Is your business open more than 8 hours a day or more than 5 days a week? If so, do you have a set schedule for your employees, or are you creating a new schedule every week based on individual employee availability and preferences? A set schedule will benefit both you and your employees.

• You won't have to spend so much time creating new schedules.
• You won't have to struggle with being short-handed because you couldn't fill a time slot (i.e. a shift).
• Employees will appreciate knowing far in advance when they have to work and, more importantly, when they will be off.
• Employees like getting occasional weekends off (as opposed to having to work every Saturday, for example).

Unlike 24/7 schedules, free examples of schedules for your type of business are hard to find because there are too many possibilities: 

• Different hours of operation.
• Different coverage requirements.
• Different number of employees.
• Different mix of full-time and part-time employees.
• Different pay weeks.

What do schedules for less than 24/7 coverage look like? Well, that depends on all of the above variables. Here are 2 simple examples:

Example #1. Open 10 hours a day all week. Need at least 2-person coverage at all times. Busiest day is Monday. 4 full-time staff. Pay week begins on Thursday.

Each crew (A and B) has 2 employees working a 10-hour day shift (D10). Crew A begins the schedule in Week 1; Crew B begins in Week 2. After finishing the initial week, they rotate to the next week of the schedule. Crew A rotates to Week 2, while Crew B rotates to Week 1. They continue this 2-week pattern indefinitely. Note that Monday is the only day of the week with two D10s underneath it. That means both crews are scheduled to work on this busiest day of the week. Note that the schedule begins on Thu. Had we started with a different day, the 2-day break in Week 2 might not have fallen on the weekend (Sat & Sun).

Example #2. Open 14 hours a day (7 a.m. to 9 p.m.) on Mon-Sat. Need at least 1-person coverage at all times. Need 2-person coverage from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. 2 full-time staff and 2 part-time staff. Pay week begins on Saturday.
 

The two full-time employees (A & B) work a 2-week schedule on a 12-hour day shift (D12) that runs from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Employee A begins in Week 1, while Employee B begins in Week 2 of the schedule. After finishing the initial week, they rotate the the next week. Employee A rotates to Week 2 and Employee B rotates to Week 1. The two part-time employees (C & D) do not rotate. They work the same 3 days each week. C works a 5-hour afternoon shift (a5) from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Thu, Fri, and Sat. D works the same shift Mon, Tue, and Wed. The 5-hour shift overlaps the 12-hour shift from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. giving the company the 2-person coverage they are looking for.
 

We could keep going, but unless you happen to have the same combination of hours, coverage requirements, staff size/composition, and pay week, additional examples aren't going to be much help. So what's the best approach for creating a schedule? You can contact us for help (Request Quote) or you can follow the steps that we do (Employee Work Schedules).

During the coronavirus pandemic, organizations that employ first responders and critical workers want to minimize the risks associated with both public and employee interactions. Here are some scheduling strategies that can help:

Public Interactions
First responders and critical workers who are in close contact with the public, especially with people who might have virus, face a unique challenge. Their repeated exposures increase the chance of getting sick and not being able to perform their duties, or even worse, spreading it among their co-workers. How can managers of these frontline workers address this risk?

One approach would be to gradually rotate the staff through a 2-week furlough, so there's a reserve staff that hasn't been exposed to the virus. And, even if they have been exposed, keeping them away from work for that long will reduce the risk of spreading the virus to fellow workers.

In 24/7 operations, this can be done by adopting a 5-crew rotating shift schedule. If the organization is already on a 4-crew schedule, it would have to shrink the size of the crews by 20% to create 5 smaller crews. Here's an example of what this schedule would look like:

The way the schedule works is that each crew (A, B, C, D, and E) starts the schedule in the week shown next to them. After finishing the initial week, they rotate to the next week of the schedule. Crew A moves from Week 1 to Week 2, Crew B moves from Week 2 to Week 3, and so on. Crew E moves from Week 5 up to Week 1. All five crews continue rotating through this 5-week pattern for as long as needed.

