Overtime & Time KPIs
Monitor overtime trends and control labor cost across departments, sites, and shifts in real time.
Quick answer
- What is a healthy overtime rate?
- It depends on the industry and the staffing model. Continuous-coverage operations such as healthcare and manufacturing often run 5 to 10 percent, while office environments run near zero. The useful signal is the trend and the concentration, not the absolute number.
- Why track overtime concentration?
- When a small group absorbs most of the overtime, the risk is burnout and turnover in exactly the people who are hardest to replace. Concentration is often a better early warning than the aggregate rate.
Why this reporting is hard
Overtime is usually managed after it has already been paid. By the time it appears in a payroll summary the shift is gone, the cost is fixed, and the only remaining option is to explain the variance.
This page covers the overtime control pack: leading indicators that show where overtime is building, who is absorbing it, and what it is costing against budget.
Reports in this pack
- Overtime rate by unitOvertime hours as a share of total hours by location, department, shift, and supervisor, trended weekly.
- Top overtime earnersEmployees with the highest overtime hours and dollars, with tenure, role, and department context.
- Overtime cost vs. budgetOvertime dollars against the cost center budget, with run rate and projected period end.
- Pattern detectionRecurring overtime by day of week and shift, and overtime concentrated around absences or open roles.
- Coverage and open shift impactOvertime traced to unfilled shifts, callouts, and vacancies rather than volume.
- Premium and double-time exposureHours crossing double-time and premium thresholds, with the rule that triggered them.
Metrics tracked
- ✓Overtime percentage of total hours
- ✓Overtime dollars per FTE and per department
- ✓Share of overtime concentrated in the top 10 percent of employees
- ✓Overtime attributable to vacancies vs. demand
- ✓Projected period-end overtime spend
- ✓Week-over-week change by supervisor
How Praisidio builds it
- Combine time, schedule, payroll, and position data so overtime can be explained, not just counted.
- Set thresholds per location so a rate that is normal in one site still flags in another.
- Deliver a Monday morning view to operations leaders while the week can still be changed.
- Track the cause code on every spike so the fix is staffing, scheduling, or demand - not a memo.
Every report reads from your existing systems - payroll, HRIS, time, benefits, and finance - so there is no data warehouse project and no spreadsheet export step. Reports are scheduled, delivered, and versioned, and every number can be traced back to the source record.
Frequently asked questions
What is a healthy overtime rate?
It depends on the industry and the staffing model. Continuous-coverage operations such as healthcare and manufacturing often run 5 to 10 percent, while office environments run near zero. The useful signal is the trend and the concentration, not the absolute number.
Why track overtime concentration?
When a small group absorbs most of the overtime, the risk is burnout and turnover in exactly the people who are hardest to replace. Concentration is often a better early warning than the aggregate rate.
Can overtime be forecast before the pay period ends?
Yes. With hours to date, the schedule for the remaining days, and the applicable pay rules, the projected period-end overtime is a straightforward calculation and it gives leaders a few days to act.
See Overtime & Time KPIs live
We will build this reporting pack against your own data on the call, so you can see the real numbers instead of a sample.
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