I've written several articles about 12-hour shift schedules. Here are links to the most popular ones:

1. https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/12-Hour_Shifts
    
2. https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=12-hour-shifts-in-smaller-companies
    
3. https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=matching-12-hour-shifts-to-your-workload-distribution
    
4. https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=covering-absences-on-a-12-hour-shift-schedule
   
   
5. https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=12-hour-shift-schedules-with-no-overtime

These 12-hr articles tend to focus on schedule effectiveness and efficiency, i.e. schedules that align the coverage with the workload and utilize the smallest number of employees. Other websites that offer free examples of different 12-hour patterns imply that these are good choices for anyone changing to longer shifts. Smaller groups with uneven workloads and staffing limitations should beware.

In this article, I'd like to address things that should be considered before making the change to 12-hour shifts.

1. Environment. Some jobs are simply too taxing to endure for more than 8 hours. Things like excessive heat, noise, toxins, or physical labor might preclude the use of longer shifts.
    
2. Productivity, quality and safety. Some tasks are too tedious or focused to continue for more than 8 hours. To accommodate 12-hr. shifts, these jobs would require extra breaks, job redesign, and/or periodic rotation to other positions to keep employees fresh.
    
3. Different patterns. With fixed 12-hr. shifts, there is no rule that says both shifts must work the same on-off pattern. In fact, some patterns that are great for the day shift (e.g., Pitman) are terrible for the night shift. We encourage clients to have each shift select its preferred shift independently.
    
4. Worker preferences. Although many employees are willing to work 12-hr. shifts in order to get more days off and more weekends off, not everyone is. Older workers, people with childcare or eldercare concerns, students, and those with 2^nd jobs often prefer 8-hour shifts.
    
5. Business issues. If the business runs 24/7 and has a steady workload at all times, 12-hour shifts can be a good choice. If the company uses fixed shifts, 12-hour fixed shifts are a little more efficient than 8-hour fixed shifts, which may mean a smaller headcount. If the workload is not steady, it may be necessary to use a combination of 8 and 12-hour shifts.
    
6. Absence coverage. If the organization has a high absence rate, 12-hour shifts might not be a good choice. That's because absences must be covered by someone who is scheduled to be off. This can defeat the extra days-off advantage of the longer shifts.
    
7. Pay policies. Most pay polices (e.g., holiday pay, vacations, sick leave, etc.) were written for 8-hour shifts. These polices need to be revised to reflect the 12-hr shifts. For example, with 8-hour shifts new employees get 10 days of vacation per calendar year (80 hours). If this policy was not modified before changing to 12-hour shifts, the new employees might get 120 hours of vacation per year.

I've written numerous articles about 10-hour shifts for groups that work 24/7. If you'd like to see some of these 10-hour articles, here are the links:
 

1. https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/10-Hour_Shifts
   
   
2. 10-Hour Shifts in 24/7 Operations (shift-schedule-design.com)
    
3. 10-Hour Shifts for 24/7 Coverage (shift-schedule-design.com)
    
4. 10-Hour Shift Schedules and Police Management (shift-schedule-design.com)
    
5. 10-Hour Shift Schedules for Police Officers (shift-schedule-design.com)

For managers of 24/7 operations, 10-hour shifts have a number of shortcomings. The biggest, of course, is the fact that they require at least 25% more staff than 8 or 12-hour shift schedules. That's because you really are covering 30/7 instead of 24/7. There are several other issues, which you can see by reading the articles. 

On the other hand, there are situations where 10-hour shifts are a good choice. If you have a busy period around the same time every day, you can take advantage of the double coverage achieved with the overlapping shifts. You can boost the coverage for 6, 12 or 16 hours a day. This may require odd shift start/end times or adding a 4th shift.

For employees in 24/7 operations, 10-hour shifts are attractive primarily for two reasons:

1. Working 2 extra hours each day in order to get one more day off each week is a reasonable trade-off. Getting that extra day off each week is worth the sacrifice. And 10-hours is seen as a lot more tolerable than 12 hours.
    
2. Most people think that a 10-hour shift schedule will feature 3 consecutive days off, ideally on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Who doesn't want a 3-day weekend off all the time?

Unfortunately, in 24/7 operations, these two results aren't always realized. Similar to 8-hour and 12-hour shift schedules that average 42 hours a week, many 10-hour schedules also have overtime built into them. This means that the employees won't always get 3 days off. The number of weeks with only 2 days off depends on the 10-hr schedule adopted. Usually it's once every 5 weeks. 

10-hour schedules in smaller organizations (fewer than 21 people) won't have 3 consecutive days off either. Most of the breaks will be only one or two days long. This can be avoided by adopting a schedule with fixed days of work. The downside of this approach is that few employees will get a full weekend off, let alone a 3-day weekend. Only a few of the most senior employees will get a 3-day weekend off.

To summarize, 10-hour shift schedules for 24/7 operations rarely meet employee expectations for several reasons:

1. Most of these 10-hour schedules don't consistently offer 3 days off every week.
2. They rarely offer 3 consecutive days off. 
3. Typical 10-hr schedules feature a maximum of one 3-day weekend off every 5 weeks or 2 every 7 weeks.

