Everyone wants to find free examples of shift schedules, especially with 10-hour shifts. The problem is you can't trust what you get. Here's one I found today. I won't say where I found it, because I don't want to embarass anyone. I'm merely showing it to you to illustrate a point about the risks of adopting a schedule example or template you found on the Internet.

When I first saw this schedule I thought, "Wow, they figured out a way to make a 10-hour shift schedule using a 4-on-3-off pattern. That's awesome!" But then I started looking closer at how it worked. Here are the things you'd have to live with:

1. Rotating shifts. Sometimes rotating shifts are necessary for various business reasons. I'm not saying rotating shifts are bad, but these rotate backwards from nights to evenings to days. That's bad.

2. Fixed days. This schedule has fixed days of work for each team. Some teams have to work every weekend while others have every weekend off. That's just not fair. All employees should be treated equally when it comes to the days of work.

3. Overlapping day. One day a week, all six teams are scheduled to work. That's not an efficient way to use your personnel. And will the organization using the schedule have adequate capacity for that many employees working at the same time? How about when the shifts overlap for 6 hours that day? This will increase the coverage by 4 times. So if the normal coverage is 3 people, you would have 12 people at work for that six hour period. Not only is it wasteful, but I doubt that many places could accommodate that.

4. Staffing requirements. With rotating 10-hour shifts, you could achieve the same coverage with 5 teams working an average of 42 hours a week. Let's say the teams were comprised of 3 people each. The 6-team schedule shown above would require 18 employees working 40 hours a week or 720 hours a week. A 5-team schedule would require 15 employees working 42 hours a week or 630 hours a week. When you account for the overtime in the 5-team schedule, the total hours of pay would be 645 hours / week. Even with low average wages of $8/hour, the free schedule example would cost $600 a week more than the other schedule.

So you tell me, is this free schedule example really worth it? I know it's hard to believe, but there are organizations that will implement this schedule. And they'll brag about how great their new 10-hour schedule is. They haven't a clue what they're missing. I hope you aren't seduced by the lure of free schedule templates like this one.