Although most people can tolerate a little inconsistency in their lives, when it comes to their work schedules, they hate it. The rest of their lives can be unplanned, spontaneous and spur-of-the-moment, but they need a work schedule that is predictable. Even a bad schedule can be tolerated, if the time-off is certain and known far in advance. They want to make plans for their personal lives – and count on getting the time off to do things. If they are constantly being called into work on a day off or given last-minute notice they have to stay late or work the weekend, morale suffers and employees develop a adversarial relationship with management.

We find this situation frequently with companies operating 5 days a week with frequent weekend overtime. Employees often end up working 6 or 7 days every week. They may like the overtime pay, but it is highly disruptive to their personal lives. It’s tough to make commitments for weekend activities when you don’t know until sometime Friday whether or not you have to work. If this continues, employees become so addicted to the overtime that they will strongly resist any attempt to change, e.g., the adoption of a 24/7 schedule.

This situation is also found with facilities that don’t follow a set schedule. Instead they ask for the employee preferences each week and then scramble to fill any gaps in coverage. Many employees like this flexibility, that is, until they are the ones who have to fill in for someone else or they can't get off on a day they have other plans. This type of scheduling is going away as many states are requiring predictive schedules. Here's what I found when searching for information about them:

"Predictive scheduling laws generally require employers to provide employees a minimum amount of notice for their work schedule and any changes to an employee’s scheduled shift. These laws were designed to make it costly for employers to place employees in the position where they do not know from day to day whether they will be working."

For retail and service businesses that operate more than 5 days week, schedule consistency creates an issue with who has to work the weekend shifts. With a set schedule, some employees get every weekend off, while others have to work at least one day every weekend. The only way to alternate the weekend work is to adopt a schedule that rotates the days of work over a multi-week pattern. Most 24/7 schedules do this since it works with both fixed-shift and rotating-shift schedules. This creates a tough choice for people who prefer having a fixed schedule. But it is the only way to treat everyone equally when it comes to the weekend work.