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.      

Everyone seems to have a different opinion as to what constitutes a good shift schedule. For many people, the judgment is based solely on whether the schedule satisfies a single concern or preference, such as:  (1) the desired shift length, (2) more weekends off, (3) a specific on-off work pattern, (4) no built-in overtime, or (5) coverage that meets or exceeds the minimum requirements. The problem with such a narrow focus is that it often requires sacrifices in other areas of the business. These tend to be ignored or never acknowledged, as illustrated by the following examples: Employees want management to adopt a 10-hour shift schedule because it will give them another day off each week. They don't realize that the organization would have to either increase the staff by 25% or reduce the coverage by 25%. The organization also would have to add one more supervisor, and the supervisors no longer would be working with the same crew at all times. In addition, the facility isn't large enough to accommodate the double coverage that would occur during the 6 hours a day that the shifts overlap. The city council insists on a 24/7 schedule with no built-in overtime as a way to reduce expenses in the police department. They don't realize that this will require a larger staff. If the cost of the additional officers and their benefits is disregarded, the council members will think they made a wise financial decision. In reality, they increased the department's overall expenses as a result of the increased headcount. Ideally, the search for a new schedule should consider the interests of all of the schedule's stakeholders (management, the union and employees). Establishing formal selection criteria to evaluate alternative schedules will force the organization to do this. It also will encourage them to set priorities and weigh the consequences. We recommend using the following criteria to ensure a comprehensive approach to the schedule selection process:  (1) effectiveness, (2) efficiency, (3) sleep, and (4) employee satisfaction. The next few blog posts will cover these four criteria and will show how they can be used to evaluate different scheduling options.

One of the key issues with 12-hour shift schedules is how to cover absences. With 8-hour shifts, one way to cover absences is to hold an employee on the previous shift over so that he or she works two consecutive shifts or 16 hours total. Another way is to split the vacant shift into two 4-hour segments, and have someone from the previous shift stay over for 4 additional hours and have someone from the following shift come in 4 hours early. It's fairly easy to cover the open shift this way, since the replacements are already at work or planning to work later that same day.   Unfortunately, 12-hour shifts are too long for either of these approaches. Holding someone over for a second shift means they would be working 24 hours (36 hours if they are scheduled to work the next day too). With a split shift, it means the replacements would be working 18 hours straight. Clearly this is excessive.   With 12-hour shifts, the only option is to find a qualified employee who is not scheduled to work the same day as the absence. Sounds simple, right? Well it's not. Supervisors can spend an inordinate amount of time trying to find volunteers. It can be tough to reach people. Candidates may have left town or they may be too busy to answer the phone. And they simply may not want to work that day. They might have made other plans or don't want to spoil a nice multi-day break.   This is one case in which scheduling software can be beneficial for the supervisors. You'll want a program that makes it easy to both identify eligible candidates and then to contact them. Eligibility may include things like: (1) job title, (2) skill sets, (3) work schedule, and (4) recent overtime hours (to prevent over-using someone). Contact can be by email or text message. If no one volunteers within a fixed amount of time, the supervisor can select someone to cover the open position using criteria such as reverse seniority. All of this saves the supervisor a huge amount of time, freeing them up to focus on other responsibilities.  

Here's another comment I read at the 911Dispatch forum from someone who wants to adopt 10-hour shifts: "Our center has been looking into getting away from our 8 hour shifts. Most everyone here wants either 8's or 10's, 12's are out of the question for now anyways. We have 12 full time dispatchers, 3 being leads. Has anyone found a way to work a ten hour schedule with that number of people? Most of the research I've done says it is not able to be done." I'm going to break my comments down into a couple of categories: 1. Workload. Is there ever a mention of a variable workload? No. So why are they considering 10-hour shifts? 10-hour shifts are only appropriate for organizations whose workload varies throughout the day. I suspect that the desire to adopt 10-hour shifts is merely employee preferences to get more days off and more weekends off. Unfortunately, this is insufficient justification. 10-hour shifts require some major sacrifices, so you'll need a lot more than just employee preferences to support the change. Sorry to be so blunt about it, but there are several limitations to 10-hour shifts that employees fail to recognize. Some of them will be discussed below. 2. Coverage/staffing. To provide 3-person coverage on a 24/7 basis using 10-hour shifts would require 15 employees working an average of 42 hours a week. This organization only has 12 employees. They could have 3-person coverage on one shift and 2-person coverage on the other two shifts. If they tweaked the start/end times on the shifts, they could make the overlapping shifts cover another 6 hours of the day. The end result would be 4-person coverage for 6 hours, 3-person coverage for 10 hours, and 2-person coverage for 8 hours. 3. Crews. Most 10-hour shift schedules don't use crews. They are what I refer to as "crewless" schedules. For this group, I would create a 12-week schedule. Each employee would be initially assigned to one of the 12 weeks. When they finished the first week, they would rotate to the next week of the schedule. They would continue doing this until the finished the entire schedule, at which time they would go back to the first week of the schedule. 4. Leads. There are 3 leads. If they are working 10-hour shifts and are needed at all times, the organization would need 2 more leads. Even then, they would have to work 42 hours a week on average. And they wouldn't always be working with the same set of employees. This will make it much more difficult to supervise. 5. Overtime. Sometimes people think that changing to 10-hour shifts will allow them to have a schedule with no overtime built into it. Unfortunately, that only occurs with certain levels of coverage. The most efficient 10-hour schedule will have multiples of 7 people on each shift which will produce multiples of 4-person coverage. For the 3-person coverage this organization needs, overtime would be needed to ensure consistent coverage. As with their current 8-hour schedule, they would average 42 hours per week if they had 15 employees.    

