Schedule Question - smaller sized dept

[ETOH]

Howdy. Sorry this is a bit long, but it’s kinda hard to explain. I know there are people out there who, simply because of the way they’re wired, tend to really, REALLY like this kind of thing… and I’m not one of them. I work security in a Level I Trauma Center in Minneapolis [non-LEO, but structured similarly and just as busy ] and this looked like the best spot to ask for help. If there’s a more appropriate forum for this let me know and I’ll move it there.

Need: We’re looking at making a 2010 schedule that satisfies our business needs (24/7 coverage) as well as being flexible for the officers (keep ‘em happy with ample time off including as many whole weekends off as possible). The challenges we face include: we have 28 FTEs to schedule, our current schedule does not have any time built in for training and it only allows for one officer to take time off and absorb one sick call before we’re at a critical minimum staffing level (we try to not work with fewer than 5 officers on at any time). We also are trying to manage this kind of coverage with zero overtime (Hahaha, yeah, I know).

History: we’ve always worked either four 10’s each week or some variant of our current schedule which is made up of two 8’s & two12’s each week. We LOVE the idea of a 4 day work week for a number of reasons;
• reduced burnout
• reduced use of sick time
• less $$$ spent on commute, daycare, parking, etc
• currently we work a fixed schedule meaning that officers work the same pattern of days on/days off each 14 day pay period. Their shift length, start & end times sometimes vary slightly.
• hard to argue that 52 “extra” days off each year isn’t a perk
• currently shifts start at 0600, 0800, 1400, 1600, 2000, 2200, and 0001 and are either 8 or 12 hours in length.




Parameters: here’s what we have to work with and what we need to do;
• we have exactly 28 officers.
• we need to schedule 7 people around the clock (to absorb a day off & a sick call as mentioned)
• we would prefer to staff extra people between 2000 and 0200 / 0400 to handle the higher call volume
• we would like an extra officer to post at an access point from 2030-2230 (which would raise our minimum staffing requirement to 6 for just those two hours. Ugh!)
• there is no day of the week that needs extra bodies working
• can’t work less than 8 hours, can’t work more than 12
• must have 8 hours off between the end of one shift and the beginning of another
• cannot work more than 40 hours in any one week and cannot work more than 80 hours within any (2-week) pay period. Too bad, too, because one officer came up with a nifty schedule a few years ago that had you working 36 hours week 1 and 44 hours week 2, but Payroll went BONKERS and said “no way!”.
• we do NOT have to schedule for lunch breaks; just 8, 10 or 12 hour shifts

My question, then: Is anyone aware of a schedule that provides relatively even coverage, 24/7, for a department of 28 officers? The 6 supervisors have their own hybrid deal to provide 24/7 coverage by one of them and allow for “admin” or “office” time that will NOT work for the line staff.

Or… is anyone aware of some reasonably priced software that creates schedules after you set the parameters? Not looking for a slick/pretty schedule management program, but something that will crunch our numbers and plot out the shifts for us.

If there is a schedule out there that uses 29 or 30 people it would have to come with some OUTSTANDING justification for the addition of 1 or 2 more employees. We’re fighting just to not lose what we currently have.

Or… am I asking the impossible?

I’m happy to move discussion to e-mail, just PM me, but I bet there are other people out there craving a magic schedule as much as I am so I figured I’d cast a broad net.

Questions? Fire away!

[StudChris]

28 is not small at all. 4 shifts, 6am-6pm, or 6pm-6am, 2 on 2 off 3 on 2 off 2 on 3 off, just like most cops do.

I didn't read past you having 28 people and needing 24/7 coverage, so if I totally missed the point of the post, my bad.

[ETOH]

12-hour shifts in a 2/2, 3/2, 2/3 pattern has people working seven 12's each pay period. That's a total of 84 hours.

Worse yet is there are only 36 hours scheduled one week and 48 hours the following week. HR will not allow anything other than two 40-hour work weeks.

Thanks, though

[StudChris]

12-hour shifts in a 2/2, 3/2, 2/3 pattern has people working seven 12's each pay period. That's a total of 84 hours.

Worse yet is there are only 36 hours scheduled one week and 48 hours the following week. HR will not allow anything other than two 40-hour work weeks.

Thanks, though

Well then looks like you're SOL.

[HEDP]

.

That sucks.




Luckily I'm with a dept. where we get to choose our schedules each month.




I wouldn't want to do 6 ons, 4 offs.


.

[mikeymedic]

12-hour shifts in a 2/2, 3/2, 2/3 pattern has people working seven 12's each pay period. That's a total of 84 hours.

