A 2-2-3 schedule is a fourteen-day rotation for four crews working 12-hour shifts. Each crew works two days, has two off, works three, has two off, works two, has three off; the pattern then repeats with the days and nights swapped or held, depending on the version. It gives every crew a three-day weekend every other week and a full weekend off every other weekend, which is why it is the most common 12-hour pattern in plants, hospitals and dispatch centers that run around the clock. This page sets out what a 2-2-3 schedule is, day by day, what it does to a person's hours, and how four crews cover the clock on it.
The fourteen days, crew by crew
Take Crew A on days and Crew B on nights for the first fortnight. Monday and Tuesday A works days, B works nights. Wednesday and Thursday A and B are off and Crews C and D take days and nights. Friday, Saturday and Sunday A and B are back, then off Monday and Tuesday, back Wednesday and Thursday, off Friday to Sunday. C and D run the mirror image. In fourteen days each crew works seven 12-hour shifts, has every other weekend entirely free and the other weekend entirely working, and never works more than three days in a row. After two or four cycles the day and night crews swap, which is the part of the pattern that varies most between workplaces.
What it does to a person's hours
Seven shifts of twelve hours in fourteen days is 84 hours a fortnight, an average of 42 hours a week. Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act overtime is owed on hours over forty in each workweek, and the 2-2-3 alternates a 36-hour week with a 48-hour week, so the overtime is eight hours every other week rather than two hours every week. Where the workweek is set to start decides which shifts fall in which week, and a workweek that starts mid-pattern can change the overtime bill without changing a single shift. The rotating schedule generator on this site returns the 42-hour average and the amount over forty from the two numbers the pattern reduces to: seven days on in a fourteen-day cycle.
Covering the clock: four crews, not three
Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, on 12-hour shifts, with each crew working half its days, takes exactly four crews: two shifts in a day multiplied by the two-to-one ratio of cycle days to days worked. An operation that runs a 2-2-3 with three crews is not running a 2-2-3; it is running everyone at 56 hours a week and filling the fourth crew's shifts with overtime and callouts. Before the pattern is adopted, the headcount question is whether the fourth crew exists, and the worksheet's crews-needed figure is the honest answer.
Questions people ask about 2-2-3 schedule
How many hours a week is a 2-2-3 schedule?
An average of 42, made up of alternating 36-hour and 48-hour weeks on 12-hour shifts. The exact split depends on where the workweek starts.
Do crews rotate between days and nights on a 2-2-3?
Usually, every two to four weeks, so that no crew is permanently on nights. Some workplaces run fixed day and night crews on the same 2-2-3 shape, which is the Pitman fixed-shift variant.
Is the 2-2-3 the same as the Pitman schedule?
The Pitman is the best-known 2-2-3 and the two names are often used for the same thing. Pitman usually refers to the version where day and night crews rotate every two weeks.