Field notes › Running the business
The five numbers worth looking at every Monday
Most operations dashboards suffer the same fate. Built with enthusiasm, checked daily for a fortnight, then ignored, because looking at them never led to doing anything differently.
A number is only worth a place on the wall if there is an action attached to it moving. Here are five that pass that test in a labour hire office, and what each one is telling you.
1. Unfilled shifts in the next seven days
The most direct measure of this week's pain. Not next month, which is a planning problem, but the shifts that need a body soon.
What to do when it moves: if the number is rising, the question is why. No qualified people, or qualified people not putting their hand up? Those need different responses. The first is a training or recruiting problem, the second is usually a communication one, and publishing the shift to the crew instead of ringing individuals fixes more of it than people expect.
2. Certificates expiring in the next 60 days
The best leading indicator in the business, because it is the only one that reliably tells you about a problem before it exists.
What to do when it moves: group the expiries by ticket type rather than by person, book renewals in batches, and put the training days into the roster as unavailability before the client asks for those weeks. Mustr surfaces this list with one-click reminders to the worker, which is the whole point of tracking expiry as a date rather than an image.
3. Workers whose availability has run out
Not workers who are unavailable, which is fine, but workers whose availability calendar is empty because nobody has updated it. These people look unavailable to your roster and are frequently sitting at home waiting for a call.
What to do when it moves: a reminder, and if the same names keep appearing, a conversation. A worker who never updates availability either does not know how, or has half left and not told you. Both are worth knowing.
4. Requests waiting on the office
Client requests that have arrived and not been actioned. This is the number that decides how you are perceived by the people paying the invoices.
What to do when it moves: nothing complicated. Clear it. The reason to have the number on the wall is that a request queue is invisible until someone is annoyed, and by then the cost has already been paid. A queue split into needs action and recently handled makes the distinction obvious at a glance, and confirms that the morning's work actually happened.
5. Blocked bookings this week
The one people find surprising. Every time the system refused to book someone, because a ticket was missing or expired or an induction had lapsed.
You might read a rising number as a problem. It is closer to the opposite: those are incidents that did not happen. What matters is the pattern. If the same ticket blocks bookings repeatedly, your bench does not match the work you are winning. If the same worker blocks repeatedly, somebody needs to chase their paperwork. If blocks cluster at one site, its requirements may have changed without anyone telling you.
A block is a piece of information delivered at the cheapest possible moment. Treating it as noise wastes the most useful signal you have.
What not to put on the wall
Total headcount, which changes slowly and prompts nothing. Shifts filled this month, which feels like achievement and cannot be acted on. Anything you cannot influence by Wednesday.
The test for every number is the same: if this moved by 20 percent, would somebody in this office do something different today? If not, take it off. A short dashboard that gets used beats a complete one that does not.
Make it a fifteen minute habit
Monday morning, five numbers, one action each where the number moved, and a note of what you decided. That is the whole ritual. It works because it is short enough that it survives a busy week, which is the only week it actually matters in.
The running the office guide shows the dashboard these come from, and proof of compliance covers what the blocked-booking record is worth when a client asks.