Author: Gus Anderson

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The Pros and Cons of 12-Hour Shifts

Summary

  • Knowing the pros and cons of 12-hour shifts can help scheduling managers determine if the model fits with the specific demands of their business and the availability of their employees.

  • The pros of 12-hour shifts are that they minimize shift handovers, reduce absenteeism, and save employees time and money.

  • The cons of 12-hour shifts are that they can increase labor costs and burnout while also making labor compliance more difficult.

Do 12-hour shifts make sense? Or is it better to schedule a standard eight hours a day per employee? Which one is for you?

Knowing the pros and cons of 12-hour shifts can help scheduling managers determine if the model fits with the specific demands of their business and the availability of their employees. Scheduling managers can set optimal hours for their employees, whether by following a scheduling pattern or scheduling employees according to user demand, while also ensuring they meet labor compliance requirements.

The Pros:

There are definitely certain advantages to 12-hour shifts, including:

Simple 24-hour coverage

For businesses that need 24-hour coverage, 12-hour shifts make schedules simpler since you only need two shifts per day to have total coverage (i.e. a day shift and a night shift). Because of this, 12-hour shifts tend to be much easier to routinely schedule than a multitude of smaller 8-hour shifts. Simplified 12-hour shift patterns can also be used, meaning administrative staff will spend fewer hours constructing schedules and filling shifts while dedicating more time to accomplishing more important tasks.

Fewer shift handovers

Working 12-hour shifts reduces miscommunication and variability between shifts while also allocating more time for employees to work on projects on a continuous basis. Focusing on projects for longer periods of time with less variability in the staff managing them means objectives get completed on time and to a higher standard, as opposed to a “too many cooks in the kitchen” situation.

Most importantly, 12-hour shift patterns mean fewer shift handover problems. In a hypothetical scenario, let’s say a building needs security guards to work 24 hours a day to ensure it’s secure. If there were three guards scheduled for eight hours each, all of them would need to be filled in on important events/information occurring outside of their shifts. But if only two guards are scheduled for 12 hours each, only the two of them would need to be briefed on the security issues surrounding the building. Reducing the occurrence of shift handovers in this way helps to minimize employee skill and cost variability. It also helps minimize issues that can occur between shifts like miscommunication, equipment mistakes, and wasteful meeting times.

Reducing employee absenteeism

Employees working 12-hour shifts work fewer days, meaning they are usually more likely to turn up on the few days they’re scheduled. Employees have more to lose by skipping a 12-hour shift than an eight-hour shift since they would be sacrificing a greater number of working hours and, consequently, accrued annual leave hours. Moreover, greater responsibility tends to come with a 12-hour shift, further reducing the frequency of no call, no shows.

The greater number of days off that come with working 12-hour shifts may also reduce absenteeism. Employees can put this valuable time towards family, running errands, or dealing with other personal matters that might typically conflict with a traditional 8-hour shift schedule. Moreover, it seems as if the workforce is increasingly moving in the direction of more time off. A whopping 92% of US employees want a four-day workweek, which has been found to reduce stress, improve work-life balance, and actually increase productivity.

Saving money

Working fewer days per week means employees can save on other costs, like travel costs to and from work. If they worked eight-hour shifts, five days a week, they’d have to spend money traveling to work five days a week, while if they worked three 12-hour shifts per week, they’d only have to travel to work three days a week, helping them save on travel costs.

As per Jerry, a car insurance company, each American spends over $4,500 every year commuting to work, and that doesn’t consider the opportunity cost of the travel time involved. The opportunity cost in itself averages nearly $1,700 per employee per year. Saving on these costs would be a massive benefit.

The Cons:

Deploying 12-hour shifts also comes with several disadvantages, some of which include:

Increased risk of burnout

Working longer shifts can be emotionally and physically exhausting and can lead to burnout. Most notably, longer shifts might mess up sleep cycles for employees which can negatively affect their health.

