Almost every week I'm contacted by police officers, sheriff's deputies, and patrolmen about 10-hour shifts. They believe that 10-hour shifts would benefit themselves and their fellow officers. I believe there are two reasons they think 10s would be an improvement over their current 8-hour schedule. I will take a closer look at each of these in an attempt to sort out the reality from the myth.      Time Off  In 24/7 operations, typical schedules using 8, 10 or 12-hour shifts provide the following number of days and weekends off:    Shift Length        Days Off Per Year             Max. Weekends Off    8-hour                           91                                       25%  10-hour                          146                                      40%         12-hour                          182                                      50% It is clear that 10-hour shifts offer more days off and more weekends off than 8s, but not as many as 12s. I believe that 10s are the most popular shift length because they offer more time off than 8s and they are seen as more tolerable than 12s. If the only objective was to maximize time off, 12-hour shifts would be the clear winner. The key point that is often overlooked is absence coverage. With 8-hour shifts, absences are covered either by holding someone over from the previous shift or by splitting the vacant shift into two 4-hour components that can be covered by the preceding and following shifts. With 10-hour and 12-hour shifts, absences must be covered by calling someone in from a scheduled day off. Many law enforcement agenices have built additional coverage into their schedules to compensate for their high absence rates. But what happens if that extra coverage isn't available? Since 10-hour shifts will reduce the available coverage by at least 25%, there won't be any extra capacity to cover absences. So, instead of getting the expected 3 days off every week, the officers might only get 1 or 2 days off.   On/Off Work Patterns The common perception of 10-hour work patterns is 4 days of work followed by 3 days off. In 24/7 operations, however, this pattern only works if you use 6 crews and fixed days of work. This requires a lot more staff, a backwards rotation, and fixed days of work. You can read more about this approach and its shortcomings here:  http://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=problems-with-free-schedule-examples    The best 10-hour schedule for 24/7 operations uses 7 crews per shift or 21 total crews. There is no built-in overtime with this schedule. It also has the most attractive work pattern (4 or 5 consecutive days of work followed by 3 or 4-day breaks). The pattern can easily be adapted for use with either fixed or rotating shifts. If you don't have 7 officers or a multiple of 7 (14, 21, 28, etc.) per shift, your 10-hour schedule will have shorter blocks of work (two to four days) and shorter breaks (one to three days). Many officers are disappointed when they see these patterns because there are so many one and two-day breaks. These patterns are especially unattractive to anyone who is expecting to consistently get 3 consecutive days off by changing to 10-hour shifts.     Organization and Supervision  Many 8-hour and 12-hour schedules use 4 squads. Squad members work the same shift(s) and the same days of the week. 10-hour shift schedules for small organizations (less than 50 people), rarely use squads. Some days, Officer A might be working with officers C and E. On other days, he or she might be working with officers B and D, or maybe with officers G and J.   With 8 or 12-hour shift schedules, each squad usually has a sergeant or corporal who acts as the team leader/supervisor. With 10-hour shifts, in order to ensure that a supervisor is always on duty, it's necessary to put them on their own, separate schedule. This means the officers will not always be working with the same supervisor after changing to a 10-hour shift schedule.       Conclusions  10-hour shifts provide more time off than 8-hour shifts, but not as much as 12-hour shifts. The extra days off may not be realized since some of them will probably be used to cover absences. Although the schedule will provide 3 days off for most weeks, they won't always occur on consecutive days. 10-hour shifts also will change the way the group is organized and supervised. Although 10-hour shifts are clearly more attractive than 8-hour shifts, they may not live up to the high expectations that many police officers have of them. I think the shift length debate among officers should not be 8s vs. 10s, but 10s vs. 12s.   Please check out my other 10-hour blog posts, especially 10-hour shifts and Police Management. Go to the search box and type in 10 hour shifts. You really need to educate yourself about this before making a choice you might regret.  

