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Permalink Reply by Al Smith on August 5, 2010 at 15:45

We have many operators working the 12-hour, 3 day workweek, and every other week, someone has overtime for the 4 day week.
It works, but when I was manageing that group, I felt there was some issues with knowlege transfer and job competancy. I saw the day shift and night shift were very difficult to ask for cross support. I also saw tta the early half of the work week was using different methods to do an identical task as the later week resources. Documention and training may have helped, but it was more the division that caused the issues.

I had proposed an alternative which I had seen work very well in other positions previously, and it may suit you well, especially if you are adding significant growth and need to have team members cross train. 8 hour shifts being the standard work schedule, and 4-on, 2-off scheduling. It adds up to 5 work days per 7 day week, and forces some changes to the employee schedules. Employees that have worked with continued 4-day weekends will fight it, but those that have been stuck on fri-sat-sun workweeks for years look forward to getting some family/social time back.
Day___1___2___3___4__5___6
Res1__x___x___x___x___-___-
Res2__x___x___-___-___x___x
Res3__-___-___x___x___x___x

The number of resources has to change, but a team of 3 in this rotation keep 2 people on-site during the shift, down from 4 (early and late week). On the other hand, you have 3 shifts, not 2 (9 FTE in place of 8). It is more likely you can cover a resource outage by 1/2 shift overtime split two ways in place of an entire shift of overtime and adding more burnout.

Another option is o rotate across shifts (3 months graveyard, 3 months Swing, 3 months Day). This can help keep them sharp as it is not the same old shift all the time, and opens their understanding to what happens on other shifts. Thta is a little more difficult to sell as sleep paterns and family life will cause more headaches. The important thing is to alter which members chnage at which time, so there are current experts on a shift with the new arrivals.

Good Luck.

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Permalink Reply by Shelby Sims on August 17, 2010 at 0:21

Hi Jason,

The model my guys chose was 9.25 hours for three days and one 12.25 hour weekend (every other weekend) for 2nd and 3rd shifts. They have wednesday when two work together per shift - it's how they remain a team. Day shift is still m-f 8-hour shifts. This shift takes 5 people to do 24/7. If you are interested let me know and I'll send it to you via email...

They really like the shift and this way you don't have to work every weekend. As well it reduces FTE, OT is required for vacation fill-in.

Thanks Shelby

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