I started by showing the Chief what the current schedule looked like on a spreadsheet. It's a 6-week pattern with 6 teams working an average of 56 hours a week. The only way to get rid of the overtime is to add more staff. Shall I repeat that? The ONLY WAY to get rid of the overtime is by hiring more staff. Not changing the shift length. Not changing the work pattern. MORE EMPLOYEES is the only way.

With his coverage requirements (4 people at all times), the current schedule required 12 employees. By increasing the staff to 16, they could lower the average hours worked to 42 hours/week. It didn't matter whether they used 8-hour, 12-hour, or 24-hour shifts. All three approaches (with the exception of 8-hour fixed shifts, which would require 18 people) would need 16 employees averaging 42 hours a week.

What the city folks should have asked was:

1. Would adding 4 more employees cost less than the current approach (12 employees at 56 hours/week vs. 16 employees at 42 hours/week)?
   
   
2. And, if it is, is it worth disrupting the workforce and causing numerous personnel issues?

Overtime is really a substitute for staffing. In 24/7 operations, a little overtime can save a bundle. In this city's case, the answer is not so clear. However, the belief that changing to a different shift length would eliminate the overtime is not accurate. The only way to lower the overtime would be to hire more staff. 

Unfortunately, this can be in direct conflict with the common employer goal of maximizing employee utilization. For work schedules, this means achieving maximum coverage for the lowest possible cost. In 24/7 operations, “lowest cost” often requires keeping the headcount as low as possible and adopting a schedule that averages 42 hours a week (Why Eliminating Overtime in 24/7 Schedules Can Be Costly).

Thus, when it comes to choosing the best work schedule, management and the workers have different goals. Employees focus on the time off. Managers focus on minimizing headcount and cost. So, how do you strike a balance between these opposing points of view?

If you start from the employee perspective, you could end up with something that the employer just can’t afford. A good example is a company that works 24/7 and has a relatively steady workload. The employees want to change from 8-hour shifts to 10-hour shifts. This would require the company to hire 25% more staff (10 hour shifts). For most companies, this is clearly infeasible.

But, if you ignore what the employees want, you risk having high turnover, increased absences, and reduced productivity. As Mike Michalko recently commented on my website, “Too little emphasis on the employee leads to turnover and the high costs associated with onboarding and training. This is aggravated with needed positions in a highly competitive job market. If an employer doesn't address employee satisfaction, they'll end up training someone else's workforce.”

So, where do you start? I think it’s important to reflect on the reason you have a schedule in the first place. Most people think of the schedule as an on-off work pattern for a specific shift length, for example, a 5-on-3-off pattern for 8-hour shifts or a 2-3-2 pattern for 12-hour shifts. While it's true that the shift length and work pattern are essential components of the schedule, they don’t explain why the schedule is needed. 

 
The real purpose of the schedule is to ensure proper coverage:  the right number of people with the right skills at the right time and place. If the coverage isn’t adequate or matched to regular variations in the workload, the group won’t be able to provide the amount or quality of product/service expected by its customers. The schedule ensures that the organization effectively fulfills its purpose of satisfying the needs of its customers.

Therefore, the top priority for the schedule must be to maintain a level of coverage that matches customer demand. In most cases, more than one approach (usually different shift lengths) is possible. I’ve previously discussed how the hours of operation and the workload variability dictate the best choice of shift length(s):  (Shift Length Selection).

As an example, consider a company that operates 24/7 and needs 2 people working at all times. They first have to decide whether to use fixed shifts and rotating shifts. As a general rule, employees prefer fixed shifts whereas employers prefer rotating shifts (Fixed shifts vs. rotating shifts). In this example, we’ll assume they choose fixed shifts. Next, they have a choice between 8-hour shifts or 12-hour shifts. The 8-hour fixed shifts will require 9 employees working an average of 37.3 hours a week, whereas the 12-hour fixed shifts will require 8 employees averaging 42 hours a week. They decide to narrow the search to these two approaches.

For each approach, several different work patterns are possible. These patterns will vary in terms of the number of consecutive days of work and the nature of the days off. In general, the longer the blocks of work days, the longer the blocks of days off and the longer the weekends off.

Once the alternative patterns are developed, the company should involve the employees who will be working the schedule (Strategic Schedulers Enjoy Remarkable Success). The workers must choose between longer days of work more time off. They also must choose between longer blocks of work days and longer blocks of days off. The majority will decide how important work-life balance is and what sacrifices they are willing to make to achieve it.