Worse yet is there are only 36 hours scheduled one week and 48 hours the following week. HR will not allow anything other than two 40-hour work weeks.

Thanks, though

84 hours a pay period and your talking burnout? I work 140 a pay period and I'm ok. Twitch, jitter.

[ETOH]

Union contract, what can I do? To be honest the crew is super cool about working extra hours, but the rules won't allow us to schedule those hours or the budgets gets thrown outta whack. Come work for me, Mikey. You'd have plenty of time off-duty to decompress.

Actually, with a little good 'ol public school math, I figured out that the boss has asked us to do the impossible. With 28 officers working 40 hours a week each, we have 1120 hours of work available, right? The parameters he set out with 7 people scheduled around the clock is asking for 1176 hours of work to be done. Difference = 56 hours.

It looks like I have 2 options:
1) I need 2 more officers to "balance" the schedule (giving me 1200 hours of work to assign each week)
2) Make a schedule that gets us as close to his request as possible

Prolly not gonna get 2 more FTEs so leaving blank spots in the schedule is the only other option. I guess the call load is lowest from about 0200 or 0300 to around 1000 or 1100. Running one officer shorter these hours frees up 56 hours. That gets us down to our number of 1120 hours available.

I should've gone into fire and worked 24-hours days hehehe.

[1345]

Union contract, what can I do? To be honest the crew is super cool about working extra hours, but the rules won't allow us to schedule those hours or the budgets gets thrown outta whack. Come work for me, Mikey. You'd have plenty of time off-duty to decompress.

Actually, with a little good 'ol public school math, I figured out that the boss has asked us to do the impossible. With 28 officers working 40 hours a week each, we have 1120 hours of work available, right? The parameters he set out with 7 people scheduled around the clock is asking for 1176 hours of work to be done. Difference = 56 hours.

It looks like I have 2 options:
1) I need 2 more officers to "balance" the schedule (giving me 1200 hours of work to assign each week)
2) Make a schedule that gets us as close to his request as possible

Prolly not gonna get 2 more FTEs so leaving blank spots in the schedule is the only other option. I guess the call load is lowest from about 0200 or 0300 to around 1000 or 1100. Running one officer shorter these hours frees up 56 hours. That gets us down to our number of 1120 hours available.

I should've gone into fire and worked 24-hours days hehehe.

We work this ridiculous 5 day shifts/3days off then 5 evening shifts/2 days off. Rotate every other week between days and eves. Its really annoying. Its a 15 day cycle at 85 hours. We then have fixed personnel on midnights. Day shift is 0730-1600, eves 1530-0000 and mids 2330-0800. 8.5 hours a day. We as officers have been trying to get the schedule changed but for whatever reason, those on the command staff who work a lovely 9-5 mon-fri could care less. We came up with a 4x3 10 hours shift that will work with our current manpower (about 170 beat cops to cover a city of 220k and 360+ square miles, lowest manpower in our area), but we cant get any support because it would require the command staff to manage the schedule every 6 months. I can email you some XLS schedules that I have drafted.

[Rush817]

12-hour shifts in a 2/2, 3/2, 2/3 pattern has people working seven 12's each pay period. That's a total of 84 hours.

Worse yet is there are only 36 hours scheduled one week and 48 hours the following week. HR will not allow anything other than two 40-hour work weeks.

Thanks, though

Within the 2 week cycle, you have a swing day, which means you have an 8 hr shift. By doing that it wil bring your total number of hours to 80 for the pay cycle. They can choose when they want their swing day either on their Friday (Most Preferred) or on their Monday.

[Jere]

I work in a Level 2 trama hospital (with 340 beds) and we have 10 officers with 2 on at a time. 28 is a big department. We have 10 hour shifts, 5 a day. 2 during the day, 2 during the evening, and one overnight in ER. 6 of the officers are FTE and the other 4 are PTE. There is a 3 hr gap in coverage every night and an 8 hr gap 2 evenings a week. That is how we deal with not having the officers we need. We had 15 when I started and then had 6 8 hour shifts a day with full coverage. We have been short (because of the budget) of a few officers for about 3 years so most days we only have one officer on duty during the day. The PTE work extra when someone is out on PTO. We work a 2 week schedual with the FTE doing different days either week save one; i.e. I have every day off every other week save Monday with no more than four days in a row. Our scheduling is based off the local PD's schedual.

You could try posting this at the SecurityInfoWatch.com forums. They deal with schedualing all the time.