Build a Thriving Company Culture with Flexible Schedules

Damon Pistulka  00:03

All right, everyone, it is Friday, and you know what that means? It is time for manufacturing, e commerce success, and I am your co host, Damon Pistulka, and I am excited for our guest today, and I’m excited to talk today about building a thriving company culture with flexible schedules. And right now I’m going to turn it over to that gentleman right over there, Curt Anderson, and let him take it away. Curt, let’s go with this.

Curt Anderson  00:32

Hey, Damon, happy Friday, my friend. What

00:34

a what

Curt Anderson  00:35

a great day to have a great day. We’re going to dive into a, I’ll tell you, this is such a relevant conversation. You know, you’re hearing a ton of, you know, wow, flexible work schedules are so vital and important, especially in our space working with manufacturers, where, you know, workforce has been a little bit challenging. So this is just such a, you know, this can lend such a dynamic competitive advantage. So I’m just thrilled and absolutely honored to introduce our guest today we have Dr Richard Coleman. Dr Coleman, happy Friday. How are you?

Dr. Richard Coleman  01:04

Thank you. Nice to be here.

Curt Anderson  01:06

Hey. We are just thrilled for you to be here. Now. You’re the founder of Coleman Consulting Group. Do I have that correct? Is that Yes? Now that was a rumor. I just want to confirm that there’s truth to that rumor. Is that correct? Okay, and also you’ve written a couple books. We’re going to dive into that now. Doctor Coleman, before I your specialty, your expertise, has been flexible work schedules, as far as, like, you know, sleep patterns, that type of thing. Now I want to go back in time a couple years, maybe just a maybe three or four years, but when you were a little guy growing up, Doctor Coleman, when you were a little guy growing up, who was your hero? Who did you look up to that you just thought was the one most wonderful person on the planet. Who’s your hero? When you’re a little guy growing up, Jackie Robinson

Dr. Richard Coleman  01:51

and Willie Mays, he’s

01:54

a baseball guy. Great

Curt Anderson  01:55

answers, man, great. Please do share. Let’s hear it and go deeper, please. Well,

Dr. Richard Coleman  02:00

Jackie Robinson actually lived in Stanford, Connecticut, where I grew up, and I was friends with his neighbor, so sometimes we go over to Jackie Robinson house to play with his kids. And one time I met him, I was about 11 years old, my mom said, Jackie Robinson, go meet him. I shook his hand. He said hello to me. And so he’s always one of my heroes.

Curt Anderson  02:23

Wow. And then Willie Mays, are you kidding me that one of the

Dr. Richard Coleman  02:28

Mays I went to a game at Wrigley fields, and I figured out that he was being interviewed in the press box, and I figured out that he had to walk through the stance to get back to the dugout. So I waited for half hour, and we walked through the stands. I was there to shake his hand.

Curt Anderson  02:45

Oh, my God. Two legends. I tell you what a great answer. I didn’t know where we were going to go today, Damon, but Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays to the greatest. Just two legends, right? And actually, goodness, I’m always reluctant to do this. I think that Willie Mays, did he just, did we just lose him recently? My closing, yeah, I think we just lost him. I think we just lost him recently. So Dr Coleman, thank you for sharing that those were two and you shook Jackie Robinson’s hand. Can you believe it? Oh, my goodness,

Dr. Richard Coleman  03:16

yeah. My mom is so wonderful. There is you gotta go meet him, and I just went over and took his hand. Said, Hello. Wow. What

Curt Anderson  03:25

a two absolute legends. Just not even in baseball, just just two legendary human beings, two class acts, and just, oh my god, I got I got goosebumps even think about that. Damon, we got a couple people here saying, Hello, Leslie

Damon Pistulka  03:39

stopping in. Hey, Leslie, how are you doing today? She said, hello all I’m tuning in from New York, and I look forward to the conversation. Then we got Suzanne Taylor King stopping by. Amazing. So cool. She’s talking about the Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays. Awesome, awesome. Thanks. And if you’re out there today, listening, drop a note, let us know you’re there, or ask questions for Doctor Coleman,

Curt Anderson  04:01

yeah. Thank you guys. Thanks. Suzanne, thank you for being here. Leslie, Happy Friday to you again. We have a phenomenal expert here today. Please drop a comment. Let us know that you’re here. Let us know where you’re coming from, and great opportunity to ask some questions. So, Dr Coleman, let’s dive in. So your expertise, your specialty, has been just helping companies figure out the whole scheduling thing. Now I’m going to go back in time a little bit. How did you get started? How did your your consulting journey start?

