What is the best way to handle absences? Everybody seems to have a different take on this. Let's look at the four most common approaches:

Part-Time Employees
In smaller organizations, this can be a great solution. It's cheaper than overtime, and it doesn't place a huge burden on the full-time staff. The problem is finding and retaining good part-time employees. It is usually best for jobs that don't require extensive training or specialized skill sets. The exceptions to this are nursing and on-demand transit, as many organizations in these fields are able to find a large pool of candidates seeking part-time employment.

Overtime
The most efficient way to cover absences is by using overtime. Your existing staff is trained and readily available. Best of all, you only pay for the coverage when it is needed. On 8-hour shifts, you can split the vacant shift into two 4-hour sessions. Hold someone from the prior shift over for the first session and call someone from the following shift in early to work the second 4-hour session. 10-hour and 12-hour shifts are different. With them, you should call someone into work who is scheduled to be off. Most groups seek volunteers first before resorting to mandatory call-ins of the least tenured staff. If the overtime levels exceed 15% of the normal working hours on a regular basis, however, that is too high and you probably should hire more staff.

Relief Coverage
Time can be built into the work schedule for relief coverage. For example, if you need eight employees to provide the basic coverage, you could employ one extra person. You would then create a 9-week schedule for the group in which one of the 9 weeks is devoted entirely to relief coverage. Since all 9 people rotate through this 9-week schedule, they would equally share in the responsibility. This works best with rotating shift schedules since the relief person can cover any shift. Larger organizations often do this by adding a fifth crew. The extra capacity could be used for both relief coverage and training purposes.

Additional Staff
This is the most expensive approach since you would pay for the extra employees even when they are not needed. For example, if you needed 4-person coverage at all times, you might hire enough staff to have 5-person coverage. Many law enforcement agencies use this approach because it is critical to maintain a minimum level of coverage. They also tend to have rather high absence rates.

 
Each of these approaches has its own advantages and disadvantages. They are listed here in order of cost (from lowest to highest), so I would probably start at the top and test each approach until you find the best one for your unique situation and requirements.

There are always two different perspectives when it comes to shift schedules. One is that of the employees who have to work the schedule. The other is that of management who represent the organization and its business requirements. Most people seem to only think about themselves, and ignore the other side's point of view. If you want to change your group's schedule, it is important to be familiar with both perspectives.

Employee Perspective
Employees tend to focus on time off. They want to maximize time off, especially the weekends. This explains the popularity of longer shifts, like 10-hour and 12-hour shifts. Having more time off from work allows them to have a life outside of work, i.e. the ability to balance their lives at work with their lives away from work (work-life balance).

Employees also are concerned with fairness. They understand that seniority may be used to assign employees to the different shifts. But they are intolerant of favoritism and unequal treatment when it comes to things like overtime distribution, vacation time off, or the days people are scheduled to work.

Employees prefer schedules that are consistent. If they are constantly being called in from a day off, they will resent this. If they don't know until the last minute whether they have to work on the weekend, morale will suffer. Employees want a predictable schedule so they know they can count on their scheduled days off. That way they can make plans for things outside of work.

What employees don't recognize is that a new schedule using longer shifts must produce some benefits for the organization too. If they want a new schedule, it's not enough to simply talk about how they will benefit. That's not adequate justification for management. Instead, they need to identify how the new schedule will help the organization. Let's take a look at the things management is concerned with.

Management Perspective
Managers tend to focus on three things: coverage, cost, and supervision. Let's look at each of these in more detail.

Ideally the coverage is closely matched to the workload. If the work volumes are constant throughout the day (as in an assembly line), the coverage should be the same on all shifts. Employees seeking 10-hour shifts fail to recognize that the shifts overlap for 6 hours a day, which would double the coverage during those hours. With a steady workload, it is wasteful to have all that extra coverage for 6 hours every day.

On the other hand, if the workload varies by time of day, as it often does in law enforcement and communication centers/dispatch units, the extra coverage might be beneficial. This may require some clever scheduling tricks such as two separate schedules that start 6 hours apart or a 4-shift schedule. If the workload has three distinct levels (e.g., moderate during daylight hours, heavy during evening hours, and light during nighttime hours), neither 10-hour or 12-hour shifts would be a good fit. The top priority is to achieve the best possible match of coverage with the workload.

A related factor is the organization's absence rate. If the employees are given generous amounts of paid time off, the organization has three alternatives to maintain adequate coverage: (1) use overtime to cover any absences, (2) build relief time into the schedule itself, or (3) boost the coverage on each shift . This is such a big topic, I'll save it for another post.

The second concern of management is cost. There are two major components: (1) staff size, and (2) average hours of work. Many public organizations believe that any hours over 40 are evil and must be avoided because of the overtime premiums. This is another big topic that I will save for a future post. So let's talk about staff size. 

Most 12-hour schedules require the same number or fewer employees than 8-hour schedules. Most 10-hour schedules require 25% more personnel than 8-hour shifts. Most fixed shift schedules require a few more personnel than rotating shift schedules. These are broad generalizations, so don't take them as gospel. It's usually best to discuss your requirements with a professional before making a schedule change.

