Everyone wants to find free examples of shift schedules, especially with 10-hour shifts. The problem is you can't trust what you get. Here's one I found today. I won't say where I found it, because I don't want to embarass anyone. I'm merely showing it to you to illustrate a point about the risks of adopting a schedule example or template you found on the Internet.       When I first saw this schedule I thought, "Wow, they figured out a way to make a 10-hour shift schedule using a 4-on-3-off pattern. That's awesome!" But then I started looking closer at how it worked. Here are the things you'd have to live with: 1. Rotating shifts. Sometimes rotating shifts are necessary for various business reasons. I'm not saying rotating shifts are bad, but these rotate backwards from nights to evenings to days. That's bad. 2. Fixed days. This schedule has fixed days of work for each team. Some teams have to work every weekend while others have every weekend off. That's just not fair. All employees should be treated equally when it comes to the days of work. 3. Overlapping day. One day a week, all six teams are scheduled to work. That's not an efficient way to use your personnel. And will the organization using the schedule have adequate capacity for that many employees working at the same time? How about when the shifts overlap for 6 hours that day? This will increase the coverage by 4 times. So if the normal coverage is 3 people, you would have 12 people at work for that six hour period. Not only is it wasteful, but I doubt that many places could accommodate that. 4. Staffing requirements. With rotating 10-hour shifts, you could achieve the same coverage with 5 teams working an average of 42 hours a week. Let's say the teams were comprised of 3 people each. The 6-team schedule shown above would require 18 employees working 40 hours a week or 720 hours a week. A 5-team schedule would require 15 employees working 42 hours a week or 630 hours a week. When you account for the overtime in the 5-team schedule, the total hours of pay would be 645 hours / week. Even with low average wages of $8/hour, the free schedule example would cost $600 a week more than the other schedule. So you tell me, is this free schedule example really worth it? I know it's hard to believe, but there are organizations that will implement this schedule. And they'll brag about how great their new 10-hour schedule is. They haven't a clue what they're missing. I hope you aren't seduced by the lure of free schedule templates like this one.    

Did you know that your shift schedule actually determines how the organization will use its two key labor resources: employees and overtime? Many people don't. They think the schedule simply determines when employees come to work and when they get time off. That's why they focus on specific work patterns (e.g., 5-on-2-off or the DuPont rotating shift pattern) or shift lengths (e.g., 10-hour shifts) when searching for a new schedule. As a result, they end up with schedules that have attractive patterns or a preferred shift length, but make poor use of the resources. Here are two examples.   Example 1 A group works 24/7. It needs 2-person coverage for 16 hours and 1-person coverage for the remaining 8 hours when the work volumes are lightest. They have 7 employees working 8-hour rotating shifts. One of the employees spends a weekend searching for free schedule examples on the Internet. He comes up with a 12-hour rotating shift pattern that provides every other weekend off. This pattern is sometimes called a Panama schedule. The other employees think it would be great to get that many weekends off, and whole-heartedly support the change. The problem is that the pattern uses 4 crews. Because of the group's size, it would have 3 crews of 2 people each and 1 crew with just one person. The coverage would fluctuate between 1 and 2 people on each shift. Adopting this pattern would create a complete mismatch between the coverage and the workload.   Example 2 A police department with 18 officers needs 4-person coverage on a 24/7 basis. They are working an 8-hour fixed shift schedule that follows a 4-on-2-off pattern. Due to budget cuts, the department will be losing 2 officers. They decide to keep the current work pattern because the officers are familiar with it and seem to like it. The problem is that the pattern only works properly with 6 people per shift. Using that same pattern with only 5 people per shift will cause the coverage to fluctuate between 3 and 4 people. The worst part is that the reduced coverage occurs on Wednesday through Saturday (when workloads are the heaviest). Once again, the chosen schedule is not an effective use of the department's resources.   You increase the likelihood of an inappropriate, ineffective, or costly solution if you ignore the resources and business requirements during the schedule search. We recommend the following process to make optimal use of your labor resources:   Step 1 Compare the staff size with the coverage requirements. Our free staffing calculators can help:  http://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Staffing_Calculator. If the desired coverage can be achieved with the existing staff, you can proceed to the next step. Otherwise, determine whether adding overtime to the schedule will allow you to consistently achieve the coverage requirements. If you're still short, you'll either need to hire more staff or reduce the coverage.   Step 2 Compare different shift lengths with the coverage requirements to identify the best fit. Our free schedule evaluation can point you in the right direction: http://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Free_Schedule_Evaluation. If the workload is steady throughout the day, you could use either 8-hour or 12-hour shifts. Anything else will have overlapping shifts and will require extra resources. Using 10-hour shifts, for example, would result in 6 hours of overlap (and double coverage) every day of the week. Plus it would require 25% more staff. That would be wasteful. What if the workload varies by hour of the day? For instance, if it changes at 8 hour intervals, using 12-hour shifts probably would not be a good match. In situations with highly variable workloads (e.g., communication centers or airline security operations), you may need to adopt multiple shift lengths with staggered start times. These situations often require professional assistance.    Step 3 Find a work pattern that fits or can be adapted. In Example 1 above, the group's size (7 employees) does not match standard 4-crew patterns, so the schedule might have to be created from scratch. It might be possible to modify a standard 4-crew pattern, but this requires some experience in schedule design. In Example 2 above, the group's size (16 employees) would allow them to use any popular 4-crew pattern with 12-hour shifts. If they decide to stay on 8-hour fixed shifts, they would need to modify patterns that use 4 crews per shift.   Step 4 The last step of the process is to tweak the pattern to maximize the weekends off. At this point, it's important to take the overtime pay week into account. You don't want the changes to create unnecessary overtime or compromise the coverage. A professional schedule designer can help with this step.   Conclusion Shift schedules determine how you will utilize your labor resources. If you want to make optimal use of these resources, we recommend a 4-step process. Yes, choosing a shift length and work pattern are steps in the process, but they are not the best places to start. If you don't feel comfortable following this process and want the best possible schedule, contact us today.