This is especially true for employees who work night shifts – they typically get two to four hours less sleep than usual. Moreover, it can be quite difficult for night-shift workers to sleep during the day. Over time, this can cause health issues like insomnia.

In healthcare, where most nurse schedules typically involve 12-hour shifts, working longer hours may reduce the empathy nurses have for their patients and diminish the standard of care they provide to their patients. In the hospitality industry, employees may not be able to provide the same level of service throughout their 12-hour shifts. For factory work that involves manual labor, working 12-hour shifts may be physically draining and impossible to sustain. This also negatively impacts employee morale since working long shifts can take its toll on their health.

Higher labor costs

Depending on overtime laws in your location, 12-hour shifts may lead to higher labor costs.

For example, in New York, any hours worked over 40 hours a week are eligible to be paid at the overtime rate (1.5 times the regular pay rate). So, if you schedule employees to work four days a week, working 12-hour shifts each day, that means they’d be working a total of 48 hours. Forty of those hours are paid at the normal rate, while the remaining eight are paid at 1.5 times the normal rate. Employers need to be mindful of these overtime costs and schedule employees accordingly.

Typically, switching from an eight-hour to a 12-hour shift schedule can increase wages by around 2%. Ensuring cost-neutrality when switching to 12-hour shift scheduling is quite difficult, especially when no plan is in place. Even the slightest rise in labor costs can be extremely detrimental to a business’s operations. However, purposefully planning and designing a new scheduling process for cost-neutrality with the right workforce management strategy may actually eliminate an increase in labor costs.

Labor compliance difficulties

Beyond the obvious administrative issues of manually creating a 12-hour schedule, errors in labor compliance and break scheduling are additional causes for concern. You need to be mindful of minimum wage laws and overtime laws to ensure you remain legally compliant.

Breaks, especially, are very tricky to administer when dealing with 12-hour schedules. While no federal law requires you to give your employees breaks, you still need to provide them to ensure your employees remain productive. Now, if these breaks are between five minutes and 25 minutes, they’d have to be considered paid work time, but if they’re longer than 30 minutes, you can make them unpaid work breaks. You’d have to manage which breaks are paid or unpaid, adding to the difficulty of managing breaks.

Monitoring overtime laws to ensure employees get paid at the right rate for the hours they’ve worked can also be an administrative hurdle. Every location has different overtime laws, so you need to be mindful of these.

Involve employees in their scheduling decisions

While there are pros and cons to 12-hour shifts, a good way to determine if they’re right for your business is to involve employees in their scheduling decisions. Doing this empowers your staff and helps you determine whether 12-hour shifts are right for your business. Changing to 12-hour shifts represents a major cultural change. Involving your employees from the outset might pay off in the long run.

A good place to start is with a survey or open meeting intended to identify your employees’ priorities. Management should encourage workers to rank the importance of issues such as days off, consecutive workdays, weekends, overtime, and family and social needs. Once these group criteria are determined, management can begin looking at 12-hour options that address workers’ concerns and satisfy the company’s business objectives.

Want to know what role employee scheduling software plays in all this? Contact us today. 

Workforce.com is a leader in Employee Scheduling on G2

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California’s push for a 32-hour workweek explained, and how to prepare

Summary:

  • California is considering a 32-hour workweek bill for businesses with over 500 staff

  • 4 day weeks have been tested in Japan and Iceland with great success

  • Employers could suffer higher overtime and hiring costs as a result of the bill

  • Prepare for a 32-hour workweek by reassessing your workforce management

Californian workers may want to hold off on posting their apartments on Craigslist and hightailing it in UHauls to Austin – a select group of them might be due for a shorter workweek in the near future.

A new bill is currently working its way through the Californian legislature proposing a 32-hour workweek for businesses with over 500 employees. AB 2932 requires that “work in excess of 32 hours be compensated atthe rate of no less than 1 1/2 times the employee’s regular rate of pay.” In addition, all work going beyond 12 hours a day or seven days a week is paid at double an employee’s regular rate of pay.

The bill also prohibits employers from reducing an employee’s regular rate of pay as a consequence of the change in workweek hours. 