Dr. Richard Coleman  04:26

Well, in 1980 I was I just joined the Stanford Medical School sleep disorders clinic, and at that point, that was the first sleep clinic in the United States. They’re only 10 all together. Now they’re hundreds. And so a couple of patients came in who were shift workers with sleeping problems, and when we looked at what their work schedules were, we figured out we couldn’t help them individually. We had a change of schedules. And a lot of our research papers that we published about circadian rhythms, we put a little paragraph in there saying this might apply. I to shift work or jet lag. And one day, a newspaper in Utah, the Deseret News, sort of took our article and made a big deal about it, and a manager at a company not there at great salt lakes come up with mining company, he actually called us at Stanford, and we talked to him on the phone. And then there were three of us who went to that plant, we knew nothing about shift work at that time. And over a two year period, we went in there and we changed the schedules dramatically. And when we changed the schedules so what they were working at the time was basically rotating shifts every week, 14 out of 15 days in a row, so they didn’t get a lot of days off, seven days off a month. We changed the schedule so that they rotated shifts very gradually, very slowly, and didn’t work as many shifts in a row. And it turned out productivity went up 20% so the Wall Street Journal picked this up and put it on their front page, second section, and then we were on the Today Show, and all of a sudden we had like five different companies calling us up and saying if we could help. And I was basically doing the consulting and working at Stanford. And finally I decided to leave Stanford on a full time basis in 1984 and I started consulting and that business group, oh, that

Curt Anderson  06:18

is phenomenal, isn’t it fascinating? You said there were 10 sleep centers in 1980 So, Damon, you know, you know, 4050, years ago, like sleep was not a priority, apparently. And so just, you know, and these schedules, you know, so let’s go back in time. Dr Coleman, what were some common schedules that you were seeing that were really causing a lot of these challenges? Well, the most,

Dr. Richard Coleman  06:37

the most common shift was scheduled in the US in the 80s was something called the southern swing. I guess it started down the south. But basically you’d have four crews, and they’re always working eight hour shifts. So on any given day, is a day shift, evening and night, but if you were on the schedule, you’re going to work like seven days in a row, one day off, seven evenings in a row, two days off and seven nights in a row and four days off. So you’re constantly, you know, basically having jet lag, constantly bouncing around, and you’re not getting enough days off. In fact, very often the schedules rotated, we call backwards. They went from days to evenings to nights, which is sort of like traveling eastbound. It’s a lot easier to travel westbound for your body clock and jet lag. So that was a basic schedules with not enough time off, rotating too quickly and rotating the wrong way. And that was the most common schedule. Wow,

Curt Anderson  07:33

yeah. What a powerful discovery. And so and just, and just that was just, was that kind of, hey, this is how we’ve always done it. Like it just there was, there was nobody’s radar, like, hey, this. We’re causing some problems here.

Dr. Richard Coleman  07:46

That’s right. It’s the way we’ve always done it. And it’s very hard to get people to change, because the people who couldn’t hack the schedule, they had dropped out, and some people adjusted to it, and they were used to it, and there were some overtime built from the schedule. So in general, employees were scared to change. So it took many, many years. Now you don’t see that schedule much anymore. It’s very rare to see that kind of schedule

Curt Anderson  08:10

so, so, you know, what a pioneer that you’ve been, and so in again, I know you’re a humble guy, and, you know, see, but you were really a catalyst of kind of breaking that mold, that it was just this, this bad pattern, was just creating a really unhealthy environment for people of just, you know, living in constant jet lag, and just, you know, probably, as you said, like, what we’re seeing morale wise, and like, you know, you know, depression or like, what were you seeing on the worker side?

Dr. Richard Coleman  08:36

Well, in those bad schedules, we found, like 60% of the workers admitted to falling asleep at work on a regular basis. Okay? And family social life was really bad. We used to bring the families in and talk to them, so it was a hard schedule, but they were used to it. So still easy to change. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  08:57

they just didn’t, you know, probably again, if it was factories, or, you know, could have been even generation, you know, where, hey, this is how grandma grandpa did it, you know, this is how mom and dad did it. And just, you know, just kind of went down. What types of schedules? What are you seeing now, nowadays, like, what are what’s more common from that?

