How to turn a spoken shift handover into a written note with AI

At 6.40 the man who has been here all night is putting his coat on while he tells you what happened.

He talks for about 90 seconds. Line 3 ran clean and the order is finished and stacked in despatch. The filler on Line 2 kept dropping pressure, Mick had a look at half one and thinks it is the seal again, though he would not swear to it. Tank 4 was reading low at 3, he topped it up, second time this week. The compressor tripped at quarter past 5 and reset fine. Dawn has rung in. The agency lad was alright.

Then he drives home, and you carry it in your head until the 9 o’clock shop floor stand up, but by that time the bit about Tank 4 has gone.

That 90 seconds rant is worth more than the brief handwritten entry in the shift handover book, because the written shift report is the version somebody had time to write down at the end of a long night. It is also the only one you have no copy of.

Many operations have tried to fix this with a form. The form gets filled in by somebody who wants to go home, so it says “no issues” or “as per log”, and the useful part leaves the site with that person.

What has changed is that the speaking no longer has to become writing. A phone will record 90 seconds. A transcription tool turns it into text in about 15 seconds, free. A general-purpose AI tool turns that text into the written handover, keeping what was said and adding nothing.

Seen working

I recorded a night supervisor’s handover the way it actually sounds, hesitations and all, and gave it to Claude with one instruction: turn this into the written note the day supervisor needs, keep everything, add nothing.

It came back in under 20 seconds. All 7 items were there. Line 2, the filler, Tank 4, the compressor, the agency lad, Dawn, the lot.

Claude kept the part I expected it to lose. “He reckons it’s the seal again but he’s not certain” came back as “his view is that it is the seal again, though he is not certain.” The hedge survived, and the hedge is most of what a handover is worth.

What it could not do is rank. Tank 4 losing level twice in a week sits in the middle of the note, between a compressor that reset itself and a vending machine that owes people £4. Every supervisor on that site would put Tank 4 first and could tell you why in one sentence. The tool cannot, because nobody has ever written down that a tank losing level twice in a week is how the last leak started.

It has been told what happened. It has not been told what matters. The second thing is in 3 people’s heads.

Two things worth knowing

1. Copilot will now answer questions about the photographs in a SharePoint library, not just the documents

Microsoft’s SharePoint release notes on 2 September added the ability to ask questions about images across a whole document library instead of opening them one at a time. It needs a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence. The same release makes a saved prompt reusable across every site rather than one.

2. A Redditch presswork firm was fined £40,000 for a Saturday job that nobody planned

On 24 June 2024 a 500kg pillar drill was being moved by forklift at The Micro Spring and Presswork Company. It became unstable and fell on a 36-year-old worker, who fractured multiple ribs. HSE found the company “failed to ensure the lifting operation was properly planned by a competent person, appropriately supervised and carried out in a safe manner”. Fined £40,000 plus £5,032 costs on 26 August. Full release.

One thing to try this fortnight

Tomorrow morning, before the outgoing supervisor gets his coat, ask if you can record him.

Say why, plainly, because he will assume the worst otherwise. Something like: “I want to see whether the stuff you tell me actually makes it into the note. It’s the note I’m checking, not you.” Most people say yes to that.

Open one of the following apps you already have on your phone: ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or Gemini with this: “Turn this spoken shift handover into the written handover note the day supervisor needs. Keep everything. Do not add anything that was not said.” Hit the recording button in the chat window. Once your man has finished talking press send and wait.

Put what comes back next to the handover note your team actually wrote that morning.

Ten minutes, and the comparison is the point. You get 2 answers. How much was said that never made the written note, and whether the things that did make it were the ones that mattered.

Then ask you app one more question, and this is the one I would not skip: “Which of these items would an experienced supervisor on this site put first, and what would you need to know about us to decide? Do not guess.”

The “do not guess” is doing the work. Without it you get invented answers. With it you get a short list of questions, and that list is the things your operation knows about itself and has never written down anywhere.

Final thought

Copilot is probably already in your Microsoft licence. Transcription is free. The 90 seconds costs nothing and it belongs to your business rather than to whoever happened to be on nights.

If you want to put a number on the hours that go into work like this, the writing up, the chasing, the asking the same person a second time, I run a free 20-minute Hidden Headcount Call. We work out roughly what it adds up to in people. No pitch, no deck. Reply and I will send you a time.

Getting what one person knows into a form the next shift can use is the problem I am building SOPwise around, which is the same 90 seconds approached from the other end.