My latest client was a Fire Chief who was facing pressure from city management to change from a 24-hour schedule (48/96) to an 8-hour schedule. I assume that the city officials mistakenly believed that 8-hour schedules don't have any overtime in them. Like many public agencies, they think all overtime is bad and should be eliminated. 

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. 

When managers decide to change their group's work schedule, they often begin by searching the internet for: (1) schedules using a specific shift length such as 10 or 12-hour shifts, or (2) popular work patterns such as 4-on-2-off or the Pitman. Unfortunately, doing this will rarely result in the best choice for their unique situation. Here are a few examples of the pitfalls:

• Picking 10-hour or 12-hour shifts when the workload varies in 8-hour increments.
• Using a schedule with constant coverage when their workload varies from shift-to-shift.
• Selecting a schedule pattern (e.g., 4-on-2-off) that requires 6 people per shift, when they have something else.
• Picking a schedule that requires 18 people when other options only require 16.
• Adopting a schedule that is great for day shift, but terrible for night shift.

I'm sure there are plenty of other possibilities, but you get the idea. Many people forget that the primary purpose of the schedule is to match the coverage with the workload. To achieve that goal, you need to start with the number of people needed at different times of the day throughout the week. In many cases, this will limit which shift lengths are feasible. You can read more about that here (Shift Length Selection (shift-schedule-design.com). 

Once you have the shift length(s) established, you need to find or create a pattern that will produce the desired coverage with minimal resources and with maximum weekends off. There is no way that an internet search will ever help with that. 

What do most people do? They find a schedule or create one that they think looks good, adopt it, and live with a mediocre solution, never aware that other approaches or work patterns would have been far superior. They avoid hiring a scheduling expert to save a few hundred dollars and end up costing the organization more than that every week because they got a solution for free. 

Wouldn't it be better to have someone with scheduing expertise go over your situation, show you alternative approaches (e.g., 8-hour fixed shifts vs. combined 8 and 12-hour fixed shifts), and lay out a few different work patterns for each approach? Since the options would all be in the same format, they would be easy to compare and evaluate. You could show them to your workers and let them debate the pros and cons of each option. This is way scheduling should be done.

Click on this link and fill out the form to get started today: (Request a quote for custom schedule design (shift-schedule-design.com)

Some time ago, I got a call from the Chief of Police from a small city in the Mid-West. He had 6 officers and needed a minimum of 1-person coverage on a 24/7 basis. Their work schedule consisted of 8-hour fixed shifts. The officers were pretty happy with the schedule since they got every other weekend off. The problem was the high overtime expenses needed to cover vacations and other absences. The officers had an absence rate of almost 20%, which resulted in an overtime bill of around $80K a year. He was thinking about hiring another officer, but couldn't figure out how to use him to cover absences unless it was his full-time job.

I told him that he didn't need to hire more staff'; he needed a different schedule. 8-hour fixed shift schedules are not very efficient, especially in small groups like his. In his case, they would provide 1-person coverage 4 days a week and 2-person coverage 3 days a week. To ensure every other weekend was off, the double coverage was scheduled for weekdays only. Since most absences occurred on the weekends (when they only had 1-person coverage), they were forced to use overtime to avoid gaps in the coverage.

When choosing the best scheduling approach, he and his officers would have to make a tradeoff between shift length and format (fixed vs. rotating shifts) when selecting a new schedule. If having fixed shifts was most important schedule feature, they should adopt a 12-hour fixed shift schedule. If having 8-hour shifts was most important, they should adopt an 8-hour rotating shift schedule. Either approach would free up capacity to cover absences without excessive overtime. Flexible relief time could then be built right into the schedule.

With the12-hour fixed shifts, 3 officers would be assigned to each shift. Each shift would have a 3-week schedule in which one week was devoted to relief coverage and the other two weeks were devoted to the required coverage. They would have to work an average of 42 hours a week. Yes, overtime would be required, but a total of 12 hours per week for the entire group is all they would need. 

With the 8-hour rotating shifts, the 6 officers would work a 6-week schedule in which two weeks were devoted to relief coverage and 4 weeks were devoted to the required coverage. They would also average 42 hours a week.