Dr. Richard Coleman  09:14

What’s more common our schedules that, if you’re running even five days a week, six days a week or seven days a week. The employees are often working 12 hour shifts. So they’re working maybe three days a week, four days off, or four days a week, three days off. There’s also a lot of 10 hour schedules. We’ll be working four days on and three days off. Now the days off could rotate and change, but we’re seeing a lot more schedules with more time off. We have schedules where you get an eight day break every four weeks. For example, without usification, we have some really advanced schedules where you can get actually up to 1015, day breaks a year. So a lot more time off, a lot more flexibility. You can trade days off. You. Have you can work more overtime if you want, or you don’t have to if you don’t want. So the schedules are just completely different. There’s still some old school schedules around, like at the US cement. I was talking to them recently. They’re still working day, evening, night, eight hour shifts, and the shifts are fixed, but so are the days off. So you might be on the night shift with Tuesday, Wednesday, off all the time for 10 years. So those kind of schedules that are still around, they’re sort of archaic, and at least a lot of turnover and form around,

Damon Pistulka  10:29

yeah, you know, I was part of an injection molding facility that I was I was running it, and we switched from a five day 24 hour day to a seven day 24 hour schedule, and switch from the eight hour shifts to the 12 hour shifts, the three four schedule, like you talked about, it’s real common and those kind of things. And just the ability to publish a schedule out for the year, basically, or as long as you wanted. And then, like you said, allow people to flip a shift or two if they wanted to. I forget what the exact, you know, things we could do, but it was so great because the employees could look out however many months, and they could say, well, I want to, I want to do a vacation here. So I’m going to heck, I’m going to pick up an extra ship here and swap with somebody else and swap with somebody else, or take vacation, or however they were doing it, and they could really, they enjoyed the heck out of that going from the eight to 12, because in the eight hour shift, if we had to run a Saturday or Sunday or both, it was horrible overtime. That’s right.

Dr. Richard Coleman  11:31

It turns out that even if you’re running five days a week or six days a week, you can still have a 12 hour system. We have one schedule that once five days a week, each employee gets a six day break every three weeks. Wow, every three weeks. Yeah? So there are those kind of schedules attract people, yes, reduce turnover. Oh, yeah, keep your skills.

Damon Pistulka  11:56

Yeah. It makes a huge difference. It’s amazing. The morale difference that makes when people I

Curt Anderson  12:01

I really commend you and admire the work that you’ve done. And just being a pioneer, just to think of like, how many lives that your firm has impacted, how many, how many marriages you’ve probably saved, how many families that you’ve kept together, you know, like, I’m being serious, like, you know, like, this is a profound impact on people’s lives. And just like, you know, like, if you have a bad night’s sleep, I mean, it totally impacts you,

Dr. Richard Coleman  12:24

right? Yeah, that’s right, yeah.

Damon Pistulka  12:25

Just think we there’s so many 24 hour things around us that we don’t even realize, from hospitals to grocery stores to fire departments, police stations, all these things, there’s so many around us. And not Not to mention, like, we know in manufacturing, because if you look like in a refinery setting or in a molding setting or something where the equipment, you know, is hard to turn to, you know, turn on and shut off, it’s it’s necessary.

Dr. Richard Coleman  12:52

Yeah, that’s right. Hey, Damon, we

Curt Anderson  12:55

got a shout out from our buddy frank here.

Damon Pistulka  12:57

Frank’s in here. Frank is my pleasure, Richard, at the beginning of my career, and an honor to be the current managing partner at Coleman Consulting Group. Thanks for stopping by Frank and we we it was fun when it was here last time.

Curt Anderson  13:12

God bless you Frank, and thank you for serving our country, and what a great time we had with Frank. So hope you are doing amazing well. So Doctor Coleman, let’s keep the party rolling. So I’m going to dive into and I’m going to pull up a few things for folks to take a peek at. You know, what are the most common reasons companies call you for help? Like, is there an aha moment? Or, like, is there a benchmark when do people finally throw into town say, hey, we need some professional help.

