Higher-ranking law enforcement personnel (e.g., Police Chiefs, Sheriffs, Captains, and Lieutenants) tend to look at 10-hour shifts in a different way than their subordinates do. They are well aware of the popularity of 10-hour shifts among the officers/deputies, but often are unable to adopt them due to resource constraints. Let's look at the major considerations in the change to 10-hour shifts from the management perspective. Overtime Since four 10-hour shifts add up to 40 hours a week, some people believe 10-hour shifts will eliminate overtime from the work schedule. Unfortunately, this is not always the case as shown below: Coverage Crews Schedule Format Average Workweek 1 crew     5    Rotating shifts           42 1 crew     6      Fixed shifts           40 2 crews     5    Rotating shifts           42 3 crews   15          Either           42 4 crews   21          Either           40   A crew can consist of one to hundreds of officers. Unlike many 8 or 12-hour shift schedules that require 4 crews, 10-hour schedules require 5 or more crews. For example, to have 1-person coverage around-the-clock, you need 5 people if you use rotating shifts and 6 people if you use fixed shifts. To have 2-person coverage, you would need 10 people (5 crews of 2 each) with rotating shifts and 12 people (6 crews of 2 each) with fixed shifts. The most common 10-hour schedules rely on 5 or 15 crews. These schedules average 42 hours a week, the same as most 8-hour and 12-hour schedules that use 4 crews. I occasionally get calls from Police Captains and Lieutenants who have tried to create a schedule on their own, but can't make it work. They didn't realize that the schedule needed an occasional 50-hour work week or that it required more crews. Overtime is unnecessary only when the schedule is comprised of 6 crews or 21 crews (and sometimes with a crewless schedule).   Overlapping Shifts A schedule that uses three 10-hour shifts will have 6 hours a day in which the shifts overlap one another, producing double coverage. There are two common ways to use the overlaps: Overlap each shift by two hours. Officers on the out-going shift can do their paperwork while officers on the in-coming shift are out on the street. This ensures continued coverage throughout the day. This approach tends to be preferred by the officers. Align the overlapping shifts with the busiest period of the day. Coverage can be boosted for 6, 12 or 16 hours a day depending on how the shifts are scheduled. I recommend this approach because the primary reason for having a schedule is to allocate the resources to match the workload. The downside is that it often requires unusual shift start/end times. This approach tends to be preferred by management. Coverage Reduction The biggest problem with 10-hour shifts is that they require more resources than 8-hour or 12-hour shifts. A 10-hour schedule requires more staff because the officers are really covering 30 hours a day (three 10-hour shifts). This will either require 25% more personnel or a 25% reduction in the coverage levels. In most cases, headcounts are frozen, so the impact is reduced coverage on each shift. Even if sufficient staff is available, they are usually needed for other purposes such as absence coverage. Since the absence rates in most police departments are rather high, most Chiefs opt to use any “extra” staff in one of two ways: Increase coverage levels above the minimum. For example, a department needs 3 officers on each shift. This requires at least 12 officers working an average of 42 hours a week. They use their staff of 16 officers to provide 4-person coverage. This allows for up to one absence on each shift. Build relief coverage into the schedule. This is often more efficient than increasing the coverage on each shift. For example, the same department only has 14 officers, so they adopt a 14-week rotating shift schedule in which 2 of the 14 weeks are devoted to relief coverage. This requires fewer staff and provides more flexible absence coverage. When the "extra" coverage is lost, absences (like vacations, sick time, training, court time, etc.) will have to be covered using overtime. This is the most common reason for rejecting the switch to 10-hour shifts. This is such an important point that I have to repeat it. Adopting 10-hour shifts will reduce the coverage on each shift (except for the periods of overlapping shifts). Since part of this coverage provides a cushion for absences, the 10-hour shifts will result in much higher levels of overtime.   Absences Some people believe that 10-hour shifts will reduce absences. Since the longer shifts provide one additional day off each week, this time can be used for doctor's appointments or other personal business. I am not aware of any studies that confirm this, but it seems possible. The Shift Length Experiment prepared by the Police Foundation did not report any significant reductions in sick leave when switching to 10s (http://www.policefoundation.org/publication/shift-length-experiment/). If there is an impact, it is undoubtedly small.    Conclusions 10-hour shifts are universally popular with the officers. Chiefs or Sheriffs are aware of this, but often lack adequate resources to make the change. The simple fact that 10-hour shifts require at least 25% more staff than other approaches means that few departments can afford them. From what I've seen, it's primarily the larger departments that have adequate resources to adopt 10s. Smaller departments (less than 30 officers) rarely have enough personnel. 

  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.      

Catchy title, don't you think? Maybe I should write a book... Anyway, I just finished adding a new page to the website with this same title. I don't want to repeat the article here, but I'll give you a little teaser from the article itself: "If your group needs a new shift schedule, you naturally want to find the best possible schedule. But how do you know what's best? And how do you come with options for the group to consider? Let's start by exploring three things a good schedule must do: (1) optimize the coverage, (2) minimize the labor costs, and (3) maximize employee satisfaction." Here's a link to the article:  http://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Shift_Schedule_Design_for_Dummies. The article also lists a process for designing schedules, but it's the 3 things a good schedule must do that is most important. So many people think a good schedule merely has the shift length they want or an on-off work pattern they heard about (e.g., Panama, DuPont, or Southern Swing). They end up with schedules that produce ineffective or inconsistent coverage, cost more than necessary, and don't maximize weekends off for the employees.