Notice that there are 14 consecutive days off from Friday in Week 1 to Thursday in Week 3. This is the 2-week furlough mentioned above. If you only pay for the hours worked, the employees will average 35.2 hours a week when you factor in the overtime from the two 48-hour work weeks (Weeks 1 and 4). If you pay for an extra 40 hours of vacation time during Week 2 of the schedule, they will be paid an average of 43.2 hours a week over the 5-week period.

Employee Interactions
The secondary concern of these organizations is having sick or exposed employees spreading the virus to other employees. Here's an article I saw regarding this:  https://shift-work.com/news/news/11-steps-you-can-take-today-to-keep-your-employees-safe-and-your-shift-work-operation-going/

As this article states, 24/7 operations can temporarily switch to using two 10-hour shifts that are separated by 2 hours each. This will minimize contact during shift turnovers/handoffs, and it frees up time that might be used for cleaning and sanitizing. This may not be practical for smaller groups, but the concept has merit and maybe can be modified to suit your unique circumstances. 

How do you come up with a 10-hour schedule with only 2 shifts a day? Simple. You adopt any 12-hour pattern and replace the two 12-hour shifts with two 10-hour shifts. You could adopt the 5-week pattern shown above or any other popular 12-hour pattern that uses 4 crews.  

If anyone comes up with other scheduling work-arounds during this pandemic, please let me know and I'll try to pass them on. Thanks.

The best schedule for any group that works 24/7 depends primarily on 2 things: (1) the workload distribution, and (2) employee preferences. The workload distribution and associated coverage requirements should be the starting point for all scheduling decisions. Starting with anything else will lead to ineffective or inefficient solutions. Read this article for a more complete explanation: https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=the-real-purpose-of-a-shift-schedule.

Workload Distribution. If the workload is steady at all times, 8-hour or 12-hour shifts would be the best choice. If the workload varies by time-of-day, you will either need to allocate more staff to certain shifts or adopt a schedule with overlapping shifts (e.g., 10-hour shifts or combined 8 and 12-hour shifts). If the workload varies by day-of-the-week (or weekdays vs. weekends), you will need a custom-designed work pattern.

Employee Preferences. If you ask employees for their preferences, roughly 80% will say 8-hour shifts. However, if you show them examples of 8 and 12-hour schedules, 80% will prefer the 12-hour schedules. That's why it's important for them to see actual examples rather than just voicing an opinion on what they want.

There is more than just shift length to consider, of course. Should you have fixed shifts or rotating shifts (https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Fixed_Shifts)? What are the best shift start/end times (https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=fatigue-in-the-workplace-early-day-shift-start-times)? What's the best way to handle absence coverage (https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=how-to-cover-absences)?

If you would like to learn more, please fill out this form to get a quote for our schedule design services (Request Quote).

I had a client from a local motel ask for help with the staffing and scheduling of her motel's housekeepers and maintenance staff. She said these two groups were running up big overtime bills. The managers complained about being under-staffed and over-burdened with scheduling issues.

I'm going to describe what I did to address these problems because I think they are common to many hotels, motels, and bed & breakfast establishments.
 

I started by asking my client how long it took the employees to do their jobs. She said the housekeepers only needed 8 hours a day, while the maintenance crew was active for 16 hours day. Both jobs were needed 7 days a week. Then I asked her how many people she needed at work each day.
 

The housekeepers needed 9-person coverage on an 8/7 basis (8 hours/day for 7 days/week). I told her that this would require at least 12 employees. They could be organized into 4 crews of 3 people each. This was quite a few less than the 16 people they currently employed. However, because this group had a high absence rate, my client decided to increase the crew size to 4 people. This was probably more extra coverage than necessary, but it avoided layoffs. This would completely eliminate the need for overtime to cover absences. They would work a 4-week schedule in which three weeks were 40 hours and one week was 48 hours. This would average 42 hours a week over the 4-week period.

The maintenance crew needed 1-person coverage in the mornings and evenings. They needed 2-person coverage in the afternoons. This would require three 8-hour shifts. Because they worked fixed shifts, this would take six employees (2 per shift). I laid out a 2-week pattern for my client. In order to give everyone 40 hours of work each week, there would be 3 days a week in which both employees on each shift were scheduled to work.