I've written several articles about 12-hour shift schedules. Here are links to the most popular ones: https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/12-Hour_Shifts   https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=12-hour-shifts-in-smaller-companies   https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=matching-12-hour-shifts-to-your-workload-distribution   https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=covering-absences-on-a-12-hour-shift-schedule https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=12-hour-shift-schedules-with-no-overtime   These 12-hr articles tend to focus on schedule effectiveness and efficiency, i.e. schedules that align the coverage with the workload and utilize the smallest number of employees. Other websites that offer free examples of different 12-hour patterns imply that these are good choices for anyone changing to longer shifts. Smaller groups with uneven workloads and staffing limitations should beware.   In this article, I'd like to address things that should be considered before making the change to 12-hour shifts. Environment. Some jobs are simply too taxing to endure for more than 8 hours. Things like excessive heat, noise, toxins, or physical labor might preclude the use of longer shifts.   Productivity, quality and safety. Some tasks are too tedious or focused to continue for more than 8 hours. To accommodate 12-hr. shifts, these jobs would require extra breaks, job redesign, and/or periodic rotation to other positions to keep employees fresh.   Different patterns. With fixed 12-hr. shifts, there is no rule that says both shifts must work the same on-off pattern. In fact, some patterns that are great for the day shift (e.g., Pitman) are terrible for the night shift. We encourage clients to have each shift select its preferred shift independently.   Worker preferences. Although many employees are willing to work 12-hr. shifts in order to get more days off and more weekends off, not everyone is. Older workers, people with childcare or eldercare concerns, students, and those with 2nd jobs often prefer 8-hour shifts.   Business issues. If the business runs 24/7 and has a steady workload at all times, 12-hour shifts can be a good choice. If the company uses fixed shifts, 12-hour fixed shifts are a little more efficient than 8-hour fixed shifts, which may mean a smaller headcount. If the workload is not steady, it may be necessary to use a combination of 8 and 12-hour shifts.   Absence coverage. If the organization has a high absence rate, 12-hour shifts might not be a good choice. That's because absences must be covered by someone who is scheduled to be off. This can defeat the extra days-off advantage of the longer shifts.   Pay policies. Most pay polices (e.g., holiday pay, vacations, sick leave, etc.) were written for 8-hour shifts. These polices need to be revised to reflect the 12-hr shifts. For example, with 8-hour shifts new employees get 10 days of vacation per calendar year (80 hours). If this policy was not modified before changing to 12-hour shifts, the new employees might get 120 hours of vacation per year.  

/**/ It's amazing how many people contact me about 24/7 schedules with no overtime in them. I warn them that this will not necessarily lower their costs. I also explain that avoiding overtime in the schedule will not eliminate the need for overtime. OT will still be needed to cover absences or temporary increases in demand. Here are links to two articles I've previously written on this subject: Overtime Issues Why Eliminating OT Can Be Costly It's best to think of overtime as a way to increase the size of your staff without adding to the headcount. A small amount of overtime in the schedule means you will need fewer employees to produce a specific amount of coverage. Overtime also can enable you to build relief coverage into the schedule to cover absences. In some cases, it's possible to reduce the total overtime by doing this (https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=you-can-t-eliminate-overtime-but-you-might-be-able-to-reduce-it).  The bottom line is: if you eliminate overtime from the schedule, you will increase the staffing requirements. In most cases, the increased headcount will be more expensive than the overtime was. Despite these words of warning, I know that some of you still want to see schedules with only 40 hour work weeks. Let's take a look at an example using 8-hour rotating shifts. If you want a 12-hour schedule without overtime, I suggest you read this other blog post here. This is a 5-crew schedule that follows a 5-week schedule. Crew A begins the schedule in Week 1, Crew B begins in Week 2, and so on. When the crews finish their first week, they move down to the next week of the schedule. When they finish Week 5, they start the cycle over again with Week 1. All five crews are working the same 5-week schedule. It's just that they are always in different weeks of that pattern. You'll note that the 5th week of the schedule has only one required shift: the Tuesday night shift. The prior four shifts are relief shifts. These can be used to cover absences or for training, maintenance, or special projects. The only downside is that it doesn't cover every day of the week. Had we adopted a schedule that averaged 42 hours a week, we could have had relief coverage for every day of the week. Is it worth eliminating the overtime? Let's look at the numbers. We eliminated 2 hours of overtime a week for every employee. That will reduce the costs by 7.5%.           