Rotating schedules can be a game-changer for businesses looking to optimize productivity and employee satisfaction. But what exactly are rotating schedules, and how can they benefit your team?
Rotating schedules can also be difficult to organize, and present serious challenges if you don’t manage them well. Your employees can become disillusioned, tired, and frustrated, and you risk no-shows and poor results. But there are countless benefits, too—including balanced scheduling for swing shifts and a more distributed labor force.
In this complete guide, we’ll dive into the ins and outs of rotating schedules, explore various types, and provide practical tips on how to implement them effectively.
We’ll cover everything from creating and managing a rotating schedule to rotating schedule examples. Whether you’re new to employee rotation schedules or looking to refine your current system, this guide has you covered.
Ready to transform your scheduling approach? Let’sdiscover how rotating schedules can help you build a more efficient workplace.
What is a rotating work schedule?
A rotating work schedule is a scheduling system where employees shift through a series of work schedules over a specified period. This means their work hours and days could change on a regular basis, such as weekly or monthly, rather than remaining static.
Rotating schedules are designed to make sure your business is covered across different shifts and times, which can be especially beneficial in industries that operate 24/7—like healthcare, manufacturing, and retail.
By rotating shifts, employers can distribute workload evenly and offer employees a variety of working hours.
Types of rotating schedules.
There are a lot of different types of rotating work systems, but these are some of the most common rotating schedule examples.
Continuous rotation.
A continuous rotating system means that workers rotate shifts in a continuous loop. For example, one day they work in the morning, the next day in the afternoon, and the following day in the evening, before starting again. This type of rotating schedule ensures that all shifts are covered equally, providing consistency and predictability.
Backward rotation.
A backward rotation schedule is when a block of later shifts is followed by a block of earlier shifts. For example, if you have a period of working night shifts or afternoon shifts, this will be followed by morning shifts. Backward employee rotation schedules may not work for everyone, as employees may have difficulty adjusting their sleep patterns.
Forward rotation.
A forward rotation schedule is when earlier shifts are followed by later shifts. For example, if you have a period of working morning shifts or afternoon shifts, this will be followed by a period of afternoon or evening shifts. Forward employee rotating shift schedules are usually a little easier on employees’ circadian rhythms, when compared to backward rotations.
Oscillating rotation.
As its name suggests, an oscillating rotation pattern is when employees rotate back and forth between shifts. This type of rotating shift schedule aims to balance the workload and give employees varied working hours, reducing monotony and fatigue.
For example, say a team member works the morning shift for a while, but then switches (oscillates) backward and forward between afternoon and evening shifts for a while after that.
Skip rotation.
In a skip rotation system, an employee will do a block of the same shift, take days off, and then come back to do a block of another shift. For example, a team member could do a week of morning shifts, take two days off, and then return for a week of afternoon shifts. With skip rotation schedules, it’s easier to balance the workload among team members. Employees also get more varied working hours, which reduces work monotony and fatigue.
Rotating schedule examples.
Now that we’ve covered some of the different types of rotating schedules, let’s delve into some rotating schedule examples.
The Pitman shift schedule.
The Pitman schedule, also known as the 2-3-2 schedule, involves employees working in a staccato pattern: one block of two days on, two days off; then three days on, two days off; and finally and two days on, three days off.
If you count carefully, you’ll notice that’s 14 days—a two-week schedule! This rotation provides employees with every other weekend off, while also balancing work days effectively with rest days.
The DuPont schedule.
Some call it the DuPont schedule; others call it the rotating 2-3-2 schedule. It operates on a four-week cycle with 12-hour shifts. Employees work four consecutive night shifts, followed by three days off; then three day shifts, with one day off; then three night shifts and three days off; then four day shifts and seven days off. This schedule provides extended rest periods and covers continuous operations.
24/48 schedule.
You’ll see the 24/48 schedule being commonly used in emergency services. Employees work a 24-hour shift followed by 48 hours off. This pattern ensures continuous coverage while allowing substantial rest periods between shifts, helping manage fatigue.