Backed by four Democrat cosponsors, the groundbreaking bill would reportedly affect nearly 2,600 Californian businesses. Central to the idealogy behind the bill is that people will work less time while earning the same compensation that came with a traditional 40-hour workweek, all while increasing job satisfaction and productivity. 

While burnt out US workers everywhere are most likely salivating at this legislative development, many businesses owners may have their misgivings – and rightfully so. With a colorful history engulfed in debate over the past few years, the proposed 32-hour workweek in the US deserves to be unpacked a little. 

What’s the upside? 

In light of the “Great Reshuffle” and the persisting labor shortage, it is evident that workers share a growing sentiment of burnout and distaste for the current employment landscape. People are prioritizing pursuits beyond their careers and opting for more and more remote work in the days since the pandemic.

Questions still remain on how to address this national grudge against the traditional 9 to 5, and the 32-hour workweek is just the latest attempt at a solution. Working fewer hours in a week is obviously an attractive prospect and would most likely help return people to the workforce at first glance. 

The 32-hour workweek is nothing new, however. Backed by 4 Day Week Global, workweeks under 40 hours have been pushed in the countries all across the world for years, partially implemented at times with great success. 

Microsoft Japan tested a 4-day workweek for a month in 2019. They saw a rise in productivity, with sales per employee increasing by 40%. They also experienced cost savings with 23.1% less electricity used and 58.7% fewer pages printed. Honestly, I’m surprised that a Microsoft office even printed paper to begin with – well done I guess. 

In Iceland, two combined trials saw 1% of the country’s entire workforce try a four-day workweek from 2015 to 2019. Participating public service and local government organizations had their employees work about 35-36 hours a week. As a result, work-life balance was significantly improved and now 86% of Icelandic people work shorter weeks.

Icelandic workers in the trial also became more productive, eliminating unnecessary weekly meetings and reducing time spent on necessary ones. 

Okay, so it’s looking like three-day weekends in the Cali sun are coming soon to a cubical farm near you, right? 

Not so fast. 

What’s the downside? 

Chief among the concerns for a 32-hour workweek would be the financial burden on employers. The California Chamber of Commerce says that AB 2932 could be a” job killer” and could make hiring and talent acquisition more expensive. 

There is also the issue of who the bill is really benefitting. Only businesses with over 500 employees would be impacted. That means, with businesses totaling around 1.6 million statewide, only 0.2% of Californian businesses would actually get a 32-hour workweek. 

The 32-hour week may only be realistically utilized by white-collar office workers as well, not by frontline people in blue-collar industries as touted by the politicians sponsoring AB 2932. As such, the bill (and the 32-hour workweek more generally) is seen as out of touch and catering to the controlling upper class who can afford to take an extra day off. 

Restaurant workers and emergency responders don’t have this luxury as they face constant and unpredictable demand, on top of a crippling labor shortage. This of course leads to issues in overtime. 

Remember those trials in Iceland I mentioned earlier? Well, among emergency responders, overtime increased with reduced workweek hours. While in other industries, a shorter workweek tends not to lead to any change in overtime, it would be naive to think all industries would benefit the same way from a three-day weekend. 

With the 32-hour workweek bill in California, overtime hours could become a major issue for some businesses, especially if expanded to include smaller businesses on the frontline. Employers will not want to deal with the new 32-hour overtime cut-off as it will most likely raise their labor costs as workers learn to adjust their productivity to fit all work within a four-day window. 

An expensive learning curve to say the least.

Preparing for 32-hour workweeks 

If 32-hour workweeks are indeed about to become the norm in the US, employers will need to adapt. Reassessing workforce management practices is step one. It’s also step two, three, and four. Maybe even five. Managerial areas like scheduling, time tracking, and payroll will all have to become more efficient. Here are the three areas to focus on:

Control labor costs

32-hour workweeks will bring all kinds of labor cost troubles, particularly with overtime. Managers should have their scheduling and time tracking synced so that they receive alerts when employees reach or are approaching overtime. Scheduling software should also help managers avoid overtime and prioritize regular hours. 