2 hours OT/week * 1.5 OT premium = 3 hours/week           3 hours/week saved  / 40 hours/week = 7.5% savings We also have gained 4 days of relief coverage each week. If the absence rate is 10% of the normal weekly hours of work, this will reduce costs another 8.6%.           4 / 7 days of coverage/week * 10% absence rate * 1.5 OT premium = 8.57% This means that the total savings is 16.1% (7.5% + 8.6% = 16.1%). However, we have increased the headcount by 25% by adding a fifth crew, which is far more than the 16.1% we saved.   Want to read more about 8-hour shift schedules? Here are links to several articles I've written:   https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=8-hour-shift-schedules-for-24-7-coverage   https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=8-hour-rotating-shift-schedules   https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=8-hour-fixed-shift-schedules   https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=mixing-8-hour-and-12-hour-shifts  

Many companies that operate 24/7 have their employees work an 8-hour fixed shift schedule. With this type of schedule, employees never change shifts, but may work different days each week following a multi-week work pattern. This is called a fixed shift schedule with rotating days of work. Unlike a schedule with fixed shifts and fixed days of work, this approach treats everyone equally in terms of weekends off, so it tends to be the preferred approach. When these companies first started covering 24/7, they may have adopted a work pattern that was popular for their line of business or the managers had some experience with. The schedule may have worked fine initially, but as the company grew and added more employees, management didn’t update the schedule. They may not have realized that the pattern only works properly for a specific coverage level. Let’s take a closer look at two popular 8-hour work patterns to understand why they only work under certain conditions. We will only show one shift (the 8-hour day shift = d8) since the pattern will be the same for all 3 shifts. Each crew should have the same number of people, so that the coverage is consistent from day-to-day. 4-on-2-off                 Crew / Week Thu Fri Sat Sun Mon Tue Wed Hours A / Week 1 d8 d8 d8 d8 - - d8 40 B / Week 2 d8 d8 d8 - - d8 d8 40 C / Week 3 d8 d8 - - d8 d8 d8 40 D / Week 4 d8 - - d8 d8 d8 d8 40 E / Week 5 - - d8 d8 d8 d8 - 32 F / Week 6 - d8 d8 d8 d8 - - 32               Average 37.3   The way this pattern works is there are 6 crews for each shift, labeled A, B, C, D, E and F. Each crew begins the schedule in the week they are shown. Crew A begins on Week 1, Crew B begins on Week 2, Crew C begins on Week 3, and so on. After finishing that initial week, they rotate to the next week of the schedule. Crew A moves to Week 2, Crew B moves to Week 3, and Crew F moves to Week 1. They continue this rotation until after Week 6, in which they rotate back up to Week 1. If you start at the top, you’ll see that you would work 4 days (Thu-Sun) and have the next two days off (Mon-Tue). Then you would work 4 more days (Wed-Sat) and have the next two days off (Sun-Mon). This pattern of working 4 days in a row and then taking the next 2 days off continues indefinitely. You’ll see that there are four d8s shown under each day of the week. This means that 4 crews are always scheduled to work. If you need 4-person coverage, you would simply have one person in each of the 6 crews. If you need 8-person coverage, you would have two people in each of the crews. But what if you need 3-person coverage or 5-person coverage or something else that isn’t a multiple of 4? That’s where this pattern stops working correctly. Yes, people use it for the wrong coverage levels or with the wrong number of crews and wonder why the coverage isn’t consistent. It only works properly for coverage that is a multiple of 4 people. And it only works if you use 6 crews on each shift. Employees like this pattern because they only have to work 4 consecutive days and they always get 2 days off. They don’t like that they only get one full weekend off every 6 weeks. In addition, there are 2 weeks in which they only get 32 hours of pay. You could add more days to make 40 hours, but that would disrupt the 4-on-2-off pattern.   