To summarize, these are the recommended steps in changing employee work schedules:

1.       Establish the organization’s coverage requirements by time of day and by day of the week. Do you need the same number of people all day long? Maybe there is less work during the nighttime. Do you need the same number of people throughout the week? Maybe there is less work during the weekends. Here’s an example for a company that works 24/7:

2.       Identify different approaches (usually two different shift lengths) that will efficiently achieve the organization’s coverage requirements. The hours of operation and regular workload variations will play a key role in this step. Approaches that are highly inefficient will not be considered, e.g., unnecessary double coverage or excessive staffing requirements.

3.       Find alternative work patterns for each approach. Alternatives will vary the number of consecutive days of work, which will affect the amount and the nature of the time off.

4.       Involve employees in the review of all the options and final selection of the schedule. This gives them the opportunity to decide whether the improved time off is worth the (a) longer days of work, (b) more consecutive days of work, and/or (c) the average weekly hours of work.

Although work-life balance is not the starting point when changing work schedules, it is addressed by identifying different approaches/patterns that satisfy the coverage requirements, and then allowing employees to review, discuss, and vote on their preferred option. Shift Schedule Design can help you find the best approaches and associated work patterns. Please click on the link below to get started:

Request a quote

• 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).

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'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.

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.

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. 

1. Continue to rely on weekend overtime. To avoid alienating the current workforce, management can continue relying on weekend overtime to meet demand. Unfortunately, the situation will eventually become worse with excessive costs, lower productivity, quality and safety issues, and personnel problems such as increased absenteeism and turnover. By the time management realizes this, employees will have become addicted to the overtime and it will be difficult to change anything.
    
2. Hire a weekend crew. The company can keep the current employees on their Monday through Friday schedule and hire new employees for a weekend crew. Because it's difficult to find and retain good part-time employees, companies usually hire a full-time weekend crew that works 12-hour shifts on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Double coverage every Friday is expensive. So is the common practice of paying the weekend crew for 40 hours instead of the 36 hours they actually work. Less experience on the weekend crew results in lower productivity. Personnel that work weekends often do so to get their foot in the door. After a year or more of waiting to be hired, they may get frustrated, leading to increased turnover and absenteeism. You can read more here: https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=weekend-crews.
    
3. Adopt a 24/7 schedule. While the two options discussed above minimize the impact on the current workforce, they have some serious disadvantages. They might be safe from a labor relations perspective, but the cost can be considerable. The best way to avoid those costs is to adopt a 24/7 schedule. I've previously recommended a process to follow:  https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Schedule_Selection_Process. I've also discussed incremental steps to take: https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Expand_from_5_to_7_Days. For examples of different 24/7 schedules, please check this out: https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Schedule_Examples.

I have never attempted to understand this state's complex requirements and exceptions. I always advise prospective clients to have their legal representative research this before having me design schedules with anything other than 8-hour shifts.

Recently, I was contacted by Cindy Opeka of O'Peka HR Consulting who stated that she might be able to help. I don't have first-hand experience with her expertise, but thought I would share her comments with you. Here's what she said:

"I'm currently working with a client who is dealing with the Department of Labor. They are up against thousands of dollars in fines. If you work with CA customers, I'd be happy to share info at no charge. I just want to help small employers avoid penalties."

If you would like to reach her, the website is https://hrsolutions-oc.com/. Her email address is: copeka@comcast.net and her phone number is:  (916) 337-4719.

In the U.S., most non-salaried employees are eligible for overtime after working more than 40 hours in a week. Usually this is based on the hours worked during the pay week.

Some pay weeks are better than others when it comes to 7-day work schedules. For example, with 8-hour shifts, the best days to start the pay week are Sat, Sun, or Mon. That's because employees can occasionally get a 3 or 4-day weekend off. If the pay week begins any other day of the week, employees can never get more than a 2-day weekend off since they would be working less than 40 hours in that week.

Some schedule patterns work fine with a pay period that begins any day of the week. Others only work if they start on a certain day. Trying to make one of those patterns start on a different day would compromise weekends off or create highly uneven work weeks such as 60 hours one week and 24 hours the next.

Pay weeks that begin at Midnight can create overtime unnecessarily. For instance, on a 12-hour shift schedule with shifts that begin at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., the night shift at the end of the pay week will have 5 hours in one pay week and 7 hours in the next pay week. Or, on an 8-hour shift schedule with a night shift that begins at 11 p.m., the last night shift of the pay week will have 1 hour in the first pay week and 7 hours in the next. Employees could end up working 33 hours the first week and 47 hours the next.

