A talk with my plumber sub changed how I handle crew scheduling

We were finishing a strip mall job in Springfield, and my main plumbing guy, Mike, asked if we could start an hour later on Mondays. He said, 'My whole crew is fried from weekend side jobs, and that first hour is just coffee and mistakes.' I'd always pushed for 7 AM sharp starts, thinking it showed discipline. But after three weeks of the later start, our Monday rework rate dropped by almost half. Has anyone else tweaked their schedule based on crew feedback and seen real results?

3 comments

3 Comments

black.val14d ago

Yeah @hollyn70, it shows how dumb some of our old rules really are lol.

hollyn7017d ago

Wait, the rework rate dropped by half just from starting an hour later? That's a huge change from one small tweak. Makes you wonder how many other little rules we stick to just because.

oscar_ellis17d ago

It's wild how many bosses treat start times like some sacred rule. We had a similar thing with cleanup time. My guys kept rushing the last fifteen minutes to get out the door, leaving tools out and forgetting to log parts. Pushing quitting time back by twenty minutes actually got us out faster because the final sweep became organized instead of panicked. Sometimes the rule itself is what's causing the problem.