Here's another pattern: 6-on-3-off                 Crew / Week Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun Hours A / Week 1 d8 d8 d8 d8 d8 d8 - 48 B / Week 2 - - d8 d8 d8 d8 d8 40 C / Week 3 d8 - - - d8 d8 d8 32 D / Week 4 d8 d8 d8 - - - d8 32 E / Week 5 d8 d8 d8 d8 d8 - - 40 F / Week 6 - d8 d8 d8 d8 d8 d8 48 G / Week 7 - - - d8 d8 d8 d8 32 H / Week 8 d8 d8 - - - d8 d8 32 I / Week 9 d8 d8 d8 d8 - - - 32               Average 37.3   This pattern uses 9 crews on a 9-week pattern. It works the same way as the previous schedule. The crews begin the schedule in the week they are shown next to: Crew A begins in Week 1, Crew B begins in Week 2, and so on. After finishing that initial week, they rotate to the next week of the schedule. After completing Week 9, they rotate up to Week 1 and start the pattern over again. You’ll see that there are six d8s listed under each day of the week. This means that 6 crews are always scheduled to work. If you need 6-person coverage, you would simply have one person in each of the 9 crews. If you need 12-person coverage, you would have two people in each of the crews. Using this pattern with anything other than 9 crews throws everything off. Likewise, trying to achieve any coverage level that isn’t evenly divisible by 6 won’t consistently produce the coverage you want.   Recommended Approach So, if these popular 8-hour patterns only work for a limited number of situations, how are you supposed to pick a schedule? You should always begin with the desired coverage level. In this article, I will discuss 3 coverage levels: 1-person 2-person and multiples of 2 people such as 4, 6, 8, etc. 3-person and multiples of 3 people such as 6, 9, 12, etc. I won’t address odd coverage levels (such as 5, 7 or 11) as these would require a custom-designed schedule, often without any crews. I will show one pattern for each level of coverage, even though there are many others that are superior. Sorry, you have to pay for the good stuff. The patterns shown here simply illustrate the point that schedule selection should never begin with a preferred pattern. Instead, coverage levels should always be the starting point for schedule creation. Coverage levels dictate the number of crews or employees needed for each shift. Once that has been established, you can compare different work patterns using that number of crews/employees. 1-Person Coverage               Crew/Week Thu Fri Sat Sun Mon Tue Wed Hours A / Week 1 - d8 d8 d8 d8 d8 - 40 B / Week 2 d8 d8 - - d8 d8 d8 40               Average 40   With 2 crews working 40 hours a week, there will always be 3 days a week with double coverage on each shift. In the pattern above, this occurs every Friday, Monday and Tuesday. If you eliminate the extra coverage, employees would only average 28 hours a week. Full-time employees won’t tolerate this, which is why it’s not shown. This inefficiency is why 8-hour fixed shifts are rarely used when you need 1-person coverage. Other approaches such as 8-hour rotating shifts or any type of 12-hour shift schedule would only require 4 people, though they do make employees work an average of 42 hours a week. Employees like this sort of schedule because they get every other weekend off. But it requires a lot more employees than other approaches, so few organizations can afford to adopt it. If you have unlimited resources and can tolerate the double coverage three days a week, go for it! Better yet, why not adopt a 12-hour fixed shift schedule that requires 33% fewer employees and gives them almost twice as many days off.   2-Person Coverage (and multiples of 2 people)       Crew/Week Thu Fri Sat Sun Mon Tue Wed Hours A / Week 1 - d8 d8 d8 d8 d8 - 40   B / Week 2 d8 d8 d8 - - d8 d8   40 C / Week 3 d8 - - d8 d8 d8 d8 40               Average 40   Unlike the pattern for 1-person coverage, this is more efficient because it only has 1 day of extra coverage every week. In the above example, there are 3 d8’s every Tuesday. This schedule can be used coverage that is any multiple of 2 people such as 4, 6, 8, 10, etc. The pattern shown here is not very good for employees, however, since they would never get a full weekend off. Don’t be discouraged. There are other patterns that provide one full weekend off every 3 weeks, some that are up to 4 days long. Like I said, you have to pay to see the good ones. You could drop the Tuesday shift in either Week 1 or Week 2 of the above pattern, but then the employees would only get 32 hours that week. Over a 3-week period, they would average 37.3 hours/week, the same as the 4-on-2-off and 6-on-3-off patterns shown earlier. In some cases, depending on the pay week, dropping the unnecessary coverage might extend the weekend off so that employees wouldn’t mind getting fewer hours of work/pay.   3-Person Coverage (and multiples of 3 people)       Crew/Week Thu Fri Sat Sun Mon Tue Wed Hours A / Week 1 - d8 d8 d8 d8 - d8 40 B / Week 2 d8 d8 d8 - - d8 d8 40 C / Week 3 d8 d8 - d8 d8 d8 d8 48 D / Week 4 d8 - d8 d8 d8 d8 - 40               Average 42.0   8-hour fixed shift schedules for 3-person coverage (or multiples of 3) are the most efficient of all, since there is no unnecessary extra coverage. They do require a small amount of overtime, however. For employees, the above pattern wouldn’t be very attractive since they would never get a full weekend off. There are other patterns using 4 crews per shift that provide weekends off. A pattern that is based on working 5 shifts in a row will provide 5 weekends off each year. A pattern based on working 6 shifts in a row will provide 6 weekends off each year. A pattern based on working 7 shifts in a row will provide 13 weekends off each year. For work-life balance, many employees will say that working 7 consecutive days to get 1 weekend off every 4 weeks isn’t worth it. But the prospect of only getting 5 or 6 weekends of a year is even worse. That is exactly why so many companies have switched to 12-hour shifts. They found that both the company and the workers benefitted from the longer shifts. Yes, workers hated working for 12 hours, but they accepted the long hours to get twice as many days off and up to half the weekends off (12 Hour Shifts | Shift Schedule Design (shift-schedule-design.com)).   