Employees and management see shift schedules from entirely different perspectives. When employees discuss their ideal shift schedule, they talk about things like shift length, work patterns, and shift start/end times. That's because these features are related to their primary concern:  time off. Shift length affects the number of scheduled days off and percentage of weekends off. Work patterns influence the length and frequency of the breaks. Shift start/end times determine when they get to go home. When managers of shiftwork operations discuss the organization's shift schedule, they are primarily concerned about the coverage requirements, staffing levels, absence rates, and overtime. That's because these features affect their main concern: the organization's resources. Coverage requirements define the amount of resources needed (total work hours per week). Staffing is the primary resource available to the organization. Absence rates determine the staff's availability and the amount of overtime needed. Overtime is seen by some as an unnecessary cost and by others as a strategic tool to boost the weekly work hours and/or cover absences. Employees rarely consider the impact of their preferences on the organization's resources. Go to any employee forum and read the posts related to work schedules. You'll read about a group that adopted 10-hour shifts and how all the employees love them. Or how another group thinks a 6-on-3-off pattern would be better than the 5-on-2-off pattern they work now - because of the 3 consecutive days off. You also might find requests for a copy of someone else's schedule. No one ever mentions coverage requirements, the impact on absence coverage, or how many employees these choices would require. It's all about days off, weekends off, or not having to work too many days in a row. So how can managers accommodate both the needs of the organization and the preferences of the employees? The only way to satisfy both sides is to start with what's feasible for the organization, and then seek out options that will satisfy employees. If you start with what employees want, you might get inconsistent or insufficient coverage, coverage that's not matched with the workload or staff size, or schedules that consume more resources than available. Notice that I'm only indicating where to begin the search for a new schedule. Starting with what is feasible may narrow the scheduling possibilities or preclude certain approaches, but it doesn't mean the employees will have terrible schedules. And it doesn't mean they won't have any choices. What it does is join the management team with the workers in finding a solution that is best for both the organization and the employees.

