Community Impact Printing

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Community Impact Printing Protects Throughput and Reduces Overtime with an On-Demand Labor Pool

Community Impact Printing serves as the primary print partner for Community Impact newspaper while also producing high-volume impressions for outside customers. In a print operation built around expensive equipment and tightly sequenced production schedules, keeping presses productive depends on having the right people available when the work is ready to run.

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The schedule may be established in advance, but the workload and available workforce are not always as predictable. Page counts change, last-minute orders arrive, and employees call out, which means a production plan that looked properly resourced can develop a gap with very little warning.

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“Orders are coming in last minute, and every now and then we have our schedules already preset. We believe that we have the right amount of resources, but anything can happen. A call in, last minute someone got sick...”

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Historically, Community Impact had limited options when those gaps appeared. If second shift was short, a first-shift employee might be asked to stay, creating overtime and extending an already completed shift. The alternative was allowing the resource shortage to affect throughput and potentially the commitments made to customers.

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Community Impact needed a way to respond to what was actually happening on the floor without permanently expanding headcount around every possible call-out or production spike.

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Reducing Overtime Without Compromising the Press Schedule

Community Impact began using Veryable to build an on-demand Labor Pool around its core workforce. Instead of relying on overtime whenever production requirements exceeded available labor, the facility gained another source of capacity that could be brought in when absenteeism or volume created a gap.

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“So it has been a tremendous experience. It saves overtime, because typically, I run the second shift, so what we do is we'd ask somebody from first shift to stay over, and that's overtime. And definitely, the people that I can call on short notice are, you know, a gigantic help for that.”

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The impact is especially important in an equipment-dependent operation. Press capacity has little value if the people required to operate and support that equipment are unavailable, so closing labor gaps quickly helps Community Impact protect both machine utilization and the production schedule.

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The company has reported a reduction in overtime as a result of being able to add Operators when absenteeism or higher volume would otherwise force the core team to absorb the work through longer shifts.

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Giving the Floor Control Over Daily Labor Needs

As the Labor Pool developed, Community Impact moved day-to-day labor decisions closer to production. Leads on the floor already understand the upcoming schedule, page counts, and workload, so they are in the best position to identify when additional help will actually be required.

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“My guys that are out there, they look at their schedule, they see what page counts they have, they know when they're gonna need extra folks in to help them out. And that allows them to go on there and say, hey, I need a couple of people on this day. I don't need nobody on this day, but I need someone else on this day. So they have that flexibility to pull people in as they need.”

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Rather than planning labor around a fixed weekly assumption, the team can adjust coverage around the work that is actually scheduled to hit the floor. Management does not need to be involved in selecting every Operator because the leads are working from an established Labor Pool of people whose skills and previous performance are already known.

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That combination of frontline visibility and an available bench also makes the operation more responsive when conditions change unexpectedly. Community Impact has had instances where an employee had not arrived by 3:30 and a returning Operator was able to be contacted and arrive within 10 minutes.

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Building a Labor Pool That Gets Stronger Over Time

The Labor Pool is valuable not simply because people are available, but because many of those Operators return to Community Impact repeatedly and become familiar with the operation.

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Instead of starting over with paperwork, instruction, and basic orientation every time additional help is required, the company can bring back people who already know the facility, the crew, and the work.

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“They've been here many times before. that's so awesome. I don't have to be like, okay, let's go do the paperwork, let's show you what to do, like, that saves so much time to not have to do that, and that has been nice. And I've got two out there right now who have been with me for a year or more that are integral parts of my team, a couple of my absolute rockstars, so I love them.”

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Some Operators have worked with Community Impact for more than a year and have become integral parts of daily production. That familiarity reduces ramp time and gives the leads a dependable group of people they can bring back when the schedule requires additional capacity.

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For Community Impact, this is what separates the model from simply finding a new person every time a gap appears. The Labor Pool becomes a bench of returning Operators who can step into the operation with less disruption each time they come back.

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Protecting Throughput and Customer Lead Times

Ultimately, Community Impact’s labor strategy is designed around protecting production. The company needs to maximize equipment utilization while ensuring that enough qualified people are available to keep work moving through the facility.

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When a call-out or volume spike creates a gap, access to additional Operators gives Community Impact a way to resolve the labor problem before it becomes a customer problem.

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“The moment that you see yourself in a situation where you need to quickly turn around resources, labor, because there are needs to fulfill, And having the ability to do that with a platform and a company like Veryable, you know, it just makes us more competitive in any market. We don't have to move product around. We don't have to extend lead times to our customers because we don't have resources to be able to fulfill the work that we have in front of us. We can easily just depend on Veryable and say, hey, we need resources.”

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That capability helps the company keep scheduled work in-house, avoid extending lead times because of temporary resource shortages, and continue getting products to customers on time. Instead of allowing labor availability to dictate what the operation can produce, Community Impact can adjust labor around the production already in front of it.

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Creating Flexibility for New Production Needs

The same Labor Pool also gives Community Impact more room to test production requirements that may not yet justify another full-time hire. When the team wants to try a different way of running work or evaluate whether an additional role will be needed long term, it can bring in an Operator and evaluate the requirement under actual production conditions.

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“You can also try different things. Like if you wanna experiment with try running something a little different. I mean, you can always pull in somebody from Veryable and then at least it gives you a chance to try it out. It gives you that flexibility without having to hire a full time person and we've we've done that here before too to where we've hired a full time guy and then the job didn't really kinda work out like it was supposed to. At least with the Veryable, they could see what they're getting, and then so can we. You know, that's what I like about it.”

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That gives Community Impact the flexibility to learn from actual production demand before adding permanent cost, while still giving the operation the resources required to test a new approach properly.

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What Changed

By building an established Labor Pool through Veryable, Community Impact moved away from relying on overtime and static labor plans whenever real production conditions deviated from the schedule.

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The result is an operation that can respond to variability without allowing temporary labor gaps to compromise throughput or customer service:

• Reduces overtime by filling gaps that previously required first-shift employees to stay and support second shift
• Responds to unexpected absences quickly, including instances where returning Operators have arrived within 10 minutes
• Keeps presses productive by adding labor when absenteeism or volume creates a resource gap
• Gives frontline leads control to adjust labor around actual schedules and page counts
• Brings back experienced Operators who already know the facility and require less repetitive onboarding
• Protects customer lead times by maintaining the resources required to complete scheduled production
• Creates flexibility to test new production needs before committing to additional full-time headcount

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Community Impact now has a labor model that works with the realities of print production rather than assuming the original schedule will hold perfectly. With a bench of returning Operators available as conditions change, the company can protect equipment utilization, reduce overtime pressure, and keep customer commitments on track.