Summary When choosing an 8-hour fixed shift schedule, adopting a well-known or familiar work pattern, such as the two discussed in this article, will only work properly if your coverage and number of crews match the pattern’s requirements. If your coverage or staff size doesn't match, you may have to overstaff to reach your desired coverage level and the coverage will vary from day-to-day. Many of these well-known patterns average less than 40 hours a week - not the most effective way to utilize your employees. For employees, although the pattern may be easy to remember or explain, they rarely provide as many weekends off as other 8-hour options. The best way to select an 8-hour fixed shift schedule is to start with the desired coverage level. That, in turn, will dictate how many crews are necessary. Three of the most common approaches were discussed in this article: One-person coverage using 2 crews per shift, or 6 total crews. Two-person coverage (or multiples of 2) using 3 crews per shift, or 9 total crews. Three-person coverage (or multiples of 3) using 4 crews per shift, or 12 total crews. Once the number of crews is decided, the company can search for compatible work patterns. That way, employees can discuss and compare the different patterns, and then vote for the one they prefer. I recommend that you also include a few options using 12-hour shifts, just so the employees are aware of what else is possible. Naturally, I hope you'll consider our company to show you these different options. Please click on this link below and fill out the form. I'll respond with a proposal that outlines the best solutions and what I would charge to create them for you.   Request a quote for custom schedule design)    

I've written several articles about 12-hour shift schedules in 24/7 operations. Here are links to the most popular ones: https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/12-Hour_Shifts   https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=12-hour-shifts-in-smaller-companies   https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=matching-12-hour-shifts-to-your-workload-distribution   https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=covering-absences-on-a-12-hour-shift-schedule https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=are-12-hour-shifts-too-long   I also sell 2 packages with 10 different options: one with only 12-hour fixed shifts and another with only 12-hour rotating shifts. You can read more about this here:  Schedule Examples   Most 12-hour shift schedules for 24/7 coverage use 4 crews. When you divide the hours in a week (168) by 4 crews, you get a average of 42 hours/week. With 12-hour shifts, this will require half the work weeks to be 36 hours (three 12-hour shifts) and half to be 48 hours (four 12-hour shifts).  In many organizations, especially public agencies, avoiding overtime is a high priority. They view overtime as evil or an unnecessary expense. I have repeatedly tried to argue the fallacy of this belief, yet I continue to get requests for 12-hour schedules with no overtime in them. Here are 2 articles on this topic: http://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Overtime_Issues https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=why-eliminating-overtime-in-24-7-schedules-can-be-costly,  Reducing the hours of work to 40 or less a week will result in gaps in the coverage and will require additional personnel to fill the gaps. In most cases, this is more expensive than simply keeping overtime in the schedule. In addition to higher costs, this will also require other sacrifices as seen in the following four approaches to eliminating overtime in 12-hour schedules for 24/7 coverage.    Here is a key to the symbols used in the schedules below: D12 = 12-hour day shift N12 = 12-hour night shift d8 = 8-hour day shift n8 = 8-hour night shift d4 = 4-hour day shift a4 = 4-hour afternoon shift e4 = 4-hour evening shift n4 = 4-hour night shift Here is how the schedules work. When the schedule first starts, the crews are assigned to specific weeks in the cycle. Crew A is assigned to start in Week 1, Crew B is assigned to start in Week 2, and so on. At the end of each week, the crews rotate down to the next week in the cycle. Crew A moves to Week 2, Crew B moves to Week 3, etc. When a crew completes the last week, they rotate up to Week 1.      