Pay weeks are often set by payroll personnel who aren't familiar with groups that work more than just Monday to Friday. And they are highly reluctant to change the pay week once it has been established. That means you'll have to avoid certain schedules (despite their attractiveness) or simply live with the negative consequences.

There are so many different pay weeks and schedule patterns that it's hard to say in advance whether there will be problems or not. Just be aware that pay weeks beginning on Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, or at Midnight could impact weekends off or cause additional overtime.

Resource Changes

Either the staff size or the group's budget is changing. If the group is getting bigger, there may be opportunities to use the extra capacity to reduce the average weekly hours, boost coverage on one or more shifts, or build relief coverage into the schedule to cover some of the absences. If the group is getting smaller, the average weekly hours of work may have to be increased to maintain the minimum coverage requirements.

Sometimes upper management wants to cut costs but not change the headcount. The group will have to do a cost analysis of overtime in the schedule vs. overtime outside the schedule to determine the best approach. You can read about this here:  http://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Overtime_Issues. The group may also be forced to consider other schedule changes that will lower costs as discussed here:  http://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Cost_Reduction.

New Business Requirements

When the demand for an organization's products or services changes (usually by increasing), this may require them to hire more employees or make more effective use of their current employees. In either case, it's a good time to align the coverage with the workload. We start the schedule design process by evaluating work volumes and the associated coverage requirements by time of day and day of the week. We also consider absence coverage if the resources are adequate.

Employee Satisfaction

When employees search for a new schedule, they are primarily looking for ways to increase the days off and weekends off. When managers cite employee satisfaction as a reason for changing schedules, they hope that the change will reduce absenteeism and employee turnover, or improve productivity and morale issues. Once business requirements are satisfied, we will evaluate solutions that maximize days off and weekends off and, if possible, reduce the need for mandatory overtime.

1. Better staff utilization – coverage that is consistent and matched with the workload
2. Reduced labor costs – lower wages and/or overtime
3. Greater employee satisfaction – more days off and/or more weekends off

Unfortunately, doing well with one goal often means compromising the other two.

Here's an example. Suppose the employees want a 10-hour shift schedule to get one more day off each week and possibly more weekends off. This would certainly help the third goal: greater employee satisfaction. But what would it do to the other two goals?

Since the 10-hour shifts would overlap for 6 hours a day, this would exceed the physical capacity of the work area. Employees from one of the overlapping shifts would be sitting around with nothing to do for 6 hours – every day of the week. This is definitely not a good way to use the staff.

What about labor costs? Well, since the 10-hour shifts would require the organization to work 30 hours a day (three 10-hour shifts), the additional hours of coverage would necessitate an increase in the staff size by 25%. This certainly would not save money.

So how do you find a schedule that satisfies all 3 goals? Simple. Instead of starting the search for a new schedule with a focus on Goal #3: Greater Employee Satisfaction, you start with #1: Better Staff Utilization. You then move to the second goal, and finally to the third goal.

Here are the steps we follow when designing a new employee shift schedule:

• Feasibility. We start by comparing your coverage requirements and scheduling preferences with your staff size to determine the feasibility. Sometimes the resources are inadequate, so different approaches may have to be considered.
  
  
• Possibilities. 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.
  
  
• Work patterns. In this third step, 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.
  
  
• Options. 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, alternative patterns, and so on.

This process ensures that the schedules we create are effective with all three goals, not just one of them.

Sometimes it's possible to reduce overtime by swapping where it occurs. If you increase the overtime within the regular work schedule (e.g., by increasing the average hours of work from 40 to 42 per week), it may be possible to reduce the need for overtime outside the schedule. In some cases, the total overtime will be reduced.

I know, you're going to argue that overtime should be given to those employees who want it the most and volunteer for it. That's fine - up to a point. But when the overtime becomes excessive or when it continues so long that employees become addicted to it, then it's a problem. Or when you run out of volunteers and have to rely on mandatory, forced overtime to achieve or maintain the desired coverage levels - that's not good.

Here are two examples that illustrate the benefits of increasing overtime in the schedule to reduce overtime that occurs outside the schedule.

Example #1
A police department needs two people working at all times on a 24/7 basis. They are using 9 officers with an 8-hour rotating shift schedule because they don't want any overtime in the schedule. The problem is, like most law enforcement agencies, they have a high absence rate which causes their overtime to bust the budget.

