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<br />16 CITY OF LAKE ELMO, MN <br /> <br />Recommendation 3: Modify the Department’s summer hours to increase efficiency <br /> <br />During the winter months, the Department’s Operators work a standard eight-hour day (Monday to Friday). In the <br />non-winter months, Operators work four nine-hour days (Monday to Thursday) and a four-hour day on Friday <br />morning. This “summer schedule” is considered a win-win proposition. The Operators appreciate the early start to <br />the weekend, and management believes that they are significantly more productive under this scheme, thanks to the <br />longer uninterrupted hours of work in the afternoons of the nine-hour days. This alternative summer schedule <br />improves productivity by minimizing the inevitable inefficiency that occurs during the startup and cleanups as crews <br />transition from lunches and breaks. It extends the time spent working uninterrupted in the afternoons. <br /> <br />A side effect of the summer hours is the desire among Operators to take Fridays off. Currently, by using just four <br />hours of their accrued PTO, Operators can get a full three-day weekend. Given the low PTO cost to Operators, <br />Fridays are always minimally staffed. <br /> <br />Management has noted increased productivity that comes from workdays that are longer than eight hours and has <br />been considering extending the current summer hours of “four nines and a four” to the winter months in addition to <br />adopting the “four 10s” schedule in the summer. This report remains neutral as to whether “four nines and a four” <br />is appropriate during the winter. The increased productivity gained by “four nines and a four” is not questioned. The <br />issue is that the reduced hours scheduled for Fridays may require some amount of overtime if roads must be plowed <br />on a Friday. Other potential downsides include spending longer hours outside in the Minnesota winter and the lack <br />of available daylight, which can pose a safety hazard. Nonetheless, the benefits of longer hours, even in the winter, <br />may be worth the cost, but this should be evaluated by the Department. There may also be compromise strategies in <br />which “summer hours” are extended longer than they have been historically (e.g., summer hours could be in place <br />from March 15 to December 1). We believe these sorts of details are best sorted out by the Department. <br /> <br />Raftelis does propose dividing the Operators into two groups to address these staffing challenges during the summer <br />months. Crew A would work Monday through Thursday, while Crew B would work Tuesday through Friday. This <br />arrangement ensures that each crew has three consecutive days off while maintaining a four-day work schedule of <br />10-hour shifts. The summer schedule theoretically allows every Operator to enjoy a three-day weekend. <br /> <br />We recommend this change based on the fact that under the current summer schedule, Mondays to Thursdays are <br />considered productive field workdays, while Fridays address more housekeeping-type activities. Changing the <br />schedule to ensure everyone gets a three-day weekend (except for the individual on-call) may improve productivity, <br />reduce the total demand for PTO during the summer and help spread PTO requests throughout the rest of the year. <br />The longer 10-hour days should lead both to greater efficiency and to improved workplace morale. See Figure 12 for <br />a depiction of the structure of Crew A and Crew B. <br /> <br />Recommendation 4: Increase staffing by two Operators and one Lead Operator <br /> <br />Over the past six years, workloads have increased significantly, but no additional Operators have been hired since <br />2019. The number of sewer customer accounts has grown from fewer than 30 in 2013 to over 2,500 by 2023. The <br />number of water customer accounts has grown by over 330% between 2013 and 2023. In contrast, the number of <br />Operators has grown from four to nine. Given the growing workload demands, the Department has adopted <br />efficiency strategies to free up the workforce. One example is replacing water meters that use Automatic Meter <br />Reading (AMR) technology with those that use Automatic Meter Infrastructure (AMI) technology, which no longer <br />requires Operators to drive around the City to obtain meter reads. A second example is more intense screening of <br />utility locate requests, in which a desktop determination is now made as to whether the proposed activity actually