1. Eliminate the 48-hour work weeks. This sounds simple enough. Just change all the 48-hour work weeks to 36 hours by eliminating one of the shifts. To maintain the same coverage, this will require 5 crews (a 25% increase in headcount), rotating shifts, and a 4-hour pay cut for all employees. (Note that with fixed shifts, this would require 6 crews). There will also be one shift with double coverage (in the example below, it's the Friday day shift). Here's one example of a 5-crew schedule:   Crew / Week Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun   Hours A / Week 1 - - - - D12 D12 D12     36 B / Week 2 D12 - - D12 D12 - -     36 C / Week 3 - D12 D12 - - - N12     36 D / Week 4 N12 - - - N12 N12 -     36 E / Week 5 - N12 N12 N12 - - -     36                Average     36   2. Include an 8-hour shift. If you devote one day a week to 8-hour shifts and give one of the three 8-hour shifts to employees who are outside the group (e.g., part-time employees), the remaining four crews would average 40 hours a week. You would have to use a 12-hour work pattern in which the 36-hour weeks and 48-hour weeks are staggered and you would have to be able to average the work hours over a 2-week period (most companies can't do this because of overtime laws). In the sample shown below, the 8-hour afternoon shift on Wednesday would have to be given to employees who are not part of the four crews. That uncovered shift is not shown in the table below.     Crew / Week  Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun   Hours   A / Week 1   - D12 d8 - - D12 D12     44   B / Week 2   D12 - - D12 D12 - -     36   C / Week 3   - N12 n8 - - N12 N12     44   D / Week 4   N12 - - N12 N12 - -     36               Average     40 3. Include a 4-hour shift. If you devote one day a week to 4-hour shifts and give two 4-hour shifts (or one 8-hour shift) to employees who are outside the group, the remaining four crews would average 40 hours a week. This does not require the averaging of pay over a 2-week period or a pattern with staggered 36 and 48-hour weeks. In the sample shown below, there is an 8-hour gap in coverage on Wednesday that would have to be given to part-time employees or someone outside the four crews. That uncovered shift is not shown in the table below.     Crew / Week  Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun   Hours   A / Week 1  - D12 d4 - - D12 D12     40   B / Week 2  D12 - a4 D12 D12 - -     40   C / Week 3  - N12 n4 - - N12 N12     40   D / Week 4  N12 - e4 N12 N12 - -     40               Average     40   4. Reduce the work days to 11.5 hours. If you include a 30-minute unpaid meal break in the 12-hour shift, you only have to pay employees for 11.5 hours. You would have to adopt a 12-hour shift pattern in which the 48-hour weeks and 36-hour weeks were staggered. This won't completely eliminate the overtime, and you would have to be able to average the work hours over a 2-week period. An example is shown below:     Crew / Week  Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun   Hours   A / Week 1  - D11.5 D11.5 - - D11.5 D11.5     46   B / Week 2  D11.5 - - D11.5 D11.5 - -     34.5   C / Week 3  - N11.5 N11.5 - - N11.5 N11.5     46   D / Week 4  N11.5 - - N11.5 N11.5 - -     34.5               Average     40.25     If you are subject to Federal law that requires overtime after 40 hours a week, you won't be able to use Options #2 or #4. These can only be used by organizations such as police departments that are allowed to average the work hours over a 2-week period.   If you don't have enough part-time employees or you don't have employees from another department to cover the 8-hour gap in coverage every week, you'll won't be able to use Options #2 or #3. You'll either need a 5-crew schedule (see Option #1), a schedule with 11.5-hour shifts (see Option #4), or a crewless schedule that is custom-designed around your staff size.   Let's do a quick cost comparison of 4-crew schedules vs. 5-crew schedules: 4 crews * 40 hours/week * 1.4 benefit loading cost  +  4 crews * 4 hours of OT pay/week = 240 hours of pay/week 5 crews * 36-hours/week * 1.4 benefit loading cost = 252 hours of pay/week If you already have enough staff to create a 5-crew schedule, here's a way to save money. Keep the OT in the schedule and use your extra capacity to build relief coverage into the schedule to cover absences. Similar to Option #1, you would have a 5-week schedule that averages 42 hours a week. The difference is that the 5th week of the schedule would be devoted to relief coverage.   Doing this would shift the OT from outside the schedule to inside the schedule. When the overtime is outside the schedule, it requires volunteers or forced / mandated overtime. When it's inside the schedule, it is shared equally by the entire staff. In many cases, the total overtime is less. You can read more about this here: https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=you-can-t-eliminate-overtime-but-you-might-be-able-to-reduce-it.   We sell packages of 12-hour shifts for $199 apiece. One packages has 10 options with only fixed shifts and the other has 10 options with only rotating shifts. These all average 42 hours a week. You can read more about it here:  https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Schedule_Examples.   If you need help designing a 12-hour schedule with no overtime (e.g., to match your pay week or to accommodate a few part-time employees), please fill out this form:  https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/21.html