Covering twenty-four hours a day, every day, is 168 hours of coverage a week, and every 24 hour shift schedule template is a way of dividing those hours among crews so that each person averages something near forty. There are three families. The 3 shift work schedule on eight hours, which needs five crews or a mix of crews and part-timers. The 12-hour rotations, the 2-2-3, the DuPont and the 4 on 4 off, which need four. And the 24 hour shift itself, worked by fire departments on a 24/48 schedule with Kelly days, which needs three platoons and a federal exemption. This page compares the 24 7 shift patterns on the two numbers that matter, hours per person and crews, and gives the template for each.
Three eight-hour shifts
Days, afternoons and nights, each eight hours, each needing a crew every day of the week. Seven days times three shifts is twenty-one crew-shifts a week; at five shifts per person that is 4.2 crews, so a 24x7 shift schedule on eight hours runs five crews with a rotating day off, or four crews and part-timers covering the fifth. The common templates are the fixed-shift version, where each crew keeps its shift and rotates its days off, and the rotating version, where crews move forward from days to afternoons to nights over a cycle. The rotating schedule generator on this site returns the five-crew figure from eight-hour shifts at five days on in seven.
Twelve-hour rotations
Two shifts a day, each twelve hours, fourteen crew-shifts a week, and a crew working half its days: four crews. The 2-2-3 gives every other weekend off, the DuPont gives a week off every four weeks, the 4 on 4 off gives four days off at a time and drifts through the week. All average 42 hours and all alternate 36-hour and 48-hour weeks, so the workweek definition decides the overtime under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. This is the family most plants, hospitals and dispatch centers use, and the template is the pattern's days on and cycle length: seven in fourteen, fourteen in twenty-eight, four in eight.
The 24-hour shift and the 24/48 with Kelly days
Fire departments work 24 hour shifts: on for a full day, off for two, the 24/48. Three platoons cover the station, each averaging 56 hours a week, which is lawful because section 207(k) of the Fair Labor Standards Act lets a public agency pay fire protection employees overtime only on hours over 212 in a 28-day period. The Kelly day is the scheduled extra day off, every so many shifts, that brings the average down toward the threshold; how often it falls decides the hours. It is a template for firefighters and a warning for everyone else: a 24-hour shift outside that exemption is 24 hours of pay, sixteen of them at overtime, and a crew that cannot sleep through it.
Questions people ask about 24 hour shift schedule template
How many crews does a 24x7 operation need?
Five on eight-hour shifts, four on 12-hour shifts, three platoons on 24-hour shifts with the fire service exemption. The worksheet on this site returns the figure from the shift length and the pattern.
What is a Kelly day?
A scheduled extra day off in a firefighter's 24/48 rotation, taken every so many shifts, that brings the average hours down toward the overtime threshold the federal fire service exemption sets.
Can a private business run 24-hour shifts?
It can, but the fire service exemption does not apply: every hour over forty in the workweek is overtime, and most of the shift is hours nobody can stay alert for. Twelve-hour rotations are the private sector's answer.