NYC Metropolitan Transit Authority
Reducing Absenteeism to Save $45M Annually at NYCT
Executive Summary
In response to a post-COVID surge in employee absenteeism costing NYCT over $45 million annually, Rios Partners partnered with the agency to diagnose root causes and implement targeted cost-saving strategies. Through data-driven analysis, policy redesign, and executive dashboards, Rios helped NYCT set actionable availability targets, streamline disciplinary processes, and pilot employee engagement programs. These efforts positioned NYCT to reclaim lost productivity and reduce overtime costs—unlocking millions in potential savings.
Background
Since COVID, employee availability has declined within NYCT operations by 10 days on average. This 10-day loss costs NYCT $45M annually primarily due to overtime costs incurred by having to pay other employees to work extra to cover the missed work when colleagues are unavailable. Rios was brought in to implement costs savings associated with reducing employee absenteeism; the team assessed the root causes of employee absenteeism, recommended opportunities for improved availability, provided project governance and management materials to enable ongoing MTA availability initiatives, developed availability analysis tools to diagnose and track availability performance, benchmarked NYCT with related organizations, and developed updated business processes to the operating model to reduce absenteeism.
Our Approach
The Rios team implemented cost savings for NYCT by analyzing results of current policies and procedures, the redesigning and implementing improved policies and procedures to reduce costs associated with employee behavior across three workstreams:
Availability Targets: The Rios team interviewed each NYCT executive to understand their thought process and key principles for approaching targets and synthesized these into key themes. After aligning on the themes, the team developed a logarithmic model that took 2023 baseline availability metrics and applied multipliers to the three controllable absence KPIs (Workers Comp, Sick Paid, and Sick Unpaid absences) to set targets for each for the year to come and then calculated the total availability goal based on these sub-targets. These targets were then integrated into the MTA Strategic Initiative team’s Availability Dashboard for visibility purposes. The Rios team also developed an awareness campaign that can be implemented by MTA to educate management teams on their targets and how to utilize them for maximum impact in the year to come. Reaching the set target goals would provide >$45M in cost savings for MTA as a result of reduced workers’ comp and sick absences leading to a reduction in required overtime
To support attainment of cost savings, Rios separately provided support in:
- The design of pilot programs to improve employee satisfaction and availability
- Internal process improvement of performance management and labor management practices to maximize labor cost control
- Development of PowerBI dashboards to provide executive reporting on key internal business performance indicators and relevant cost implications
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Solutions and Outputs
All efforts were in support of realizing $45M in cost savings through improved policies and procedures:
Business Intelligence & Data Analytics
- Developed Availability Dashboards, using PowerBI, to aggregate complex and disparate data sources on the single platform, to allow for program tracking and monitoring enabling stakeholders to incorporate business intelligence capabilities in strategy execution and visualize employee availability in real-time
- Used excel to analyze >4,000 active and recently closed time and attendance discipline cases as well as the attendance records of >30,000 employees across the entire NYCT. Then used this data to create an executive level PowerBI dashboard that tracked the progress of all Time & Attendance violations from start to finish to show movement and aging to judge the health and efficiency of the disciplinary process.
Spending Pattern & Cost-Savings Analysis
- Quantitative analysis showing trends for chronically absent employees, including population size, the impact of disciplinary process bottlenecks to availability, potential days back from disciplinary interventions, and the correlation of sick absence utilization with tenure
- Identified and recommended NYCT renegotiate employment contracts for some chronically absent employees; with the client’s approval, we facilitated settlement offers for +100 employees leading to cost avoidance of $300k due to improved employee availability
- Identified opportunities to optimize the Chronic Absence discipline process, then redesigned the process to save +10 days in processing time by optimizing or removing manual steps
Implementation Support
- Identified the opportunity and supported implementation of additional disciplinary interventions, leading to cost savings of up to $400k due to improved availability among recipients
- Set targets set for >200 working teams, creating an opportunity for >$45M in realized cost savings if targets are met
Ready to unlock transformative savings?
Rios Partners helps public sector organizations like NYC MTA uncover millions in cost savings through data-driven workforce strategies. Let’s explore how we can elevate your spend visibility and efficiency.
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