DominicA

Hi chaps, we're looking to provide full 24hr support soon to cover expansion into US and Asia and wondering if there are any kinds of best practices relating to hours/scheduling from an employee point of view. We're looking at a minimum of 3 people each working your usual 7.5 hrs, but obviously different time shifts, a , b and c. Week 1 doing shift a, week 2 doing shift b, etc... This would then mean that every 3rd week they would be in the office for the core hours and get to be part of the team rather than some poor sod doing nights and would also be a chance for them to develop skills and relationships etc...

Does this sound reasonable??? Are there enough GOOD people out there that would be interested in this kind of arrangement???

thanks for any help

Dom

camk

shift allowance for Night Shift will need to be 30-40% to make it attractive. You need to watch Working time directive on rest time with shift changeovers so that early changes to night shift. Best way to do it is hire the team based on the job and hours and set the first task for them to work it out among themselves with the manager mediating, if you've hired any dicks, they will show up at this point. Then you can let them go...shifts and allowances are often a flash point so you need a flexible team.
The guys I worked with prefered 12 hour shifts with more days off between than 5x8. It can be worked with a similar amount of staff and people don't get the same levels of stress and rest time is no longer a real issue.

Cheers
Cammy

Puff The Magic Wagon!

iTrader: (2)

Haven't a clue regarding the issues involved here but...

Used to do 4on 4off nights and after a while your brain comes totally boozled as to day of week etc. I might suggest that doing a rotating days, eves, nights, days, eves, nights, days, eves, nights etc etc might completely **** the ol system, leading to detriment of service.

Have a look to the plod/fireservice etc as to how they deal with it and the time-spans (month of shift a, month of shift b etc?)

Whats the money like?

vmax

Speaking of IT Recruitment,

How do you guys rate the current market in general. Permie, Contract, development.

I'm trying to guage the market, A bit of comparison never hurts

DominicA

thanks guys, points noted

WillieF

Part of me says outsource the night time bit then you don't have to worry about health and safety/shift allowances etc etc - remember that you really can't have one person in the building on their own.

I set up a 24hour help desk for one of our customers and the night shift team rotates so that they see the day shift every so often and they have joint team meetings.

We have three people on the night shift so that if one is off ill there is still two in the building - never had a situation when two people are off ill

Puff The Magic Wagon!

iTrader: (2)

Willie

You've obviously not had to cover shifts in a courier company

Mind you, it could be the management

WillieF

LOL at puff

ADP

I did 4 on 4 off. It sucked royally.

Im told this is a pretty regular shift system, used by many (also at the Beeb I think)

People will want good money if they are working nights - unless its monkey work that is.

ptholt

When i worked for a city law firm on night shifts i did monday-friday, midnight to 8 am.(this was 1997)

Did this for 18 months straight then left as i was going bonkers.

It was great in the summer, you only really needed about 4 hours sleep then could lie in the garden, winter was a killer as it was dark when working, dark going home, dark going to work etc, very depressing.

I had a 5k shift bonus for doing this (very high paid job anyway due to nature of firm) and a basic of @ 35k + time and a half overtime on flexi.

Best advice would be :-

try and rotate shifts, but current day shift may not be that keen, plus you'll have to pay them all some sort of shift allowance is the downside.
Dont do straight five ons, was a killer and a huge drain of your social life falling asleep when you went out to dinner etc hehe, other night shift staff with me did sunday-thursday and saturday-weds.On a friday night i was alone, the other two had saturday and sunday night alone. Wasnt a huge problem, we covered 3 buildings, there was loads of security to play tricks on and usually some sad lawyers still working or in meetings for us to procide 1/2 and 3rd line support on.

Would recommend against the way the law firm did it, we had a huge turnaround of staff. Airport style shifts would have been much nicer on the system.

[Edited by ptholt - 8/21/2002 10:47:06 PM]