Are you searching for software to manage your employee work schedule? Well, I just read an article that evaluated several free scheduling software programs. I think you might find it particularly interesting. Sorry, but I was asked to delete the link to this article. I'm not sure why, but you'll have to do your own search.    Remember, scheduling software programs won't create schedules for you. You have to have a pattern already in mind. Sure, there are free templates to use, but are they a good choice? Just because a pattern has the shift length and format (fixed vs. rotating shifts) you want doesn't mean it's a good approach for your group. You want a schedule that does three things: (1) optimizes coverage, (2) minimizes costs, and (3) maximizes employee satisfaction. You can read more here: https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Shift_Schedule_Design_for_Dummies.     

  Google searches for “Shift Schedule Templates,” will reveal page, after page, after page of software programs. Unfortunately, and to most people's surprise, these programs won't create schedules for you. You have to enter each employee's on-off work pattern into the program to make it work. Some scheduling programs offer free schedule templates, but these are generic 8-hour or 12-hour shift schedules, best suited for large companies with steady workloads. Smaller organizations with limited staff and/or uneven workloads can't always use the generic templates offered by the software vendors. If they do, they may have to employ extra, unnecessary staff or live with coverage that doesn't match the work volumes during different times of the day (or days of the week). A lot of companies do this without realizing there are better options. How would they ever know?   So, if you're looking for a new schedule, don't be fooled by these scheduling software programs. They're great for managing an existing schedule, but they won't create a new work pattern for you. And for the few programs that actually offer templates, please beware of the following:   1.     There aren't any templates for companies that operate less than 24/7.   2.     If your staff size is not an exact multiple of 4 (e.g., 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, etc.), the template will not produce consistent coverage. That's because most of them use 4 crews.   3.     If your workload and coverage requirements vary by time of day or by day of the week, the template will not address this. These schedules have the same coverage at all times.   4.     If your pay week (for overtime calculation purposes) is different than the template's, the schedule might produce highly uneven work hours (e.g., 60 hours one week and 24 hours the next), or it might compromise weekends off for employees.      

Most 24/7 schedules use shift lengths that divide evenly into 24 hours, such as 8, 12 or 24-hour shifts. 10-hour shifts are rarely used because you are really covering 30 hours a day (three 10-hour shifts) which requires at least 25% more staff than the other shift lengths. 12-hour and 24-hour shift schedules normally use 3 or 4 crews. The 4-crew schedules require working an average of 42 hours a week, whereas the 3-crew schedules require working an average of 56 hours a week. The 3-crew schedules are primarily used by fire departments and remote mining facilities or offshore drilling rigs. Most 8-hour rotating shift schedules use 4 crews and average 42 hours a week. Most 8-hour fixed shift schedules use 9 crews (3 per shift) or 12 crews (4 per shift). The 9-crew schedules average 37.3 hours a week. They can be bumped up to 40 hours, but this creates extra coverage on one day every week. The 12-crew schedules average 42 hours a week. It's possible to create an 8-hour schedule with 40 hours every week, but this requires additional staff and creates extra (unnecessary) coverage several days a week. Other websites often show examples of popular 24/7 work patterns, e.g., Continental, Pitman, DuPont, 6-on-3-off, 4-on-2-off, etc. You get the impression that these schedule templates are good for any group that works around-the-clock. All you need to do is choose the option you like best. Unfortunately, this is highly misleading if you want to have an effective schedule. Here are the reasons why: Coverage. Many organizations don’t need the same number of people working at all times. Yet the free templates found on the Internet produce constant coverage. Staffing. If your staff size doesn’t match the number of crews in the schedule, this will result in uneven coverage. Although a template looks attractive, it might require more employees than other, more efficient patterns. Pay Week. Each template works best for a certain overtime / pay week, e.g., Sunday to Saturday. Some schedules can be modified, but some can't. This can result unbalanced work week hours and a loss of weekends off for employees. So, if popular work patterns aren't always the best 24/7 shift schedule, what should you do? Here are the steps we follow: Start with the workload and coverage requirements. How many people do you need at work on each shift? Does this stay the same all week? This is the starting point for all schedule design efforts.    Do you have enough staff? Overtime often may need to be built into the schedule to avoid additional hiring. If there is more staff than necessary, we'll show you different ways to utilize them. We then evaluate your schedule preferences to see if they're feasible. If the resources are adequate, we start the actual shift schedule design. We always try to show you multiple approaches as well as multiple patterns for each approach. The goal is to satisfy your specifications and explore possibilities you may not have considered. Don't be fooled by free schedule templates. Yeah, they're cheap and look appealing, but they're not necessarily going to make the best use of your staff. And they may not give them as many weekends off as other approaches. Please check with us first. You and your employees will be glad you did.