Naturally, all of this depends on the staff size, the coverage requirements, and when the overtime/pay week begins. If you want to know how 10-hour shifts might work for your group, please click the following link, fill out the form, and I'll let you know what's feasible for you:  https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/21.html

One of the key issues with 12-hour shift schedules is how to cover absences. With 8-hour shifts, one way to cover absences is to hold an employee on the previous shift over so that he or she works two consecutive shifts or 16 hours total. Another way is to split the vacant shift into two 4-hour segments, and have someone from the previous shift stay over for 4 additional hours and have someone from the following shift come in 4 hours early. It's fairly easy to cover the open shift this way, since the replacements are already at work or planning to work later that same day.
 

Unfortunately, 12-hour shifts are too long for either of these approaches. Holding someone over for a second shift means they would be working 24 hours (36 hours if they are scheduled to work the next day too). With a split shift, it means the replacements would be working 18 hours straight. Clearly this is excessive.
 

With 12-hour shifts, the only option is to find a qualified employee who is not scheduled to work the same day as the absence. Sounds simple, right? Well it's not. Supervisors can spend an inordinate amount of time trying to find volunteers. It can be tough to reach people. Candidates may have left town or they may be too busy to answer the phone. And they simply may not want to work that day. They might have made other plans or don't want to spoil a nice multi-day break.
 

This is one case in which scheduling software can be beneficial for the supervisors. You'll want a program that makes it easy to both identify eligible candidates and then to contact them. Eligibility may include things like: (1) job title, (2) skill sets, (3) work schedule, and (4) recent overtime hours (to prevent over-using someone). Contact can be by email or text message. If no one volunteers within a fixed amount of time, the supervisor can select someone to cover the open position using criteria such as reverse seniority. All of this saves the supervisor a huge amount of time, freeing them up to focus on other responsibilities.

In the last few weeks, a number of people have contacted me for help with their schedules. What's unusual is that many of them didn't have a scheduling preference. They said they were open to 8-hour, 10-hour or 12-hour shifts. Most of them wanted fixed shifts.
 

I started by telling them that fixed shifts often require a few more employees than rotating shifts. This is true with both 8-hour and 10-hour shifts. This can be critical when the group is already staffed at a minimum or understaffed. They could still use fixed shifts, but they would either have to hire more staff or adopt a schedule with a lot of overtime in it.
 

Next, I went into the problems with 10-hour shifts. I know, everybody loves 10s. But 10s are really inefficient when you're trying to cover a 24-hour day. You need three shifts, which means you're really working 30 hours a day instead of 24 hours. This 25% increase in hours per day requires a 25% increase in staff or a 25% reduction in the amount of coverage. Few organizations can handle this.

That leaves 8-hour shifts and 12-hour shifts. And if the coverage is not the same at all times, a 12-hour shift schedule may not be a good fit. What is needed is a combination of 8s and 12s, for example 8 people on the 12s and 4 people on the 8s. Although the 12-hour shifts might improve the efficiency (i.e. require fewer people), the 8-hour fixed shifts are highly inefficient for low levels of coverage like one person. For example, 1-person coverage requires 2 people and there would be 3 days a week in which both of them are scheduled to work.

I believe that the people who contacted me with no schedule preferences did so to find a scheduling solution to their current situation. What they didn't realize was that they had a staffing problem, not a scheduling problem.

Yes, they might find some schedule changes that are a little more efficient, but not to the extent they hoped to find. And some of those changes might result in schedules that are not very employee-friendly (e.g., 8-hour rotating shifts).

I just finished designing a set of shift schedules for a senior living facility. They needed 1 person working for 8 hours (day shift) and 2 people working for the next 8 hours (afternoon shift) throughout the week.
 

This amount of coverage requires at least 4 employees working an average of 42 hours a week. But, in this case, the manager wanted his employees to have every other weekend off.
 

To achieve that much time-off in a 24/7 operation, I would normally recommend 12-hour shifts. But this facility only needed coverage for 16 hours a day, so 12-hour shifts would not be a good fit. The only other solution would be to increase the staff size.
 

I decided to show the manager schedules for 4, 5, and 6 employees. This way I was able to show how the different staffing levels affected his goal of having every other weekend off. If he wanted to hire more staff over time, he had schedules for each level of staffing.
 

For each staff size, I created 2 patterns: one with lots of consecutive days worked (7 or 8) and one with few consecutive days worked. All of them had the same number of weekends off, but fhe former had longer breaks and longer weekends off (3 and 4 days). This way the employees could compare the two to decide which one they preferred.

Custom-designed schedules illustrate different approaches for reaching your goals. They can help with staffing decisions and with obtaining employee buy-in for a new schedule. Seeing actual examples of the different approaches supports making superior workforce decisions.

Are you searching for software to manage your employee work schedule? Well, I just read an article that evaluated several free scheduling software programs. I think you might find it particularly interesting. Sorry, but I was asked to delete the link to this article. I'm not sure why, but you'll have to do your own search. 

