10-hour shifts are extremely popular with employees. After all, they provide more days off than 8-hour shifts, and the workdays are a lot more tolerable than 12-hour shifts. Unfortunately, they are not a good choice for many organizations.

 

10-hour shifts are a good alternative to 8-hour shifts when there are only one or two shifts a day. Many office jobs, for example, can be handled with a compressed work week schedule consisting of four 10-hour shifts a week, Monday through Thursday. With this pattern, employees get a 3-day weekend off (Fri-Sun) every week.

 

If the organization must maintain the same level of coverage Mon-Fri, employees won't be able to take every Friday off. Instead, the extra day off will change each week (see example below):

 

Crew/Week	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun	Hours
A / Week 1	-	D10	D10	D10	D10	-	-	40
B / Week 2	D10	-	D10	D10	D10	-	-	40
C / Week 3	D10	D10	-	D10	D10	-	-	40
D / Week 4	D10	D10	D10	-	D10	-	-	40
E / Week 5	D10	D10	D10	D10	-	-	-	40

 

The way this schedule works is that each of the five crews is initially assigned to one of the five weeks in the schedule (A to week 1, B to week 2, and so on). After they finish their first week, they move down to the next week of the schedule, and continue doing this until they complete Week 5. After that, they rotate up to the first week of the schedule. This way, all five crews work the same 5-week pattern and share equally in the 4-day weekend off (which only occurs once every 5 weeks when transitioning from week 5 to week 1).

 

This pattern requires the staff size to be a multiple of 5 people (e.g., 5, 10, 15, etc.). Four of the 5 crews will be working each day, Monday through Friday. A different crew will be off each day of the week. The biggest downside from the organization's perspective is the reduced coverage, as only 4 crews are working each day rather than all 5 crews. Or, stated another way, it takes 5 crews to do what 4 crews can do with 8-hour shifts.

 

For organizations that operate 24/7, 10-hour shifts are best suited for variable workloads. Good examples are police and communication centers that need more employees on duty during high-activity periods such as the evening rush hours or when the bars close. When you squeeze three 10-hour shifts into a 24-hour period, the shifts will overlap one another for 6 hours. If you align the overlapping shifts with the busy period(s), you will increase the coverage when the workload is heaviest.  If the busy period lasts longer than 6 hours, you can extend the overlapping shifts by creating two separate schedules that are six hours apart or by adding a fourth shift. This can get pretty tricky, and may require an expert's guidance.

 

10-hour shifts are NOT a good choice if your workload stays constant throughout the day. Why would you want double coverage for 6 hours every day if your workload is always the same? Even though the employees would be happy, the organization would have to make too many sacrifices, as described below:

1. Reduced Coverage. 10-hour shift schedules require more employees than 8 or 12-hour schedules because they are based on 30-hour work days (three 10-hour shifts). If you try to replace your 8-hour shifts with 10-hour shifts without making any other changes, you will need at least 25% more people to maintain the same coverage. If you can't hire more staff, your coverage levels will be reduced by 25% when you change to 10s. Instead of 4-person coverage at all times, for instance, you would only have 3-person coverage. However, you would have 6-person coverage for the 6 hours that the shifts overlap.
    
2. More Facilities/Equipment. When the 10-hour shifts overlap, you will have employees from two shifts working at the same time. You'll need twice as much space and equipment to accommodate this. In small groups, fixed 10-hour shifts may have one day a week in which there is an overlap. This would produce 4 times the normal coverage on a single shift during the 6 hours a week in which both the days and shifts overlap. If you only have 4 work terminals and 16 dispatchers show up for work, what are you going to do with them?
    
3. Built-In Overtime. If you have less than 21 employees, your 10-hour shift schedule will probably have some overtime built into it to maintain the desired coverage. This is also the case with 8-hour and 12-hour shifts, since most 24/7 schedules require some built-in overtime. Many people hope that changing to 10-hour shifts will eliminate the need for built-in overtime because four 10-hour shifts adds up to 40 hours. Unfortunately, this rarely happens.
    
4. Unusual Start Times. When you align the overlapping shifts with the peak workload periods, this may result in some unusual shift start and end times, for example a day shift that starts at 11 a.m. Organizations that set the shift start times to satisfy employee preferences (rather than matching the workload) will end up with double coverage during their slow periods and normal coverage during the busy periods. This defeats the whole purpose for adopting 10-hour shifts.
    
5. Crewless Schedules. Most 8 and 12-hour schedules use 4 crews. With 10-hour shifts, you need 5 or 7 crews per shift. Most 10-hour schedules have no crews -- each employee works his or her own schedule. For example, with 16 employees, there would be a 16-week schedule that everyone rotated through. With fixed shifts, you could call each shift a squad, but not all squad members will be working on the same days. With rotating shifts, you could have team members working different days or even different shifts. Because of this, supervision will be much more challenging with a 10-hour schedule.
    
6. More Supervisors. If the supervisors also want 10-hour shifts, it will take at least 5 people with rotating shifts and 6 people with fixed shifts to have one supervisor available at all times. If you need two supervisors to be available at all times, you would need twice these amounts.

Because of these limitations, the design of an effective 10-hour shift schedule may not be something you can do on your own. Figuring out how to make the schedule work or how to get around the six limitations described above is not simple. If your busy period lasts more than 6 hours a day or if you have more than one busy period per day, you will probably need the assistance of someone who specializes in this.

 

If you would like more information about 10-hour shift schedules, we suggest you check out the following articles:

• Emergency Number Professional Magazine, May 2005
• Law & Order, July 2005
• Public Safety Communications / APCO Bulletin, April 2006

You also may want to read some of our blog posts about 10-hour shift schedules:

• 10-hour-shift-schedules-and-police-management
• 10-hour-shift-schedules-for-police-officers
• 10-hour-shifts-vs-12-hour-shifts
• 10-hour shifts in 24/7 operations