I suggested that she consider two 10-hour shifts instead of three 8-hour shifts. The shifts would overlap for 4 hours giving them the desired 2-person coverage for part of the afternoon. This would only require 4 employees and there would only be one day a week in which all 4 employees had to work. She decided that the absence rate was low enough in this group that it wouldn't be necessary to build in extra coverage like she did with the housekeepers. Due to various problems with some of the maintenance staff, layoffs were not a concern for her.
 

Do you have a similar situation in your hotel or B&B? Can't figure out the best staff size? Have trouble maintaining the right coverage? Are you experiencing high overtime levels or absences that can't be covered? Instead of having a manager create a new schedule every week, you need a set schedule that produces the desired coverage with minimal staffing/overtime costs. Please contact us today for help. Here's a link to request a quote for our services.

During this past week, I was contacted by two foreign companies with labor contracts that limited the annual hours of work for their employees. They wanted me to design schedules that didn't exceed an annual target (1,712 in one case and 1,816 in the other).
 

To “simplify” the assignment, I converted the annual figures into weekly numbers by dividing the annual hours by 52 weeks: 

• 1,712 hours/year divided by 52 is 32.9 hours/week
• 1,816 hours/year divided by 52 is 34.9 hours/week 

With 12-hour shifts, the average weekly hours worked depends on the number of crews. Here are the averages:  

• 4 crews work an average of 3.5 shifts a week or 42 hours a week
• 5 crews work an average of 2.8 shifts a week or 33.6 hours a week
• 6 crews work an average of 2.33 shifts a week or 28 hours a week 

A 5-crew schedule would only work with rotating shifts, whereas the 4-crew or 6-crew schedules would work with either fixed or rotating shifts. To minimize the staffing requirements, we decided to use the 5-crew approach with rotating 12-hour shifts that average 33.6 hours/week. This worked fine for the company with the higher limit (34.9 hours/week), but not for the other company (32.9 hours/week).
 

This could be resolved by either incorporating a 30-minute unpaid meal break or scheduling a vacation period every year to reduce the hours of work. This starts to get complicated quickly, so I won't go into all the details here. I just wanted to show you how this sort of challenge can be addressed.

When people discuss shift schedules, they tend to focus on the key schedule features like the frequency of weekends off, the number of consecutive days off, how quickly you change shifts, and how many shifts in-a-row you have to work. These features may be important for the people working the schedule, but they overlook the reason for having a schedule in the first place. So much attention has been devoted to all these schedule features that the schedule's purpose has almost been forgotten.

Why do you need a schedule for your employees anyway? Is it to attract and retain good workers? Is it to keep the current workforce happy and motivated? Is it to minimize overtime? Although all of these things are important, they are not the fundamental reason for having a schedule. 

The basic purpose of a schedule is to ensure that you have the right number of the right people at work at the right time, in other words, to match the coverage with the workload. This is sometimes called effective employee utilization. A secondary goal is to minimize costs for the organization, which is often called efficient resource utilization. In short, the schedule enables the organization to effectively and efficiently carry out its responsibilities.

A schedule pattern may be very appealing to employees, but if it doesn't fulfill the essential goals of optimizing coverage and doing it efficiently, it's not good for the organization and should not be considered. If you don't have enough people at work, the organization's mission will be compromised. If you have too many people at work, you're wasting its precious resources. Once the schedule's purpose is achieved, only then can you search for options that maxmize employee satisfaction.

You can read more about this here: https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Shift_Schedule_Design_for_Dummies. 

Search for information about 24/7 schedules and you'll find multiple websites showing examples of popular 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.
 

This is highly misleading. There are three reasons why:

1. Coverage. Smaller organizations rarely need the same number of people working at all times. Yet the free templates found on the Internet produce constant coverage on a 24/7 basis. The primary reason you have a schedule is to match the coverage with the workload, so why would you want a schedule that doesn't do that? It would be a huge waste of your resources.
    
2. Staffing. Each template works best with a specific number of crews (usually 4). If your staff size isn't a multiple of this number, the crews will not be the same size which will result in uneven coverage. Another staffing issue has to do with schedule attractiveness. Some templates look great, but require way more employees than other, more efficient patterns. Don't get seduced by a schedule's attractiveness.
    