Timekeeping systems will need to operate with pinpoint accuracy to mitigate time theft and overspending on wages. Things like geo-fencing, photo identification, and a live time clock feed prove tremendously useful in this area.

Cut back on administrative time

We all spend too much time crunching numbers, sitting in meetings, and managing logistics. With 32-hour workweeks, this needs to change. 

Just as Iceland did, businesses will have to eliminate unnecessary meetings and make important ones more efficient. Meetings are a major time waster for many businesses and will only hinder productivity during a shorter workweek. They need to be faster. 

Scheduling should also be faster – even as fast as a single click. Wasting time on manually filling out rudimentary spreadsheet schedules is an artifact of the 40-hour workweek era. Nobody has time for that. 

Timesheets should also flow much faster into payroll. This can be achieved by auto-approving correct timesheets and flagging those with discrepancies. Approving time and correcting errors shouldn’t last ages; it needs to be done in the blink of an eye so payroll can do its job and businesses can keep things moving. 

Increase productivity

Employers should use demand data, labor forecasting, and employee preference metrics to quickly build out shifts to maximize productivity, lower wage costs, and keep people under 32 hours a week. Blindly scheduling employees for shifts without seeing these metrics right in front of you increases the risk of placing employees where they aren’t needed or where they aren’t as productive. 

Managers should also work to save time and money when replacing open shifts last minute. Use a simple shift replacement tool via mobile app to help fill open shifts with the most cost-effective employees, while also letting employees quickly swap shifts between themselves.

 

It remains to be seen whether or not California passes the 32-hour workweek bill. If it does, one can only assume more states will follow. In the meantime, please continue to drag yourself out of bed on Fridays and push the Sisyphean boulder up the hill. 

Shorter workweeks are on the horizon. Your workforce management needs to adjust. Reach out to us to find out more about how to increase productivity and reduce wasted time. 

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6 proven ways to prevent nurse burnout

Summary

  • Nurse burnout is a serious issue in the healthcare business and has several negative consequences for all parties involved.

  • Long work shifts, stressful work, high patient-to-nurse ratios, a shortage of nurses, and a lack of sleep are some of the causes of nurse burnout.

  • To prevent nurse burnout, leaders should address nurse concerns, support nurse wellbeing, encourage breaks, offer flexible hours, optimize nurse workflows, improve nurse-to-patient ratios, and work collaboratively with nurses.

As of February 2021, 47% of nurses wanted to leave their jobs in the US since their work was negatively affecting their health and wellbeing. The numbers are worse during the coronavirus pandemic, with 6 out of 10 health workers reporting that the pandemic has negatively impacted their mental health. Clearly, burnout is becoming a sad reality among nurses.

Nurse burnout has several negative consequences. It not only impacts their health, but it can also reduce the quality of treatment provided to patients, increasing the risk of medical errors. The emotional fatigue burnout creates also leads to high turnover rates for healthcare institutions, as was found in a study by the journal of applied nursing research.

What causes nurse burnout?

Nurse burnout happens due to several reasons, a few of which include:

  • Long work hours: Nurses are being given long work shifts with no time to rest. This takes a toll on nurses, as longer shifts are correlated with higher levels of burnout.
  • Stressful work: Nurses constantly have to deal with stressful medical situations, especially ICU and critical care nurses.
  • Staffing problems: In a recent survey, 83 percent of responding hospital and health system executives predicted nursing staff shortages. This shortage places higher demands on currently-employed nurses.
  • High patient-to-nurse ratio: The higher the number of patients being treated per nurse, the higher the chances of nurse burnout. A study noted a direct relationship between a high patient-to-nurse ratio (i.e., over 8:1) and medical errors.
  • Poor sleep quality: Research shows that 67% of nurses reported having experienced sleep problems, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. A lack of sleep can negatively affect nurse health, leading to burnout.

