| |
Changing to new Shift Patterns |
 |
VISUAL ROTA from CDT |
The Old Vicarage, Station Road Rolleston, Newark, Notts Great Britain. NG23 5SE Tel/Fax +44 1 636 816466/816882 E-mail: vrota@btinternet.com |
Ó2003 CDT All rights reserved
SHIFT PATTERNS
All of us would like to think that there is a repeatable pattern of shifts that would only have to be done once. Yet that pattern seems to elude us. We never seem to be able to take the same schedule, say from this time last year and repeat it again. When you see how many ways you could schedule staff, then it isn't such a surprise that the schedule is never the same, ever.
The first table demonstrates a perfectly fair schedule where every day is equal. All variations are covered. This table is not meant to be an actual method of staff scheduling, it is to illustrate how it is possible to produce a fair(ish) schedule once you take a long enough time period and other conditions of employment into account. This is impossible to do manually, it requires using Visual Rota to keep track of all the factors involved.
This table demonstrates there can be 21 different ways to schedule staff working 5days a week and 2 days off a week. The first week becomes week 22 and the cycle starts again.
| MONDAY | TUESDAY | WEDNESDAY | THURSDAY | FRIDAY | SATURDAY | SUNDAY | |
| WEEK 1 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 2 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 3 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 4 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 5 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 6 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 7 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 8 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 9 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 10 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 11 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 12 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 13 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 14 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 15 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 16 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 17 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 18 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 19 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 20 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 21 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON |
We can look at a table like this and see that it is not a practicle model of how we should schedule staff. If we imagine ourselves working to this table, we would probably object to the lack of times that we would be off for 2 days together, especially weekends. Am I right? have a look yourself. But, the schedule does have some very good points to it when you look closely. First the statistics.
1. Continuous days on duty, there is one occasion of 5 days of continuous duty, 12 of 4 days continuous duty, 8 of 3 days, 7 of 2 days and 7 of 1 day, plus once of 10 continuous days(when the cycle starts again).
2. Continuous days off duty, there are 6 two day breaks and 30 one day breaks, but there are 7 occasions when the single days off are seperated by a day on duty.
3. Holidays. Everyone receives holidays, in this example lets assume that you get 21 days of holiday including state holidays. If you used 7 of those days in the table above(and don't forget you have to use them sometime) then you could have changed the pattern so that you get 6 two day periods off and 7 three day periods off, which makes 13 long(ish) breaks in 21 weeks.
4. The number of weekends off will now increase from 1 to 3, still not very good, eh. But what if you used those holidays on Saturdays and Sundays and added them to the day you all ready had off on a Saturday or Sunday, then those 7 days holiday would give you 8 weekends off, which is pretty close to 40% of the weekends, and you still have 3 weekends of 1 day off. So now we have more than 50% of your weekends with at least one day off.
5. With the exception of the long 10 period on duty, you will be working only 3 or 4 days continuously, which doesn't seem that bad, or stressful.
The above analysis, which starts very negative and ends up as being quite acceptable, is only possible when more data is available than you would normally get. It isn't easy to visualise in your mind how such large changes can be made to an original unpaletable idea just by adding a few holidays. You might then have a schedule that you could repeat every 21 weeks. The staff wouldn't have to start at week 1, they could start at any week, so you could stagger the weeks. I have reproduced the table using the holidays.
| MONDAY | TUESDAY | WEDNESDAY | THURSDAY | FRIDAY | SATURDAY | SUNDAY | |
| WEEK 1 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 2 | ON | ON | ON | ON | holiday | ||
| WEEK 3 | ON | ON | ON | ON | holiday | ||
| WEEK 4 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 5 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 6 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 7 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 8 | ON | ON | ON | ON | holiday | ||
| WEEK 9 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 10 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 11 | ON | ON | ON | ON | holiday | ||
| WEEK 12 | ON | ON | ON | ON | holiday | ||
| WEEK 13 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 14 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 15 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 16 | ON | ON | ON | ON | holiday | ||
| WEEK 17 | ON | ON | ON | ON | holiday | ||
| WEEK 18 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 19 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 20 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON | ||
| WEEK 21 | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON |
I am sure that you will be able to see many problems in using a table such as the above to run your business. Imstinctively, you object to the mathematical logic of this table and bring up points such as, lack of staffing cover at weekends, how to fit longer staff holidays in, etc. and you would be right to object on those grounds, because there is no maths that could take human nature(not to mention 'conditions of service') into account.
Staff Schedule where staff work a two shift system
A similar table to the first one can be made for staff working a 2 shift system of Earlies and Lates, which is normal in a service industry. Now, instead of repeating the pattern after 21 weeks, it would be WEEK 673 before the cycle starts again. You would not be repeating the pattern for 13 years. No wonder it's difficult to simply use last years schedule.
Scheduling for longer periods
If you did a similar table for staff working 20 shifts in 28 days, the table would be 3,000,000,000,000 lines long, which represents a period of time, 10 times longer than the Universe has been in existence. The paper used for the table would circle the Earth a thousand times. You would only have to get to line 650 before your member of staff retires after 50 years continuous service.
One more mathematical fact. If you tried to schedule 2 staff, then the total number of ways you could schedule 2 staff to work 5 days on, 2 days off, all earlies, isn't doubled, it's squared. There are 441 different ways to do it, and it would be 9 years before you had to repeat it.
Vision and Seeing Patterns
Our strongest sense is vision. More of our brain is devoted to vision and light and its interpretation than the other senses combined. Our ability to see and interprete what we see is phenomenal and without parallel. You can see, understand what you see and react in milliseconds. And we also remember what we see, no matter how short the time was. Hence the banning of subliminal messages on TV.
We use the human ability to spot patterns a lot when we constructed the layout of the results. When you are preparing a staff schedule, you will know how many staff should be on duty on each shift. In the 2 lines below representing staff on duty, see how quickly you can spot the odd ones out
Morning 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6
Evening 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
They stand out like a beacon in the night. Somehow the eye is attracted to just the location where your attention is needed. The program uses this ability to speed up your skills.
The Printout. Page 1 Staff Schedule
On one sheet of A4 paper, the program prints out the shifts for up to 67 staff and for up to 38 days. It uses the smallest print size it can to do this and there are up to 3000 individual items of data on the paper denoting all the information your staff need.
The printout initially looks too small to read. However, it is a working document and you will soon find that the small print size and compactness was an important factor in its readability to the staff that need the information the printout contained. The staff need to know when they are on duty and they focus on their line, and their line only. The faint color bars every 5 lines acted as tram lines, you are either on the line, above it or below it. Weekends are shaded as well, hence the week layout becomes obvious, Monday to the right, Friday to the left of the weekends. Hence the staff can glance straight across the schedule grid, without having to follow an individual line, to their shift on the day they want.
All printouts are time stamped and date stamped automatically, so if you happen to be working at midnight on a Saturday, everyone will know and be impressed! Also, everyone knows that changes have occurred and take notice of it.
We show our staff the printout of the hours worked as well, this is page 3. Staff are responsible for ensuring that changes to the schedule are made, or they have to bring attention to any mistakes. The staff know how many shifts and hours they work better than we do, hence we no longer make mistakes, only the staff make mistakes.
The page 4 printout is of the cash budget and this is for management use. Everyone's shift can be calculated as a cost to the organisation and in general this is not for public consumption. In instances where publication is made, all extrenuous information can be deleted very quickly and re-instated later.
The page 2 printout is of the information table and contains the shift definitions. Apart from the initial phase of defining your shifts using the Shift Wizard, its major use is whenever an analysis is carried out, then the shifts associated with the analysis should also be printed out.