Keep the Talent, Lose the Dead Weight: How I Cut 15 Points of Labor Cost

The number I think about most isn't the one on anybody's paycheck. It's the percentage that labor eats out of revenue. We took 15 points off that number at OTG, and the strategy wasn't complicated. It came down to the basics: scheduling, accountability, and getting people to think like a team.

The most effective tool turned out to be the schedule itself. We went granular. No early ins without a reason, no late outs without approval, and no unapproved overtime. That meant people had to switch up their in-and-out times and their days off, and at first that's a tough sell. But once the team understood this wasn't about squeezing them — it was about keeping everyone working — the buy-in came. I had to stand in front of them and explain it plainly: shrinking the payroll waste is how we keep hours stable and avoid cutting anyone. Once they saw it as protection instead of punishment, most of the pushback disappeared.

It's not really about managing time on a spreadsheet, though. It's about getting everyone to think like a team. That shift in mindset is the whole thing. Once people understood that a small adjustment on their part protected everyone else's hours, the changes stopped feeling like something being done to them and started feeling like something they were doing for each other.

There's a second half to this, and it's less comfortable. You have to make sure you're not carrying dead weight. Every team has people who are only in it for themselves, and a team-first schedule is the fastest way to find out who they are. When they see you're not going to bend the whole operation around what they want, most of them show themselves the door. They can't thrive in a place where teamwork isn't optional, so they leave on their own.

That's the part nobody tells you about cutting labor cost the right way. Done wrong — slashing hours across the board, cutting bodies — you lose your best people and break the trust of the ones who stay. Done right, the number comes down and the team gets stronger, because the people who wanted to be part of something stuck around, and the ones who didn't sorted themselves out. Keep the talent. Lose the dead weight. The schedule does more of that work than you'd think.