productive and non-productive hours

Meals per productive hour A. subtract the non-productive hours and calculate as usual B. typical ratio might be that 10% of total hours are non-productive; subtract 10% of your FTE and calculate as usual

Here’s another: There are seven foodservice employees in the patient tray assembly unit at a hospital where the patient tray census is ~350. If 1.5 hours is allowed, a feasible productivity goal for the unit is to assemble how many trays per minute? A. 2 B. 3 C. 4 D. 5