What does overtime really buy?
You pay time-and-a-half. Fatigue takes some of it back. See how much of your overtime turns into finished work, and how much becomes the fatigue tax.
The true cost of overtime is more than the extra hours. You pay a premium (typically 1.5 times base), output per hour drops as fatigue builds across consecutive long days, and the errors it causes add rework. Add the premium, the lost productivity, and the rework and the real cost of sustained overtime often reaches 2 to 2.5 times the base rate.
Your numbers
The efficiency curve is a standard construction overtime productivity-loss model: output per hour falls as daily overtime rises and long days stack up. Your hours and rate drive the dollars; the curve estimates how much of it comes back as work.
Overtime ROI
PODMost of your overtime dollars still turn into real output
An estimate is a start. Your real numbers are better.
This tool models the fatigue curve. POD reads the daily reports and hours your team already produces and tracks overtime, productivity, and the rework that follows it on every project, from your actual data instead of a general curve.
The premium
Overtime typically pays time-and-a-half, so every OT hour costs 50% more than a straight-time hour before any productivity loss.
The fatigue curve
Output per hour drops as daily overtime rises and consecutive long days stack up. By the end of a long stretch, a real share of each hour is lost.
The return
What is left, the share of overtime that becomes finished work, is your real return. Short and occasional keeps it high; long and sustained erodes it.
We won't invent numbers you didn't give us.
Track overtime on your own project.
POD turns the reports you already produce into live labor and overtime metrics. As complete as your data, and it shows you what to add.
Last updated: July 2026