3. 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 in the loss of weekends off for employees. 

So, if looking through popular work patterns is not a good way to find a new 24/7 shift schedule, what's the best approach?
 

You should always start with the workload distribution and the associated coverage requirements. How many people do you need at work on each shift? Does this stay the same all week?
 

When we design schedules, we compare the coverage requirements with your staff size and the average hours worked each week to determine what is feasible. Sometimes, overtime may need to be built into the schedule to avoid gaps in coverage. Occasionally there may be more staff than necessary, so we'll show you different ways to utilize these "extra" resources.

We then evaluate your schedule preferences to see if this creates any problems. If the resources are adequate for the coverage and scheduling preferences, we start the actual shift schedule design. Often, we can apply common scheduling patterns as a starting point, and modify them to fit your unique circumstances.

We create several different shift schedule options to show you the range of possibilities, such as the number of consecutive days worked, different shift lengths, relief coverage, and so on. The goal is to satisfy your specifications and explore possibilities you may not have considered.

What is a better schedule anyway?

Ask employees, and some will tell you, "10-hour shifts from Mon-Thu." Others may say, "12-hour fixed shifts with every other weekend off." The common themes are the preferred shift length and format (fixed shifts vs. rotating shifts).

Ask managers, and some will say, "We need more coverage on the 2nd shift because that's the busiest part of the day." Others will say, "We need to hire more staff, but upper management has a lid on hiring" or "Overtime is killing us, so we need a schedule that will reduce it." The common themes with this group are coverage and costs.

Unfortunately, the best solutions for employees probably will not produce the best results for managers. For example, 10-hour shifts in 24/7 operations require at least 25% more staff than 8 or 12-hour shifts. And fixed shifts can increase the staffing requirements even further. Ouch! Some of the scheduling preferences just aren't feasible, and some may compromise the organization's mission.

Most organizations simply can't afford to adopt the types of schedules that employees wish they had. So the question becomes, will the best solutions for managers produce good results for employees? I believe they can. Employees won't get their fantasy schedule, but they will get an attractive pattern with good breaks and maximum possible weekends off.

Here is how I define the "best" shift schedules. They should address three goals: (1) optimize coverage, (2) minimize costs, and (3) maximize employee satisfaction. These goals are in priority order. In other words, when designing a schedule, you should start with the coverage allocation, then work on keeping costs down, and finally on what makes employees happy. Reversing this order can wreak havoc on the organization. Here's another article that explains this in much greater detail:  https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Shift_Schedule_Design_for_Dummies. 

One of the most popular 12-hour police schedules is the 2-3-2 pattern, also known as the Pitman (or sometimes Pittman) schedule. The reason for its popularity is you only have to work 2 or 3 days in a row and you get every other weekend off as a 3-day weekend. No wonder so many people think it's the best. But you probably didn't know that there are some big downsides to this pattern for the night shift.

Let me explain.

Most people working the night shift tend to stay awake during the daytime on their days off (roughly 75% of the people on 12-hour shifts and 50% on 8-hour shifts). With the 2-3-2 pattern, this means that every 2 or 3 days, people are flip-flopping when they sleep. This can be really tough on sleep and alertness. In fact, it's even worse than most rotating shift schedules that rotate on a weekly basis.

Another problem with the Pitman has to do with the organization's overtime/pay week, since that dictates what days you get off for the weekend. If your pay week begins on Mon, Wed, or Fri, the 3-day weekend will be Sat, Sun, Mon instead of Fri, Sat, Sun. For the night shift, this means you have to work Friday night, so it really doesn't feel like you're getting the whole weekend off.  

If your schedule has fixed shifts, I recommend that each shift select it's own pattern. This way the day shift can work the Pitman while the night shift can work something else that is better for alertness and safety. The best choice on the night shift is the 4-on-4-off shift schedule. That's because there are fewer changes from work-days to off-days, meaning a slower rotation of when people sleep. Other 12-hour patterns lie somewhere in between these two extremes: Pitman and 4-on-4-off.