Dr. Richard Coleman  13:36

What could you maybe? Can you turn on the slides here?

Curt Anderson  13:39

Yep, let’s grab them here, and bear me one second. And let’s go here. How does that look?

Dr. Richard Coleman  13:45

Yeah, that’s good. This is this first slide that shows you some of the companies that we work with. So you can see it’s a wide range of industries. And though there’s a wide range of industries, the problems they have. If we drop down two slides, please, you’re right there. You can read this. This is what we call the list of the hidden costs of poorly designed schedules. So we get called in for a lot of reasons. It could be reduced productivity, capital utilization is too low lately. A lot of reasons we get called in for a turnover so people are leaving now, when someone turns over, it’s a cost to it. Not only is the cost for hiring someone, but while that person is gone, you’re using overtime also the new people who you recruit. Let’s say they put them on the back shift. They’re not as experienced, so they might not realize when there’s a problem, so the lines go down more often. So it’s been estimated that for each turnover for an employee, let’s say an employee cost you $80,000 a year with benefits. It costs about $40,000 in cost for each turnover. So what we do when we go work with companies is we take this list here and we try to turn all these issues into dollars. And if there’s enough dollars.

Curt Anderson  25:00

That type of thing. What do you what did you see a common denominator on the organizations that really created the best win? Wins? Was it just over the top healthy communication? Where did you see, like the culture that really won, the

Dr. Richard Coleman  25:16

cultures that really win, or where they have a lot of employee involvement to start with? So for example, Procter and Gamble, they have the shift workers are working directly with us on the projects. They’re looking at all the options. They’re looking at the business needs. Sometimes in the unions, like the steel workers, they realize that they really needed to be more productive and lower cost. So Right? They’d share with us, share with them, the business analysis. They’d see how this schedule is going to save money. And if you save money, that’s more union jobs. So basically, it’s the companies that have the employees or the union involved. Right from the beginning, I’m looking at the business needs. That’s better than when the employees are sort of blinded from the business needs and they just show up. So why are you guys changing schedules? So you really want to communicate what you’re doing, and companies that do that routinely, they find these projects not as hard to do.

Curt Anderson  26:05

So what I’m hearing is so obviously trust, right? So if there’s, if there’s challenge with trust going into the conversation where, you know, workers are little, you know, concerned about trust, with leadership and that type of thing, did you see that when companies had, like, real, solid foundation of trust going in, that that was a better that created a better environment or a better win for you? Yeah,

Dr. Richard Coleman  26:28

it’s a much higher chance of actually implementing a change. If I go into a some of the auto plants, like the UAW, their contracts are so fixed in detail, and they’re so advantageous to the employees that they almost don’t want to change anything. They just like the benefits they have. And any kind of schedule change, it seems a threat. And if you start out your meeting, if you’re working with the same people who negotiate the contract, say from management and the union, it’s very hard to get a change, because they’re just into negotiating right from the beginning. So what you want to try to do is work directly with employees as much as you can.

Curt Anderson  27:06

Got it, okay, excellent, boy. This was a master class I pre and, you know, and this can stem down to even, you know, small manufacturers that could be a small retailer, you know, just really, just that communication, building that trust, and just really trying to create in and bringing employees in for ownership to explain to them, like, hey, these this is why we’re doing this. We’re not doing it just to disrupt your life or, you know, we’re trying to create a more productive, more efficient How can we as a team be more competitive? There

Dr. Richard Coleman  27:33

have been some tough situations where, in the rumor busted meetings, I tell them, Look, we’re either going to change scales and lower costs are the plants moving to Mexico, it’s going to be so you have a choice. You can sit there and just fight the whole program and just not implement anything, or implement the best choice among this bad situation. So it’s really important to be brutally honest when you’re meeting with the

Damon Pistulka  27:58

employees, yeah, yeah, we got a lot of comments here. Curt, let’s do this. So Frank dropped a comment here. It says, if you change schedules the right way, there should be a positive effect on working capital. And we’re striving to match workforce to workload to the goal of less overtime, less idle time, and more operating efficiency. The key is making the right changes for your business. And so he’s and asking the person that asked the previous question about connecting and and talk about that. But yeah, it is that real combination. And then we got Leslie stopped with another comment. She said, when everyone is involved in the change, there’s less resistance. That’s what you said, Doctor Coleman, when those employees, like a Proctor and Galilee said, are when they’re involved, right away, it works. And then when we talk with our Leslie has another comment, when we talk with our teams, versus at our teams, there will be less resistant to change, resistance to change. And what you said, though? Dr Coleman, I love your four step process with the employees, your myth buster meeting, the first one, right off the bat, because you’re just laying the thing, putting that to rest. This is what we’re here to do, and this is why we were doing it. So I think that’s a great way just to stop that rumor mill before it starts.