If they built a small amount of overtime into the schedule, they could free up enough capacity to have a full week of relief coverage. They would need a 9-week schedule in which 8 weeks were devoted to the required coverage and 1 week was devoted to relief coverage. All 9 employees would share the relief responsibility equally. With rotating shifts, this relief coverage could be used to cover absences on any shift. It doesn't mean the relief employee would work all week; it simply means they are on-call for that week. If someone was scheduled for vacation, the relief person would work the vacationer's schedule that week and nothing more. If no one took vacation, the relief person could work a Mon-Fri day shift or go to training or work on a special project.

So the tradeoff is 2 hours of overtime for all 9 employees every week (18 hours of total overtime) in exchange for the flexibility to cover 40 to 48 hours of absences a week. Granted, someone won't be on vacation every week, but isn't it compelling to use 18 hours of OT in the schedule to avoid an average of 42 hours of OT outside the schedule? And think of the time saved trying to find volunteers to cover any absences, or the aggravation of forcing a junior employee to do a couple of double shifts when no one else volunteers.

Example #2
This example comes from a company that I designed schedules for earlier this week. They have 8 employees and need 2-person coverage at all times on a 24/7 basis. This would be simple if the 8 employees worked an average of 42 hours a week. The problem was that upper management would not approve a schedule with overtime in it. So I created three schedule options using a combination of 12-hour and 4-hour shifts. The 8 employees will have to work three 12-hour shifts and one 4-hour shift or 40 hours every week.

Although the schedules had no overtime in them, there were two 8 hour periods with only 1-person coverage instead of the desired 2-person coverage. The good news is that the organization had three supervisors to fill these open slots. The bad news is that the supervisors already had a tough time trying to be available on a 24/7 basis. When you added the two extra shifts plus relief coverage for all the other absences including their own, the supervisors were working way too many hours a week and were burned out.

I recommended that the client hire one more employee and have the 9 employees work a 12-hour schedule that averaged 42 hours a week. This would have allowed them to build a full week of relief coverage into the schedule. There would be no coverage gaps and a lot less need for OT to cover absences. I was unable to convince them that was the best solution. And believe me, I gave it my best shot. I'll probably hear from them again when the supervisors start bailing out for more attractive work environments with other employers. It's too bad that management's desire to avoid overtime in the employee's schedule is ruining the job for the supervisors. Replacing those supervisors is going to be a lot more expensive and painful.

When organizations struggle to make ends meet, overtime often becomes a target in their budget reduction plans. Although reducing overtime may be financially prudent for most departments, it is a poor choice for those that operate around-the-clock. Here's why.

The simplest and most common way to provide 24/7 coverage is with four crews. If the crews work 40 hours a week, that provides 160 hours of coverage (4 crews * 40 hours = 160 hours). The problem is that there are 168 hours in a week (24 hours * 7 days = 168 hours).

The easiest way to close the 8-hour gap is to have the four crews work a small amount of overtime (an average of two hours per employee every week). With 8-hour shift schedules, that requires three hours extra pay for each employee, or a 7.5 percent increase.  With 12-hour shift schedules, that requires four hours of additional pay for each employee, or a 10 percent increase.

If an organization is prohibited from using overtime, it must choose one of the following approaches to avoid gaps in coverage:

1. Use part-time employees. Some smaller organizations can do this, though it can be a challenge to find and retain good part-time employees. With larger groups, it can be difficult to fit part-time employees into the schedule without having one shift staffed solely with part-timers. This approach will increase costs by 5 percent. Although slightly less expensive than using overtime, it has limited applicability.

2. Use more than four crews. A schedule that uses more than four crews requires a larger headcount. If an organization does this, they usually allocate some of the extra work hours to training, relief, maintenance or special projects. Even if you ignore the cost of benefits for the additional employees (usually anywhere from 40 percent to 50 percent of the wages), this approach will increase costs by at least 25 percent.

3. Use a crewless schedule. Instead of scheduling groups of personnel (i.e. crews), you could develop a schedule for each individual employee. This approach also will require more employees than a typical four-crew schedule. The number depends on: (a) the shift length, (b) whether the shifts are rotating or fixed, and (c) the number of job categories/positions involved. This can increase costs anywhere from 7.7 percent to 50 percent if you ignore the cost of benefits. In most cases, this approach will cost more than using a four-crew schedule with built-in overtime.

