
The advantages of rotating shifts are clear for everyone, including your customers, your employees, and your business. Advantages of the rotating shift schedule It’s clear that nearly every business can put the rotating schedule to use, in some form, whether it’s just as simple as alternating weekends, or as complicated as switching shifts during the week. This may be due to employee qualification requirements, the need for skilled coverage, or necessary continuity for each shift. Partial: Some employees will always work a fixed shift, while others are on a rotating schedule.This gives everyone a chance for a weekend off. Weekend: This is a basic approach in which employees take turns working weekends.

This may help with adjusting to work nights and then days, as well as provide stability for planning personal time. Slow: Changes to the shifts happen over several months.This can be hard for people to adjust to both physically as well as in planning personal time. Frequent: Weekly changes to the shifts mean an employee might go from working the day shift to the night shift within the week.There are four main types of rotating shifts. The more cyclical your schedule, the easier it is for employees to balance work and personal life. Employees on a rotating schedule might work the same shift on different days (rotation of days), or they might actually work different shifts (rotation of time). If you’re open 24/7, you might have four shifts.Ī rotating schedule means that employees work a particular shift over a set amount of time. Or you might have set up day, swing, and night shifts. Your shifts might be morning to afternoon, and afternoon to night. How a rotating shift schedule worksĮven though a rotating shift means changed schedules, it’s done in a cyclical way. Plus, they get a more flexible workforce who are able to pick up shifts when someone is absent, and employees whose talents are spread out across all the shifts.Īnd with rotating shifts, you avoid some of the frustrations that employees have over their schedule, such as favoritism. It also prevents monotony.įor one thing, the mixing of employees helps in training new employees, exposing them to others who can show them the ropes and the tricks of the trade. Giving every employee an equal opportunity when it comes to different shifts helps improve engagement and morale. If you’re stuck on a low-volume shift, you’ll never get the great tips.

It’s better if everyone has experience working all of them.įor some industries, like restaurants, rotating shifts gives every worker a chance at making better tips during high-volume shifts. This is particularly important if you allow shift swaps sooner or later, they’ll probably pick up a different shift. Until you’ve worked all of the shifts, you’ll lack the experience and a chance to understand a complete picture of how everything functions. They expand their own personal network with other people, discovering different ways of working. Rotating shift schedules help strengthen your team, because employees get to work with others as they rotate across shifts.

The idea is to set up the schedule so that everyone works through the shifts they like and those they don’t as they’re rotated through the different shifts over time. Some shifts make employees happier than other shifts.Ī rotating schedule takes that into account. While there are no “good” or “bad” shifts, there are definitely shifts that your employees prefer for one reason or another.
