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.