Remember, scheduling software programs won't create schedules for you. You have to have a pattern already in mind. Sure, there are free templates to use, but are they a good choice? Just because a pattern has the shift length and format (fixed vs. rotating shifts) you want doesn't mean it's a good approach for your group. You want a schedule that does three things: (1) optimizes coverage, (2) minimizes costs, and (3) maximizes employee satisfaction. You can read more here: https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Shift_Schedule_Design_for_Dummies. 

Thank you for your service, Public Safety Dispatchers! I saw this bulletin in my Nixle from the Petaluma Police Dept. I thought it was worth repeating.

The week of April 14 - 20, 2019, is "National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week." This is an opportunity to honor the women and men who serve as our Public Safety Dispatchers. Telecommunicators week began in California in 1981 and quickly grew to national recognition. Just ten years later, Congress designated the second full week of each April as a time to remember the critical role Dispatchers play in keeping us all safe.
 

Dispatchers are the voice at the other end of the 9-1-1 call assisting a distraught caller and at the other end of the radio when police, firefighters, and medical personnel are responding to emergency situations. If you've ever been the victim of a crime, been in a collision, reported a fire or needed emergency medical help, you've called 9-1-1 and been helped by a Telecommunicator, also known as a "Dispatcher."
 

Not being visible or always recognized in the public eye, the critical role they play between the community and first responders is essential for every public safety call for service. Our Dispatchers are the direct link to our officers in the field. They monitor the radios, computers, phones, and more, answering thousands of calls from our community each year.
 

Please join us in this week as we say THANK YOU to the often heard but not seen, first of the first responders, our 9-1-1 Dispatchers.

Many larger companies have switched from 8-hour shifts to 12-hour shifts. Smaller organizations have been slower to make the change. A major reason is that the workload in smaller companies isn't constant all day long. For example, they may need 3-person coverage from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. and only 1 or 2-person coverage from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Alternatively, they need 3-person coverage around-the-clock from Monday to Friday, but only 1-person coverage on the weekends.
 

All of the popular 12-hour patterns (Pitman, DuPont, 3-on-3-off, 4-on-4-off, etc.) have the same coverage levels all day and all week. If a company with an uneven workload adopts one of these templates, they would either have too much or too little coverage for part of the day (or part of the week). This, in turn, would incur unnecessary costs or adversely impact the service levels.
 

This doesn't mean 12-hour shifts won't work; it just means that the schedule has to be modified. Here are the two possible situations and the best approaches for each:

• If the workload varies by time of day, then you have to combine the 12-hour shifts with an overlay or "power" shift. You use the 12s to match the coverage for the lightest shift (usually the night shift). Let's say that's 2 people. You could use any common 12-hour pattern for 2-person coverage. Then you would overlay that with one or two shifts that boost the coverage during the busier hours of the day. This could consist of an 8-hour shift, 10-hour shift, another 12-hour shift, or two 8-hour shifts. If some of your employees are reluctant to work 12-hour shifts, this will allow a few of them to avoid changing.
   
• If the workload varies by day of the week, then you have to modify the 12-hour pattern. This will require a custom-designed pattern, perhaps one that doesn't use crews. The solution depends on the coverage levels throughout the week and whether you want fixed or rotating shifts. I would modify popular patterns (Pitman, DuPont, etc) to reduce or increase the coverage so that it matches your workload distribution. 

I believe this is a great solution for companies that want to make their work schedules more employee friendly, especially when the workers are grumbling about a lack of work-life balance. Contact us today to see how this might work for your group. You'll be glad you did. Contact us. 

10-hour shifts are a popular choice among employees. However, when used with companies working 24/7, the 10-hour shifts create a few problems. The biggest is that it takes three 10-hour shifts to cover the day. This means the company is actually running for 30 hours a day instead of 24, which will boost the staffing requirements by at least 25%.
 

And, if that's not bad enough, how do you handle the fact that the shifts overlap one another for 6 hours a day? Do you overlap each shift by 2 hours or do you consolidate the overlap so there are 6 consecutive hours of double coverage?
 

If you overlap each shift for 2 hours, do you have one shift sit idle, while the other works? That seems pretty wasteful. The exception would be police departments where the first shift can go back to the office to do paperwork, while the second shift is out on patrol.
 

If you consolidate the overlaps, you might be able to take advantage of the double coverage. Maybe there is a special project that can be tackled, areas that can be cleaned / repaired, or a new production line that can be operated. Companies with variable work volumes can align the 6 hours of overlap with the busy period to match the coverage with the workload. The downside, of course, is that this may result in some weird shift start and end times that won't appeal to employees.

If you are considering 10-hour shifts in your 24/7 business, I hope you'll read the other articles I've written about the limitations of 10-hour shifts. Here are links to the most popular articles:

1. https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/10-Hour_Shifts

2. https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=10-hour-shift-schedules-and-police-management

3. https://www.shift-schedule-design.com/Blog?m8:post=10-hour-shift-schedules-for-police-officers