4-3 schedule.
In the 4-3 schedule, employees work four days on and three days off. This weekly rotation schedule provides consistent work hours and regular long weekends, helping maintain a healthy work-life balance and reducing burnout.
Benefits of rotating schedules.
Rotating schedules offer some major advantages for both employers and team members. Let’s explore what they are.
Increased productivity.
Rotating schedules help ensure that employees are working at their most alert times. Changing up employees’ shifts can help to boost variety and therefore productivity, as team members are not always working the same hours with the same tasks or challenges. By varying shifts, employees stay engaged and maintain high performance levels.Fairer shifts.
Some industries pay staff differently for different shifts, or require more difficult work at certain hours. This happens in restaurants, where people who work in the evening get more tips, or a coffee shop where the toughest shift is the early morning rush.
Rotating schedules distribute less desirable shifts evenly among all employees, ensuring no one is consistently stuck with night or weekend shifts. This fairness can boost employee morale and reduce resentment within the team.
Better work-life balance.
Team members who work rotating shifts may experience a better work-life balance, because they are not always “unavailable” at the same hours for their life outside of work.
Rotating schedules that include regular days off and varying shifts allow employees to manage personal responsibilities and enjoy their time off more effectively.
For example, when they‘re working the evening shift, they can spend more time during the day with their kids, or head to an afternoon gym class. And when they’re working the morning shift, they’ll have more time to spend with friends in the evenings or put their kids to bed.
This variety may suit some workers better than others, depending on their needs outside of the workplace.
Reduced burnout.
A better work-life balance can help reduce burnout. That means that workers are less likely to get sick or need time off work overall. Regularly changing shifts and providing extended rest periods also help reduce burnout. Employees get time to recover between intense work periods, leading to better overall health and job satisfaction.
Offering workers different shifts can give them much-needed variety. It also means that they don’t always have to commit to working at the same time, on the same days.
This can give them flexibility to pursue interests and projects outside of their shifts, or simply give them time to rest, boosting satisfaction and energy.
Challenges of rotating work schedules.
Rotating schedules can present some challenges if you don’t manage them well.
Fatigue and health complications.
Constantly changing shifts can be tiring for staff, who may struggle to stick to a consistent sleep pattern when their hours are always changing—especially from night shifts to morning shifts or vice versa. By disrupting sleep patterns and circadian rhythms (the way that the body keeps time and wakes up with the sun), rotating schedules can lead to fatigue and potential health issues.
Working evening and night shifts also contributes to a range of health problems, including insomnia, heart complaints, and digestive issues. Night work can conflict with people’s 24-hour “internal clocks” and circadian rhythms, which impacts the way the body stays in harmony with itself.
Lack of stability.
One of the most obvious challenges of rotating schedules is the lack of stability and constant change that it presents to employees.
While some workers may welcome the variety, others may find it stressful. Many people prefer consistent work patterns so they can organize activities outside of work, like evening classes.
This constant change—especially if it happens without much warning—can become difficult for workers who need a more predictable or consistent schedule. It can also be challenging to plan personal activities and responsibilities around these constantly rotating shifts.
Lack of productivity or quality.
Assigning employees rotating shifts without much thought for the balance of the team, or the skills of those assigned, can mean that productivity and quality vary considerably between shifts.
Similarly, if the workload differs a lot between shifts—if, for example, there’s more work to do in the morning than the afternoon—this can affect work quality and productivity, too. The best rotating schedules will take all of this into account to avoid peaks and dips in output and balance skillsets between shifts.
Decreased morale.
Some staff may experience decreasing morale as a result of rotating work shifts due to the uncertainty, fatigue, and constant change it can bring.
If workers feel as though their shifts are constantly changing, especially without much predictability or warning, they may feel as though their employer doesn’t respect or care about them, and become disillusioned. Employees who struggle with rotating shifts may feel less motivated and engaged in their work.