The third management concern is supervision. Changing to a new schedule may require a different crew configuration. If you had a 4-crew schedule with 8-hour rotating shifts, you might neeed 12 crews with 8-hour fixed shifts. Or you might need 21 crews with a 10-hour shift schedule. Or you might end up with a schedule that has no crews. How do you handle the supervisory situation in these cases?

Every situation is unique, so it's difficult to lay out a set of rules or conclusions. The point is that a schedule change will affect employees differently than it will affect management. If you are a shiftworker seeking a new schedule, you will have to figure out how the change will benefit the organization. If you are manager seeking a new schedule, you will have to determine how the change will benefit the employees. With large organizations, the use of a neutral facilitator is often the best approach. With smaller organizations, the use of a professional schedule designer may be all that is needed.

Here's my last 10-hour shift schedule post for awhile. This is another forum comment at 911Dispatch:

"I have 9 Full Time (1 position open for total of 10) Dispatcher's and I'm trying my hardest to get us converted to 10 hour shifts. I would prefer 12 hours shifts but management is against it still at this time. I only have 3 working consoles so I would need no more than 3 on at a time and I have 3 supervisor's to account for. Any examples or ideas are VERY WELCOME!! You can email me or respond on here. My email is xxxxx! Thanks in advance!"

1. Justification. A variable workload is the only way to justify a change to 10-hour shifts to management. There is no mention of a variable workload here; just a desire to get 10-hour shifts. If you want 10-hour shifts, you have to find a way to justify the change to management. The only viable argument is that it will help us to better match our coverage with the workload.

2. Coverage. Coverage requirements are the starting point for all schedule design. All this person mentions is the maximum coverage, not the minimum. With 10 employees and a little bit of built-in overtime, this group could have 2-person coverage for 18 hours a day and 4-person coverage (when the shifts overlap) for 6 hours a day.

3. Physical capacity limitations. But wait! They can't have more than 3 people working at the same time. Now they're up a creek. When 4 people show up for 6 hours every day of the week, they'll have one person doing nothing. That's a waste. I'm not sure about the 3 supervisors. Are they in addition to the 10 dispatchers? They could have up to 6 people working during the 6 hours of overlapping shifts, but only have 3 consoles. This would be a mess.

4. Supervision. Should I repeat all the problems that 10-hour shifts create for supervision? Like crewless schedules and the need for at least 5 supervisors?

5. Schedule format. This person never mentioned whether they had fixed shifts or rotating shifts. If they changed to 10-hour shifts, this might make a difference. To achieve 2-person coverage with 10-hour rotating shifts takes 10 people working an average of 42 hours a week. To achieve 2-person coverage with 10-hour fixed shifts takes 12 people working only 40 hours a week. This is one additional area they might have to make a sacrifice just to get 10-hour shifts.

Here's another comment I read at the 911Dispatch forum from someone who wants to adopt 10-hour shifts:

"Our center has been looking into getting away from our 8 hour shifts. Most everyone here wants either 8's or 10's, 12's are out of the question for now anyways. We have 12 full time dispatchers, 3 being leads. Has anyone found a way to work a ten hour schedule with that number of people? Most of the research I've done says it is not able to be done."

I'm going to break my comments down into a couple of categories:

1. Workload. Is there ever a mention of a variable workload? No. So why are they considering 10-hour shifts? 10-hour shifts are only appropriate for organizations whose workload varies throughout the day. I suspect that the desire to adopt 10-hour shifts is merely employee preferences to get more days off and more weekends off. Unfortunately, this is insufficient justification. 10-hour shifts require some major sacrifices, so you'll need a lot more than just employee preferences to support the change. Sorry to be so blunt about it, but there are several limitations to 10-hour shifts that employees fail to recognize. Some of them will be discussed below.

2. Coverage/staffing. To provide 3-person coverage on a 24/7 basis using 10-hour shifts would require 15 employees working an average of 42 hours a week. This organization only has 12 employees. They could have 3-person coverage on one shift and 2-person coverage on the other two shifts. If they tweaked the start/end times on the shifts, they could make the overlapping shifts cover another 6 hours of the day. The end result would be 4-person coverage for 6 hours, 3-person coverage for 10 hours, and 2-person coverage for 8 hours.

3. Crews. Most 10-hour shift schedules don't use crews. They are what I refer to as "crewless" schedules. For this group, I would create a 12-week schedule. Each employee would be initially assigned to one of the 12 weeks. When they finished the first week, they would rotate to the next week of the schedule. They would continue doing this until the finished the entire schedule, at which time they would go back to the first week of the schedule.

4. Leads. There are 3 leads. If they are working 10-hour shifts and are needed at all times, the organization would need 2 more leads. Even then, they would have to work 42 hours a week on average. And they wouldn't always be working with the same set of employees. This will make it much more difficult to supervise.

5. Overtime. Sometimes people think that changing to 10-hour shifts will allow them to have a schedule with no overtime built into it. Unfortunately, that only occurs with certain levels of coverage. The most efficient 10-hour schedule will have multiples of 7 people on each shift which will produce multiples of 4-person coverage. For the 3-person coverage this organization needs, overtime would be needed to ensure consistent coverage. As with their current 8-hour schedule, they would average 42 hours per week if they had 15 employees.