Dr. Richard Coleman  29:12

I was at one plant. I can’t remember who it was, but the supervisor introduced me, and he said, Dr Coleman’s just here to help you, to make you healthier. I said, I’m sorry, that’s not the truth. We’re here to cut over time and save costs. That’s what we’re brought in. And so, you know, they appreciate you being honest. That’s all that’s,

Curt Anderson  29:28

right? And, and Damon, he did save a lot of marriages. I think it’d be fascinating to see how many marriages doctor saved over his career, right? And same for Frank, just

Damon Pistulka  29:37

there’s, there’s so many, there’s so many detrimental, long term effects of people that work these schedules that that are way too many, you know, you see used to be, you’d see people sometimes working 712, hour shifts in a row, and it’s like, you just are, we are not made to do that.

Curt Anderson  29:52

That’s right, you know. And just think of like, and I’m being, I don’t Dr Coleman, I’m sure you know, you’ve seen this with, like, how many, how many kids you. Know, how many soccer games were parents able to attend, or dance recitals just because they could have a say, like Leslie and Frank are saying in the chat box, you know, because they they participated with these folks and these organizations were wise enough, if I can use that word, to bring in the Coleman Consulting Group to really figure those things out. Well,

Dr. Richard Coleman  30:17

some of our schedules are designed specifically. They have unlimited trading of days off without permission. Yeah, all you have to do is make sure you’re cross trained. Yeah, and the two you and you trade within the weeks with there’s no overtime. Yep, you don’t need to tell anyone you’re doing it.

Curt Anderson  30:31

Well, absolutely love it. So now, just to let folks know if they’re not already, just impressed like crazy. Dr Coleman wrote two books. Dr Coleman, could you please talk a little bit about your books? I know that’s not an easy task. We have the 24 hour business and wide awake at 3am just share a little bit about your two books. Yeah,

Dr. Richard Coleman  30:50

the wide awake at 3am by choice or by chance, was written around 1984 when I was the co director of the Stanford sleep clinic. So it had chapters on insomnia, chapters on hypersomnia, people who are excessively sleepy. Chapters on shift work, jet lag. So it’s a general book about sleep. And the book I wrote in 1995 the 24 hour business, was basically a book about shift work, scheduling, a lot of case examples. And it talked about those three circles, employee desires, business needs and health and safety. And there are a lot of examples in there how that worked. I even had the that slide I showed you earlier, the hidden costs of poorly designed schedules that was in that book from 1995

Curt Anderson  31:34

nice, excellent. So, so hey, go out and get those books there too, a couple of classics. What a great conversation here. So anybody out there at your business you’re looking to create a more flexible work schedule, Dr Coleman and his team, Frank are, of course, just wonderful assets to help you take things to the next level. Dr Coleman, I have two last questions for you before I know you’re super busy before we let you run. One question I love to ask as an entrepreneur now, you started in academia. Did you ever did you see yourself going into be becoming an entrepreneur? Not

Dr. Richard Coleman  32:04

really. I guess I knew. When I was I was basically involved in sleep research, starting in 1973 and anytime you mentioned to someone who were doing sleep research, they got very interested. So in the back of my mind, I said, Well, maybe someday there’ll be something here with jet lag or shift work. But I never really thought I would end up doing this. And I really got the company started with i i borrowed $5,000 from my dad, and I sent out some direct mail, and, boom, I got like five clients, and I got started 1984 so I didn’t know it was going to happen like that. I had no idea what

Curt Anderson  32:39

an inspiration and you’re in 40 you’re the 40 year accidental entrepreneur. Who, how about writing that book? Dr Coleman, right? Who thought, who saw that coming? So as an entrepreneur, leaving academia, going into entrepreneurship, say there’s a young Dr Coleman out there, a young entrepreneur. What would be the best business advice that you feel that you ever received or that you’d love to pass along? Well,