How to create a rotating schedule.
At its most basic, creating a rotating schedule is fairly simple. Find out when each of your team members is available, and put them into groups by shift (for example, put them into groups according to when they work, e.g. morning, afternoon, or evening). Then, assign them to one of the three shifts, taking into account their role, skills, and availability.
However, creating a rotating schedule manually can quickly get complicated, especially if there are a lot of different roles or experience levels, changing availability, PTO, and sick days. It gets even harder if you have a lot of staff to assign quickly.
Homebase can make this much easier by automatically populating a schedule for you based on your rotation pattern, employee roles, and availability. You can also create a template based on a schedule that works well and repeat it, so you don’t have to build each schedule from scratch every time.
Here’s how you do it.
First, set up your “perfect” schedule, based on the rotating shift schedule you choose.
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- In your Homebase dashboard, hit Schedule. This is on the left-hand sidebar.
- Firstly, set team members’ availability. Hit Team Availability to block out days or times when staff are not available. The scheduler will then take this into account on your schedule, and alert you if you accidentally schedule a team member at a time when they’re not available.
- Under Departments/Roles, you can assign the staff you need across your business for each shift. For example, in a restaurant, in the Back of House (BOH) you may need a Cook and a Prep worker. In Front of House (FOH), you need a Cashier and a Server. This ensures that you always have the right staff available for each new shift (so, for example, you don’t end up with two Servers and no Cooks, when you need one of each).
- Then assign staff to each day or hour, rotating their shifts on a daily, weekly, or bi-weekly basis (depending on the pattern you choose). You can toggle between views so you can get more detail on each week or day, by hitting the Day / Week / Month dropdown at the top of the screen. To assign a team member, click on the day or hour you want to give them, on the line where their name appears to the left of the screen (see the image below).
Next steps.
Once you’re happy with your rotating schedule, you can then copy it as a job rotation plan template so you never have to start with a blank page again. You can then use your template as a base, and switch out team members depending on their changing availability.
- To create a template of your current schedule screen, click the Tools button with the spanner icon, in the top right-hand corner.
- Click Templates (see the image below.) Then give the current view a name, and hit Create. This will make a template out of your current view, so you can refer back to it and use it to build another schedule.
You can also copy the current view to another date if you want to repeat a week’s shift schedule for two weeks or a month in a row, for example.
- To copy one week’s schedule to the next, hit the Copy button in the top right-hand corner.
- Then choose the dates that you want to copy the current view to (see the image below).
Publishing.
Once you’re happy with your rotating schedule, hit Publish in the top right corner.
In Settings (on the left-hand sidebar), you can toggle how you want your schedule to be sent to team members, as well as other parameters.
For example, under Schedule Enforcement, you can choose the day that your work week starts, and the hours you want to have available for scheduling.
Under Alerts & Permissions, you can choose to Text the schedule to employees (see the image below). This is a major advantage of using Homebase, because staff receive a notification about a change to the schedule via their smartphone.
This makes it easier for staff, as it reduces the chance that they won’t see changes in time. It also means they don’t have to check a piece of paper physically to know when they’re scheduled to work.
Finally, it saves managers major time and stress because they know that every team member has received an alert about a new schedule. No more worrying about printing a new calendar or manually letting everyone know every time there’s a change!
How to manage rotating schedules.
When managing a rotating schedule, we recommend keeping the following tips in mind for a happier and more productive workforce.
Continuously manage employee availability.
Rotating shift schedules work best when you assign times to employees who are not only available to work then, but also happy to do so.
Of course, as a business, you’ll sometimes have to ask a team member to work at a time when they’d prefer not to—maybe everyone wants to work mornings. But keeping your employees’ availability and preferences in mind is key to a happier and more productive workforce. It also keeps scheduling problems to a minimum.
