Definition of Rotating Shifts
A rotating shift schedule can therefore be defined as any shift schedule by which workers periodically exchange or cycle through the shift they take. For instance, an employee might be assigned to the day shift for one week, then promoted to the evening shift in the next week, and then demoted to the night shift in the following week. The rotation then repeats. Working shifts are often utilised in organizations that provide continuous service, for example; health care facilities, hotels, manufacturing firms, transport firms and services, and emergency services.
Benefits of Rotating Shifts
Rotating shifts can offer several key benefits:
- Fairness: The shift or rotation of the time that employees have to work guarantees that all have to work on an unpopular night or during the weekends, not only the new employees or those occupying junior positions. This setup is perceived as less hierarchy or power distance.
- Preventing burnout: Changing the schedule rather than giving a particular position to people, and having them work the shift for as long as they can handle it, helps reduce stress and burnout among employees.
- Cross-training: Staff who operate in shifts ensure that they interact with different people and learn from other co-workers, managers, and different procedures. Cross-training as a concept can improve communication and coordination between employees and thus the teams end up being more efficient.
- Higher staffing: Some of the benefits of rotating shifts include that it creates opportunities for having an adequate number of staff during the day and night hours for instance during customers’ service or emergencies and it matches the staffing with business needs.
Drawbacks of Rotating Shifts
However, there are also several potential downsides:
- Disrupting work/life balance: This often requires shift changeovers between day, evening, and even at night which makes it hard for the employees to have a personal life, let alone planning for it. This also affects sleep cycles particularly when the individual is unable to maintain a regular sleep schedule.
- Compromised health: Rotating shift workers are exposed to unfavorable sleep patterns that augment the vulnerability of the workers to develop chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, mood swings, and miscarriages in females among others.
- Safety hazards: The effects of shift volatility are even more pronounced for the quality of work, as it impairs concentration and leads to fatigue; thus, it is logical to assume that volatile shifts increase the likelihood of accidents and injuries for certain types of workers. For instance, investigations carried out on doctors revealed that the ones who had worked while sleepy were more prone to committing mistakes.
- Lower productivity: This implies that output, focus, and performance deteriorate mainly because workers are involved in shift-to-shift movements. That’s because the body clock takes some time to adapt to different sleep-wake cycles for instance when a person is transferring from the day shift to the night shift he or she is likely to experience some difficulties in sleeping at night and being awake in the day.
Tip #1: Include More Frequent Changes of Shifts
However, it is important to have not only a few hours’ difference between shifts but several days of rest between them. Therefore change from Monday day working to Tuesday night, Wednesday morning working to Wednesday night working and off on Thursday and then restart with Friday morning shift. This reduces fatigue and provides the body with more time for adaptation to the pressure and stress.
Tip #2: Space Shifts Minimum 10 Hours Apart
According to the studies, the optimal time for starting new shifts should be at least 9-10 hours after previous shifts have ended. This allows enough time to spend on commuting, breaking from work, resting, and even sleeping. When shift-turnarounds are done hastily they contribute to fatigue and increase the safety risks.