Although overtime is often perceived as something to be avoided (because it requires a time-and-a-half pay premium), it is not the most expensive approach for providing 24/7 coverage. Using part-time employees to supplement four full-time crews is the least expensive solution, but this is only feasible in smaller groups. So, before banning overtime, it is important to recognize that the policy will force groups that operate around-the-clock to adopt schedules that are actually more expensive.

When organizations view overtime as an expense rather than a strategic tool, they often make three major mistakes:

• They staff for peak demand. In order to have enough resources on hand to respond to short-term fluctuations in demand, they over-staff instead of using overtime. Usually this is the most expensive approach.
  
  
• They sacrifice customer service. Without overtime, they are unable to respond to fluctuations in demand. In short, they sacrifice customer service to avoid overtime.
  
  
• They build up an inventory of excess product to have a cushion for demand variations. The cost of this inventory must be passed on to customers.
  
  

Here are three more articles on overtime.

Reasons for using overtime. Four valid reasons for using overtime are: (1) 24/7 coverage, (2) workload fluctuations, (3) staff variations, and (4) labor market considerations.

Overtime problems. High overtime, especially when it continues for an extended time period, has several potential drawbacks: (1) an overtime-dependent workforce, (2) safety and quality issues, (3) absenteeism, and (4) lower productivity.

Correcting overtime problems. To avoid overtime problems, you should regularly monitor overtime and absences. You also should understand the workload variations and take steps to improve the accuracy of your demand forecasts. Periodically, you should review your organization's overtime distribution policies to make sure they are working properly.

I thought you might like to read some of the typical comments from employees facing this major change:

• If we choose to go to 12-hour shifts, will everything over 8 per day still be overtime or will it change to only being over 40 hours a week?
  
  
• Seniority and how the people working those new shifts will be selected. Vacation/personal days (how they work). Holiday pay. Coverage of shifts for call-outs, sick days and vacation. Do we still get paid for not taking a lunch break? If we work 12-hours, how does that work?
  
  
• How will working a 24/7 work week will affect the wear and tear on the equipment used on a daily basis?
  
  
• Can this be done with an 8-hour shift? Does everyone have to work 12 hours?
  
  
• What about those of us who need all the OT we can get because our bills can't be paid without it? Do we get a second job?
  
  
• If I would have to work the overnight shift, everything in my life will be affected. I would also hope my pay to stay the same or get better.
  
  
• Overtime is very important to ALL of us because a lot of us are under-paid and need it to make ends meet. So please keep that in mind as well.
  
  
• The fact that we are being forced to make a decision that increases the company's profit, and in turn we have to bend over backwards to do it and get no sort of compensation to do it. It's bullshit and greedy.
  
  
• How does seniority relate to any of this?
  
  
• I understand the reason for 24/7 operation. However, this process to me is just another way management confronts challenges/issues. In short, the management team does not address the core problem. Rather they address the symptoms of the core problem.
  
  

Employee responses often depend on how the question is asked. If you simply ask whether they would mind working the weekends, you can expect the answer will be, "No way!" If the question is reframed to whether they would like 10% more pay and 78 more days off annually, you would probably get a completely different response. Responses also will be based on their specific concerns, such as the following:

• Employees may not understand or appreciate the economic and competitive reasons for running the business 7 days a week. Larger organizations often prepare a business case that discusses reasons for the change. You may not need to be this formal, but you must clearly explain and justify the need for a 24/7 schedule. Lacking a compelling reason for making this change, employees will assume the worst. Management is doing this to get rid of people they don't like. Management doesn't care about the workers or their families. Management is doing this to bust the union. Management is doing this for their convenience, etc., etc.
  
  
• Employees may be concerned about the unknowns of a new schedule. It's important to give them as much information as possible: days off, weekends off, maximum consecutive days of work, maximum consecutive days off, minimum consecutive days off, pay impact, paid time-off (vacations, holidays, bereavement leave, etc.) impact, and so on. They may need time to digest this information, so don't rush it. While there is no way to eliminate all the unknowns in advance, you should tell the workforce as much as you can. If you can know the absence rates and can estimate the overtime requirements, show them. If you are planning to change the vacation or holiday policies, let them know.
  
  
• Employees may misunderstand 24/7 schedules. When told the company will operate 7 days a week, they mistakenly think they will have to work every day of the week. They may have friends who are shift workers who have told them horror stories about 24/7 schedules. You will need to show them several different schedule examples and compare the number of days off, weekends off, and pay vs. the current schedule.

I highly recommend following a strategic schedule selection process. I have described this process elsewhere on my website. Here's a link: http://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Schedule_Selection_Process.