By ensuring that you’re always aware of factors like PTO, sick leave, other commitments, or anything else that could impact availability, you’ll keep staff happier and have fewer no-shows or last-minute changes.
Homebase’s scheduling tool makes it really easy to manage availability, as staff can submit their availability via the app (and you can approve it there too). The tool will also alert you if you try to schedule a team member at a time when they’re not available, so there’s no risk of clashes.
Finetune your communication and feedback processes.
One way of ensuring staff preferences and availability for rotating schedules is to maintain excellent communication and feedback processes among your team.
Work to implement a culture of open communication, where staff feel comfortable letting you know their availability, what’s working, and what isn’t. You could have a system where staff communicate their availability in advance, but feel comfortable letting you know if that changes.
You can also encourage autonomy among your workforce by encouraging open and friendly communication between colleagues. That way, staff share knowledge between shifts to maximize productivity and handovers.
A platform like Homebase makes transparent team communication between workers and managers easy, and emphasizes a culture of transparent and professional messaging.
The Homebase app is specially designed for easy communication between managers and staff. It lets them chat among themselves, too—all within the same platform. You can share information about shifts, send documents, and alert your team to schedule changes instantly.
Your team can switch shifts between themselves, and managers can choose whether to require approval or not without the Homebase dashboard.
You can also do things like create groups—for example, for everyone working a particular shift—so you can send messages to the entire on-duty team in one go.
Stay flexible and keep an open mind.
Whichever rotating shift schedule you choose, you’ll likely have very good reasons for doing so. But when it comes to scheduling staff, it’s always a good idea to stay flexible and keep an open mind .
Stay compassionate and open to changing availability, and don’t assign staff to work at times that really don’t work for them. Doing so will cause disillusion, and risks more no-shows and workforce churn.
Using a communication platform like Homebase can make this easier, because staff can organize themselves and switch shifts with minimal input from managers. This gives them flexibility without requiring you to plan out a whole new schedule.
It’s easy to change shifts in the Homebase platform, as you can do the whole thing digitally on the calendar dashboard, and push alerts and changes to staff via text or app.
Keep shifts as predictable as possible and plan ahead.
Employees will appreciate you scheduling shifts in advance as they’ll be able to plan ahead and figure out other commitments in their life.
This will improve morale, as staff will feel that you’re respecting their time and needs outside of work.
For example, a restaurant worker may find it easier to psych themselves up to be productive and alert on a long night shift, because they know that they have PTO and daytime shifts lined up for next week.
You’ll also improve productivity and ease scheduling issues, as giving people time to plan ahead increases the chance of everyone turning up to their shifts.
It’s simple to let staff know their schedule in the Homebase app, as they can see a calendar view of their upcoming shifts. You can also toggle between letting them see everyone’s shifts, or only letting them see their own schedule.
Consider your rotation rate.
It may be easier for your team to adapt to changing shifts if you slow down the rotation periods, or change them up depending on staff demand. Rather than rotating over a period of 24 hours (so employee shifts change every day) you could rotate over a period of a week (for example, have employees rotate weekends), fortnight, or month.
This will depend on your industry, and the availability and preferences of your staff. But slowing down your rotation rate could help reduce burnout and fatigue, so it may be the right choice for you.
Rotating schedules for success.
Rotating schedules is a tried and true method of assigning team members to shifts. It makes sure their hours align with their availability, and you have the team you need when you need it.
But it can be tough deciding on the type of rotating schedule, and ensuring you get the best of the benefits without the worst of the challenges.
Homebase can make the entire process much easier compared to scheduling manually using pen or paper or juggling spreadsheets. It lets you automatically factor in staff availability, PTO, and staff roles.
It even highlights clashes. What’s more, you can copy schedules from week to week so you can plan schedules well in advance—saving you time and stress, and alerting team members early. Now you can rotate staff schedules with success.
Remember: This is not legal advice. If you have questions about your particular situation, please consult a lawyer, CPA, or other appropriate professional advisor or agency.
