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10-Hour Shifts in 24/7 Operations
June 25th, 2019 at 3:11 pm   starstarstarstarstar      

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

JOANNA says:
September 14th, 2021 at 2:25 pm   starstarstarstarstar      

Hello, we have 9 employees that work a 10 hour shift, 6 days a week, we are looking to keep them at the 10 hour shift but have them only work 5 days a week. We are a police impound so we are working 24/7. What would be the best way to do that.

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