Question for Visitors

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Question for Visitors

December 17th, 2012 at 1:45 pm star

I was looking over my posts and realized that no one is commenting on them. Instead of ranting about topics I have a strong opinion about, I'd like to hear from you. What are you looking for? What is it that you need the most? Let me make a list of some of the possibilities:

Examples of schedules for different situations
Information about the advantages and disadvantages of different scheduling options
Criteria for selecting a new schedule
Scheduling tradeoffs, e.g., consecutive days of work vs. weekends off
Steps for implementing a new schedule
Discussion of common shiftwork issues (high OT, variable workloads, etc.)
Software recommendations and warnings

If you leave your contact information, I'll try to respond to everyone who leaves a comment. Thanks.

Posted in Miscellaneous by Bruce Oliver

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Sharon says:

January 29th, 2013 at 2:39 pm star

I work the 12 hour shift, and I love it. There is one thing that our crew doesn't like, the way we have to use our vacation time. We all get two weeks paid vacation. We are the only department that works 12 hour shifts, so when we take vacation, we have to take a regular 8 hour day and a half in order to make up our full 12 hour workday. My sister works 12 hours as well, but at that company, when they take a day's vacation it is for one 12 hour day, a not a regular 8 hour day and a half. Needless to say, this will eat up our two weeks of vacation in almost a week. Any suggestions on how to get our management to see our view on how this is not fair for us when the other employees use their 40 hours of vacation is used in one week where our 1 week vacation uses up most of our 80 hours of vacation. For example: If we were to take 5 days of vacation, it would leave us with only 20 hours of vacation time left out of 80 hours of vacation time. Which would be one 12 hour day and 8 hours left. I know that I am probably ranting, but I was trying to get the point across.

Bruce Oliver says:

January 29th, 2013 at 8:35 pm star

Sharon,

Whenever a company changes its shift schedule, it should strive to be cost neutral, i.e. no one should gain or lose money as a result of the new schedule. What you want would violate that principle. You are essentially asking for 50% more hours of vacation per year. Increasing the cost of this important benefit by 50% could put your employer in financial jeopardy. I have seen organizations that failed to revise their paid time-off policies when they changed to 12-hour shifts. They either had to eliminate other benefits or in most cases changed back to 8-hour shifts. You would be surprised how much this costs. It's not a trivial expense.

Please take a moment to consider the company's perspective. With 8-hour shifts, the cost of someone taking a vacation day is 8 hours + 4 hours of overtime (at time and a half). With 12-hour shifts, the cost of someone taking a vacation day is 12 hours + 6 hours of overtime. So it costs 12 hours pay with 8s vs. 18 hours pay with 12s, or 50% more with the longer shifts. If these costs were known ahead of time, I don't know any companies that would ever adopt 12-hour shifts.

I understand that employees see this is a loss, but it really isn't. With 12-hour shifts, you get twice as many days off as you did with 8-hour shifts. Now you want the same number of vacation days off, despite working fewer days per year. Besides, with 12-hour schedules, you can use your vacation strategically to get longer stretches of days off than you ever could with 8s. With some patterns you can take just 4 days of vacation and get 2 full weeks off.

Shiftwork consultants will unanimously agree that all paid time-off policies be converted to hours per year rather than days. This way the schedule change will remain cost-neutral. I hope you can understand this alternative point of view.

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