Overtime

Since four 10-hour shifts add up to 40 hours a week, some people believe 10-hour shifts will eliminate overtime from the work schedule. Unfortunately, this is not always the case as shown below:

A crew can consist of one to hundreds of officers. Unlike many 8 or 12-hour shift schedules that require 4 crews, 10-hour schedules require 5 or more crews. For example, to have 1-person coverage around-the-clock, you need 5 people if you use rotating shifts and 6 people if you use fixed shifts. To have 2-person coverage, you would need 10 people (5 crews of 2 each) with rotating shifts and 12 people (6 crews of 2 each) with fixed shifts.

The most common 10-hour schedules rely on 5 or 15 crews. These schedules average 42 hours a week, the same as most 8-hour and 12-hour schedules that use 4 crews. I occasionally get calls from Police Captains and Lieutenants who have tried to create a schedule on their own, but can't make it work. They didn't realize that the schedule needed an occasional 50-hour work week or that it required more crews. Overtime is unnecessary only when the schedule is comprised of 6 crews or 21 crews (and sometimes with a crewless schedule).

Overlapping Shifts

A schedule that uses three 10-hour shifts will have 6 hours a day in which the shifts overlap one another. There are two common ways to use the overlaps:

• Overlap each shift by two hours. Officers on the out-going shift can do their paperwork while officers on the in-coming shift are out on the street. This ensures continued coverage throughout the day. This approach tends to be preferred by the officers.
  
  
• Align the overlapping shifts with the busiest period of the day. Coverage can be boosted for 6, 12 or 16 hours a day depending on how the shifts are scheduled. I recommend this approach because the primary reason for having a schedule is to allocate the resources to match the workload. The downside is that it often requires unusual shift start/end times. This approach tends to be preferred by management.

Coverage Reduction

The biggest problem with 10-hour shifts is that they require more resources than 8-hour or 12-hour shifts. A 10-hour schedule requires more staff because the officers are working 30 hours a day (three 10-hour shifts). This will either require 25% more personnel or a 25% reduction in the coverage levels. In most cases, headcounts are frozen, so the impact is reduced coverage on each shift.

Even if sufficient staff is available, they are usually needed for other purposes such as absence coverage. Since the absence rates in most police departments are rather high, most Chiefs opt to use any “extra” staff in one of two ways:

• Increase coverage levels above the minimum. For example, a department needs a minimum of 3 officers on each shift. This requires at least 12 officers working an average of 42 hours a week. They use their staff of 16 officers to provide 4-person coverage. This allows for up to one absence on each shift.
  
  
• Build relief coverage into the schedule. This is often more efficient than increasing the coverage on each shift. For example, the same department only has 14 officers, so they adopt a 14-week rotating shift schedule in which 2 of the 14 weeks are devoted to relief coverage. This requires fewer staff and provides more flexible absence coverage.

When the "extra" coverage is lost, absences (like vacations, sick time, training, court time, etc.) will have to be covered using overtime. This is the most common reason for rejecting the switch to 10-hour shifts. This is such an important point that I have to repeat it. Adopting 10-hour shifts will reduce the coverage on each shift (except for the periods of overlapping shifts). Since part of this coverage provides a cushion for absences, the 10-hour shifts will result in much higher levels of overtime.

Absences

Some people believe that 10-hour shifts will reduce absences. Since the longer shifts provide one additional day off each week, this time can be used for doctor's appointments or other personal business. I am not aware of any studies that confirm this, but it seems possible. The Shift Length Experiment prepared by the Police Foundation did not report any significant reductions in sick leave when switching to 10s (http://www.policefoundation.org/publication/shift-length-experiment/). If there is an impact, it is undoubtedly small. 

Conclusions

10-hour shifts are universally popular with the officers. Chiefs or Sheriffs are aware of this, but lack of resources to make the change. From what I've seen, it's primarily the larger departments that have adequate resources to adopt 10s. Smaller departments (less than 30 officers) rarely have enough personnel. 

Overtime

Since four 10-hour shifts add up to 40 hours a week, some people believe 10-hour shifts will eliminate overtime from the work schedule. Unfortunately, this is not always the case as shown below:

A crew can consist of one to hundreds of officers. Unlike many 8 or 12-hour shift schedules that require 4 crews, 10-hour schedules require 5 or more crews. For example, to have 1-person coverage around-the-clock, you need 5 people if you use rotating shifts and 6 people if you use fixed shifts. To have 2-person coverage, you would need 10 people (5 crews of 2 each) with rotating shifts and 12 people (6 crews of 2 each) with fixed shifts.