The Chief said he'd have to think about it. He was hesitant to do this because the city was opposed to having employees work more than 40 hours a week and the officers were opposed to changing schedules. I never heard from him again. I suppose he's still incurring overtime every time someone is absent, having poor coverage, or maybe still searching for ideas on how to fix this. Or maybe he hired another officer. So he is either spending $60K a year for a 7th officer (wages + benefits) or $80K on overtime. What would you do?

“Work-life balance” is largely a desire for more time off from work. That’s why so many employees want to change their work schedules. They want more days off and, for jobs that require Saturday and/or Sunday work, more full weekends off. In facilities that run 24/7, this often leads to a search for a schedule using 10 or 12-hour shifts, or a work pattern with less than 40 hours of work per week. Even though this means longer days of work or reduced compensation, many employees feel the extra time off is worth it.

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

The most efficient shift length (one that requires the fewest staff) depends the nature of the hourly coverage requirements, i.e. whether the coverage needs are constant or vary on a regular basis throughout the day. It doesn't matter if the group operates 24/7 or something less than that. Here's a flow chart of the steps involved:

24/7 Operations

If the coverage requirements are steady throughout the day, then the best choice is either 8-hour or 12-hour shifts. That's because these shift lengths don't overlap during the 24-hour day. Other shift lengths (9, 10, or 11 hours) would overlap. This not only doubles the coverage during the overlap(s), but it also increases the staffing requirements. Three 9-hour shifts require 12.5% more staff, three 10-hour shifts require 25% more staff, and three 11-hour shifts require 37.5% more staff.

If the coverage requirements vary fairly regularly by time of day, the organization can either use:

• Fixed shifts with different staffing levels on each shift that match the coverage requirements, e.g., 4 people on day shift, 3 people on evening shift, and 2 people on night shift.
   
• Overlapping shifts, e.g., 9 or 10-hour shifts. By changing the shift start and end times, the daily overlaps can be consolidated and matched to the busy period.
   
• An overlay shift that boosts the coverage for the length of that additional shift, e.g., a 6-hour shift from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Less than 24/7 Operations

If the coverage requirements are steady, the best choice would be a shift length that matches the hours of operation - up to a maximum of 12 hours. For example, if the company is open for 11 hours a day, the most efficient choice would be an 11-hour shift, since this would require the smallest number of employees and would avoid any overlapping shifts. If the daily hours exceed 12 hours, then 2 shifts are needed each day. For example, a company that is open 14 hours a day could have two 7-hour shifts or one 8-hour shift and one 6-hour shift.

If the coverage requirements vary by time of day, the organization can either use:

• Fixed shifts with different staffing levels on each shift that match the coverage requirements, e.g., 2 people on the first shift and 4 people on the second shift.
   
• Overlapping shifts. For example, if the late afternoon is busiest, a company could use a 12-hour day shift and an 8-hour evening shift that overlaps from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
   
• An overlay shift that boosts the coverage for the length of that additional shift, e.g., a 4-hour shift from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Summary

If you want to maximize employee utilization, your shift length should be based on the whether the workload and associated coverage requirements remain steady throughout the day or vary on a fairly regular basis. Steady workloads should have shifts that don't overlap for more than the length of a meal break. Variable workloads can be addressed in several different ways.

Many people choose the shift length for other reasons. For example, they choose 10-hour shifts, hoping to get an extra day off each week, or they choose 12-hour shifts, hoping to get more weekends off. They don't realize that this may increase the headcount requirements, not match the coverage with the workload, or utilize the staff ineffectively.

Is your business open more than 8 hours a day or more than 5 days a week? If so, do you have a set schedule for your employees, or are you creating a new schedule every week based on individual employee availability and preferences? A set schedule will benefit both you and your employees.

• 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).

The best schedule for any group that works 24/7 depends primarily on 2 things: (1) the workload distribution, and (2) employee preferences. The workload distribution and associated coverage requirements should be the starting point for all scheduling decisions. Starting with anything else will lead to ineffective or inefficient solutions. Read this article for a more complete explanation: https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=the-real-purpose-of-a-shift-schedule.

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).

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.

What is a better schedule anyway?

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.