Dr. Richard Coleman  33:04

number one thing is, have an expertise in some fields. Doesn’t have to be a big field, but be an expert so you have credibility. Okay. The other thing is, I hired sales consultants, great sales trainers to teach me how to sell, and I also hired a great marketing people to teach me how to market, and after that, the next thing you got to do is hire a really good executive assistant to help you run your business so you can spend your time doing most important things. So those are the lessons I learned. Get help know what you’re not good at, but get experts to tell you what

Curt Anderson  33:39

to do. Well, no brilliant advice. Drop the mic right there, and that’s awesome. Big shout out to Rebecca, because I know Rebecca got this meeting set up today. Yeah, can we give a shout out? And thanks to her and so all right. Dr Coleman, first off, I want to thank you for your your brilliant advice, just so admirable the work that you’ve done, or your 40 year entrepreneurial career before, I let you go, since you are a baseball fan, I have a baseball question for you. So I Are you ready? Are you sitting down for this one? Dr Coleman,

Dr. Richard Coleman  34:08

well, if it’s a curt baseball, I’m not really up to date, but if it’s an old question, I might be able to help you. It’s, it’s an old question. So

Curt Anderson  34:15

let’s, let’s go back. So your team, if you’re really maze, are you Giants fan?

Dr. Richard Coleman  34:20

Yes. Okay, so

Curt Anderson  34:21

let’s say the giants are playing the dreaded Dodgers. Okay, you with me? So it’s, uh, there you’re in San Francisco. It’s a bottom of the ninth. The giants are playing the Dodgers. Okay, there’s a guy on second base. There’s two outs, bottom of the ninth. Tie. Score, Ty, score. The manager the Giants looks down the bench and says, Hey, Coleman, grab your helmet, grab your bat, go up there, hit in the winning run. Okay, as you walk up to the plate to go hit in that winning run. What is your walk up song?

Dr. Richard Coleman  34:56

I don’t know. My walk off songs. I. I wish I had a, wasn’t it giant songs like, Go, baby, go or something like that. Hey, that’s

Curt Anderson  35:06

a perfect, yeah, right. So that was, that’s a great answer. So, and maybe, if a if, since you’re such a sound sleeper, but if you wake up and you have another wake up song, you drop Damon myself an email wake up song. So thank you for playing along. Hey, how about we’re going to wind down, and any last words of wisdom, any partying shots that you want to share with us? Dr Coleman, as we close out today. No,

Dr. Richard Coleman  35:28

I just want to say, I want to thank you guys for having me. And the only thing I would say is, one of the advantages of having a shift consulting firm to help you change your schedules is we’ve dealt with 1000s of shift workers and 1000s of schedules. So a lot of companies, they sort of focus on the answer first, and that can get you into trouble. So you’re better off building a schedule and letting the employees choose from a variety of them,

Curt Anderson  35:51

right? And take a page out of Dr Coleman’s book, let the experts do their expertise, and your business is going to be that much better. So connect with Dr Coleman on LinkedIn and his team at the Coleman Consulting Group, check out their website. And Damon, hey, how about a big round of applause for Dr Coleman for just absolutely crushing it today. Thank you. Thank you expertise. So guys, we want to close out and just wish you an amazing weekend and just Damon, as I love to say, just go out and be someone’s inspiration, just like Dr Coleman. Damon, take it away, my friend. All

Damon Pistulka  36:23

right. Well, thanks everyone for being here today. Thanks Dr Coleman for dropping all that knowledge on shift schedules, the research you’ve done how it can help the companies. Also want to thank Leslie and Frank and who else we got in here. Suzanne for dropping those comments in here today, and we want to thank all you that were listening but didn’t drop the comments. We know you’re there. We appreciate you. We want to let you know that every single week we are happy that you’re here. If you got in late and didn’t hear it from the beginning, go back to the beginning and start over and listen to Dr Coleman, because if you are wondering how you can change your shift schedules. Learn more about that and how to create a better workplace. You’re going to want to listen to this. Thanks everyone. We will be back again next week. We’re being going off the air for now. Have a great weekend. Thank you. Bye.