The most common 10-hour schedules rely on 5 or 15 crews. These schedules average 42 hours a week, the same as most 8-hour and 12-hour schedules that use 4 crews. I occasionally get calls from Police Captains and Lieutenants who have tried to create a schedule on their own, but can't make it work. They didn't realize that the schedule needed an occasional 50-hour work week or that it required more crews. Overtime is unnecessary only when the schedule is comprised of 6 crews or 21 crews (and sometimes with a crewless schedule).

Overlapping Shifts

A schedule that uses three 10-hour shifts will have 6 hours a day in which the shifts overlap one another, producing double coverage. There are two common ways to use the overlaps:

• Overlap each shift by two hours. Officers on the out-going shift can do their paperwork while officers on the in-coming shift are out on the street. This ensures continued coverage throughout the day. This approach tends to be preferred by the officers.
  
  
• Align the overlapping shifts with the busiest period of the day. Coverage can be boosted for 6, 12 or 16 hours a day depending on how the shifts are scheduled. I recommend this approach because the primary reason for having a schedule is to allocate the resources to match the workload. The downside is that it often requires unusual shift start/end times. This approach tends to be preferred by management.

Coverage Reduction

The biggest problem with 10-hour shifts is that they require more resources than 8-hour or 12-hour shifts. A 10-hour schedule requires more staff because the officers are really covering 30 hours a day (three 10-hour shifts). This will either require 25% more personnel or a 25% reduction in the coverage levels. In most cases, headcounts are frozen, so the impact is reduced coverage on each shift.

Even if sufficient staff is available, they are usually needed for other purposes such as absence coverage. Since the absence rates in most police departments are rather high, most Chiefs opt to use any “extra” staff in one of two ways:

• Increase coverage levels above the minimum. For example, a department needs 3 officers on each shift. This requires at least 12 officers working an average of 42 hours a week. They use their staff of 16 officers to provide 4-person coverage. This allows for up to one absence on each shift.
  
  
• Build relief coverage into the schedule. This is often more efficient than increasing the coverage on each shift. For example, the same department only has 14 officers, so they adopt a 14-week rotating shift schedule in which 2 of the 14 weeks are devoted to relief coverage. This requires fewer staff and provides more flexible absence coverage.

When the "extra" coverage is lost, absences (like vacations, sick time, training, court time, etc.) will have to be covered using overtime. This is the most common reason for rejecting the switch to 10-hour shifts. This is such an important point that I have to repeat it. Adopting 10-hour shifts will reduce the coverage on each shift (except for the periods of overlapping shifts). Since part of this coverage provides a cushion for absences, the 10-hour shifts will result in much higher levels of overtime.

Absences

Some people believe that 10-hour shifts will reduce absences. Since the longer shifts provide one additional day off each week, this time can be used for doctor's appointments or other personal business. I am not aware of any studies that confirm this, but it seems possible. The Shift Length Experiment prepared by the Police Foundation did not report any significant reductions in sick leave when switching to 10s (http://www.policefoundation.org/publication/shift-length-experiment/). If there is an impact, it is undoubtedly small. 

Conclusions

10-hour shifts are universally popular with the officers. Chiefs or Sheriffs are aware of this, but often lack adequate resources to make the change. The simple fact that 10-hour shifts require at least 25% more staff than other approaches means that few departments can afford them. From what I've seen, it's primarily the larger departments that have adequate resources to adopt 10s. Smaller departments (less than 30 officers) rarely have enough personnel. 

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.

Example 1

A group works 24/7. It needs 2-person coverage for 16 hours and 1-person coverage for the remaining 8 hours when the work volumes are lightest. They have 7 employees working 8-hour rotating shifts. One of the employees spends a weekend searching for free schedule examples on the Internet. He comes up with a 12-hour rotating shift pattern that provides every other weekend off. This pattern is sometimes called a Panama schedule. The other employees think it would be great to get that many weekends off, and whole-heartedly support the change. The problem is that the pattern uses 4 crews. Because of the group's size, it would have 3 crews of 2 people each and 1 crew with just one person. The coverage would fluctuate between 1 and 2 people on each shift. Adopting this pattern would create a complete mismatch between the coverage and the workload.