Your group needs a new employee work schedule. Maybe the staff size has changed. Or the demand for your product/services requires you to increase the hours of operation. Perhaps you've run out of space and need to add a 2nd or 3rd shift. Maybe you're just tired of listening to employee complaints. Whatever the reason, you know that something has to be done. If you're like most managers in this situation, you may be asking friends or associates in your industry about their schedules. And you're probably searching the Internet for additional ideas. It's important to find a solution that doesn't require a lot of time or money. Your regular responsibilities can't be put on hold and your budget has little room for unexpected expenditures. Unfortunately, a schedule that's not tailored to the organization's hours of operation, coverage requirements, staff size, and pay week will rarely be a good solution. You will probably end up with problems such as these: Ineffective coverage Inconsistent coverage Over-staffing Unnecessary overtime Minimal weekends off Let's look at each of these problems a little closer. Ineffective Coverage The fundamental purpose of the schedule is to ensure the right number of people at work during all the hours of operation, i.e., to match the coverage with the workload. If the work volume is fairly steady, then the coverage also should be constant. A schedule with hours of overlapping shifts would be ineffective for these situations. For example, using 10-hour shifts in an organization with a steady workload would be a waste. There is no need for the 6 hours of double coverage while the shifts overlap. It would also be costly, since it would require 25% more personnel than a schedule using 8-hour or 12-hour shifts. If the work volume varies by time of day or day of the week, the coverage should reflect that. Possible solutions include mixed shift lengths, overlay or power shifts, 10-hour shifts, staggered shift start times, or different coverage levels on each shift. An example of ineffective coverage is a police department with a heavier workload on Friday and Saturday evenings that uses a schedule with the same coverage throughout the week. Inconsistent Coverage An ideal schedule consistently matches the desired coverage. Some schedules don't do this. Here are two examples: Sometimes companies have more staff than the minimum necessary. They may have reached this position because they were using an inefficient schedule which required more employees or they thought the extra personnel would help to cover absences. A small food processing firm needs 5 people working on a 24/7 basis. They employ 23 people, three more than the minimum necessary. They could have used the extra employees to build relief coverage into the schedule, but instead adopted a schedule in which the coverage varies between 5 and 6 people. Sometimes organizations adopt schedules that produce fluctuating coverage because they like the work pattern even though it is a poor match for their requirements. For example, a warehouse needs at least 3 people working around the clock. They chose a schedule with a 6-on-3-off pattern because their employees thought it would be better than the current schedule. Because of their staff size, however, the coverage varied between 2 and 3 people. To maintain the minimum coverage levels, the company was forced to hire 3 more employees. The coverage now varies between 3 and 4 people. In this case, choosing the wrong schedule increased their costs by 25% and it is still producing inconsistent coverage. Over-staffing Nobody wants to overstaff, yet it happens all the time. It occurs primarily for three reasons: The organization sets an annual target of less than 2,080 work hours per employee (<40 hours a week). For example, a police department has a labor contract that limits employees to 1,820 hours a year. This is an average of 35 hours a week. They need 5-person coverage using 10-hour rotating shifts. Because of the reduced work hours, they have to employ 30 officers. If they worked an average of 42 hours a week, they would only need 25 officers. The organization builds extra coverage into the schedule rather than using relief coverage. For example, small utility needs 4-person coverage at all times. Although they could do this with 16 people working an average of 42 hours a week, they employ 20 people to have 5-person coverage at all times. They could have employed 17 people (rotating shifts) or 18 people (fixed shifts) and built relief coverage time into the schedule which would have accomplished the same thing. The organization wants a schedule with no built-in overtime. A small hospital needs 3 CNAs on a 24/7 basis. Their 8-hour fixed shift schedule requires at least 12 people working an average of 42 hours a week. However, they are instructed to eliminate overtime from the schedule. To maintain the same coverage, they are forced to employ 15 people at 40 hours a week. Unnecessary Overtime People adopt work patterns that were intended for a different pay week. If they don't tweak the schedule, they could end up with highly unbalanced work weeks and more overtime than necessary. Example:  A small trucking company found a schedule that was intended for a Sun-Sat pay week. Since their pay week starts on Monday, the employees work 60 hours one week and 24 hours the next, and the company has to pay for an extra 3 hours of overtime per employee every week.     Minimal Weekends Off Employees want to get as many weekends off as possible. This may not be achieved if the organization chooses the wrong schedule or doesn't modify it to fit their pay week. A nursing home has a schedule with several split weekends in which employees work either Saturday or Sunday instead of both. A different pattern would have provided more full weekends off. Many work patterns work best for a certain pay week. For example, a popular 8-hour rotating shift schedule pattern that requires only 4 or 5 consecutive days of work provides 1 weekend off every four weeks - only if the pay week begins on Sunday. Trying to use this pattern with a Monday start will mean the workers never get a full weekend off. Conclusions When organizations select a schedule that is not matched to their specific resources or requirements, employees can suffer from fewer full weekends off and the organization can suffer from ineffective coverage and higher costs.

This is the second post in a series on the subject of fatigue. In each post, I will focus on steps that management can take to address fatigue. In the first post, I noted that employees don't think they need more than 7 hours sleep. Managers may want to post articles explaining the impact of sleep debt and the need for more than 7 hours of sleep a day. Just run a Google search for "sleep debt" and copy of few of the articles. If you can find anything by William Dement, he is the subject matter expert. I doubt that doing this will change employee behavior, but it may help to justify any actions management undertakes to address fatigue. This post draws from a previous post in which I showed how early shift start times reduce the average hours of sleep for day shift workers (http://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=problems-with-early-morning-start-times). To summarize, people who start work at 7 a.m. sleep about 20 minutes more per night than those who start a 6 a.m. Changing shift start times is difficult because people build their lives outside of work around the shift start and end times. When I review employee surveys, they often list the pros and cons of early start times. They say that the best thing about their current schedule is that they get off early, giving them time to do all sorts of things. Then they turn around and say that the worst thing about their schedule is having to get up so early and always feeling tired. How do you resolve this dilemma? It's both the best and worst features of your schedule - at the same time. The other consideration with shift start times is traffic congestion. Later shift start times may require employees to spend extra time commuting. This takes time away from other activities. For those "other" activities to continue to take place, sleep is often the first thing sacrificed. Although many companies flex their hours to allow commuters to minimize time spent in traffic, this can be challenging for those with shiftwork operations.  Early start times affect more than just shift workers. I've seen articles about the impact of early school start times on student performance. Teenagers have an internal clock that makes it difficult for them to be alert early in the morning, suggesting that learning would improve if schools started at 9 a.m. instead of 8 a.m.