Example 2

A police department with 18 officers needs 4-person coverage on a 24/7 basis. They are working an 8-hour fixed shift schedule that follows a 4-on-2-off pattern. Due to budget cuts, the department will be losing 2 officers. They decide to keep the current work pattern because the officers are familiar with it and seem to like it. The problem is that the pattern only works properly with 6 people per shift. Using that same pattern with only 5 people per shift will cause the coverage to fluctuate between 3 and 4 people. The worst part is that the reduced coverage occurs on Wednesday through Saturday (when workloads are the heaviest). Once again, the chosen schedule is not an effective use of the department's resources.

You increase the likelihood of an inappropriate, ineffective, or costly solution if you ignore the resources and business requirements during the schedule search. We recommend the following process to make optimal use of your labor resources:

Step 1

Compare the staff size with the coverage requirements. Our free staffing calculators can help:  http://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Staffing_Calculator. If the desired coverage can be achieved with the existing staff, you can proceed to the next step. Otherwise, determine whether adding overtime to the schedule will allow you to consistently achieve the coverage requirements. If you're still short, you'll either need to hire more staff or reduce the coverage.

Step 2

Compare different shift lengths with the coverage requirements to identify the best fit. Our free schedule evaluation can point you in the right direction: http://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Free_Schedule_Evaluation. If the workload is steady throughout the day, you could use either 8-hour or 12-hour shifts. Anything else will have overlapping shifts and will require extra resources. Using 10-hour shifts, for example, would result in 6 hours of overlap (and double coverage) every day of the week. Plus it would require 25% more staff. That would be wasteful. What if the workload varies by hour of the day? For instance, if it changes at 8 hour intervals, using 12-hour shifts probably would not be a good match. In situations with highly variable workloads (e.g., communication centers or airline security operations), you may need to adopt multiple shift lengths with staggered start times. These situations often require professional assistance. 

Step 3

Find a work pattern that fits or can be adapted. In Example 1 above, the group's size (7 employees) does not match standard 4-crew patterns, so the schedule might have to be created from scratch. It might be possible to modify a standard 4-crew pattern, but this requires some experience in schedule design. In Example 2 above, the group's size (16 employees) would allow them to use any popular 4-crew pattern with 12-hour shifts. If they decide to stay on 8-hour fixed shifts, they would need to modify patterns that use 4 crews per shift.

Step 4

The last step of the process is to tweak the pattern to maximize the weekends off. At this point, it's important to take the overtime pay week into account. You don't want the changes to create unnecessary overtime or compromise the coverage. A professional schedule designer can help with this step.

Conclusion

Shift schedules determine how you will utilize your labor resources. If you want to make optimal use of these resources, we recommend a 4-step process. Yes, choosing a shift length and work pattern are steps in the process, but they are not the best places to start. If you don't feel comfortable following this process and want the best possible schedule, contact us today.

https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/12-Hour_Shifts
 
1. https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=12-hour-shifts-in-smaller-companies
    
2. https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=matching-12-hour-shifts-to-your-workload-distribution
    
3. https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=covering-absences-on-a-12-hour-shift-schedule
   
   
4. 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:

1. http://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Overtime_Issues
2. 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:

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.

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.

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:

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

Crews        Hours

   3                56

   3.5             48

   4                42

   5                33.6

I don't recommend using schedules with that much overtime. People that do this claim it's temporary or it's a common practice in their industry. I explain that high overtime schedules cause problems in the following areas: safety, quality, and employee health. There is also the risk of liability for an employee who crashed his or her car on the commute home after five or six consecutive night shifts.

Every month or so I get a call from someone who wants to run a schedule that would normally take 16 people, but they only want to use 12 or 14 employees. They ask me to give them a pattern (like 4-on-2-off) that would work. Instead of focusing on the pattern, they should start by deciding the number crews – either 3 or 3.5 crews.

I see this a lot with fire departments and paramedics. They work 24-hour shifts, and want to know if a 2-on-4-off pattern or a combination of 10 and 14-hour shifts would reduce the overtime. I explain that they need to start with the desired weekly hours of work and select the number of crews that comes closest to that target. Then and only then can they start searching for a work pattern (or different shift lengths) that provides the desired coverage.

I ran into the opposite situation recently with a major airport. Their screening officers were assigned to 5 crews on an 8-hour rotating shift schedule with a 3-on-2-off pattern. Management wanted to get more coverage without hiring more employees. I suggested 4 crew patterns that averaged 42 hours a week. By increasing the average weekly hours from 33.6 to 42, they were able to increase the coverage from 56 to 70.

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