Clearly, leadership must step up to prevent nurse burnout. Here are a few things they can do:

Address nurse concerns

Leadership can acknowledge, empathize, and address nurse concerns to make nurses feel valued. Nurses must be encouraged to openly share their concerns regarding burnout, so leaders can have a go at resolving them.

This can be done by allowing nurses to voice their concerns via an internal online forum or during one-on-one or team meetings. Shift feedback tools are also great for enabling nurses to leave feedback after each shift, so leaders can monitor nurse concerns and identify any early signs of burnout.

For instance, leaders can empower nurses to voice their concerns by giving them the opportunity to participate in decision-making, especially when it relates to their work. Nurses can be involved in discussions related to how patients should be treated, cleanliness and hygiene, break policies, standard of care, and more. Research has found that nurses are more likely to be fully engaged if they’re given autonomy and control over their work and if their opinions are valued by leadership, helping prevent burnout.

Support nurse physical and mental well-being

Leaders must ensure they’re paying heed to their nurses’ physical and mental well-being.

Employee well-being can be supported through sponsoring workout classes, partnering with gyms to encourage regular workouts, hosting meditation classes, starting a wellness program, or creating social events like potlucks or workplace birthday celebrations.

The Massachusetts Health and Hospital Association developed the Caring for the Caregiver initiative, which includes a focus on gratitude for nurses’ work, workplace safety, and wellbeing. As part of this initiative, they created a podcast called the Medical Professionals Empowerment Program, or MedPEP. Each episode contains tips to improve the health, wellbeing, and effectiveness of medical professionals.

Another great option to support nurses’ mental well-being is to provide on-demand psychological counseling services to help nurses cope with stress and emotional fatigue. Rush Health took a proactive stance by anticipating the risks of burnout and providing 24/7 psychological support to their employees for free. They’ve since reported a dramatic increase in the utilization of these services, especially participation in psychotherapy, coaching, and stress management training, which went from a few hundred employees in August 2020 to more than 1,500 in December 2021.

Encourage nurses to take breaks

While the law may not make it mandatory for employers to provide breaks, leaders should ensure nurses aren’t overworking themselves. Breaks ensure nurses are well rested to perform their duties with care.

Encourage nurses to take short breaks every 2 hours. These can be breaks between 5 minutes to 20 minutes long, so they’re counted as paid breaks. Breaks longer than 30 minutes could be unpaid.

Katrina Emery, a MICU nurse working on her doctor of nursing practice (DNP), started a “restorative break initiative” to ensure nurses get the breaks they deserve and also to shift the culture to one where breaks are mandatory. She started the initiative as data shows that 35 percent of nurses rarely or never take a break, and almost half of the nurses didn’t know the number of breaks allotted in their shift. The nurse scheduling software used by leadership should automate and administer breaks so nurses are aware of the breaks they get and also commit to them.

Offer flexible hours

Offer flexible scheduling so nurses can pick the shifts they’d like to work. Working on shifts of their choice where they work with coworkers they get along with, or at times that suit them, can help prevent burnout.

Flexible scheduling becomes easy with an employee scheduling software that empowers nurses to pick and swap shifts at the click of a button with managerial approval. Try to limit scheduling staff for long shifts greater than 12 hours since long shifts increase the risk for fatigue-related incidents and increase the time workers are exposed to infectious diseases.

In a recent study, 55% of nurses reported that more control of their schedule would decrease exhaustion, and 60% mentioned that they would have a better work/life balance if they were involved in their shift scheduling. Clearly, if leaders want to prevent nurse burnout, they must allow flexible scheduling by giving nurses control over their schedules.

Optimize nurse workflows

Nurses don’t always focus on their core priorities. Burnout can happen when nurses do too much work outside of their core domain. Workflows need to be optimized in a way that allows nurses to focus on what they’re best at.

For example, a nurse may be doing too much administrative work, which might be unnecessary and counterproductive. Working to optimize workflows so nurses can focus on their core duties and delegate the rest of the work to the right people can help prevent burnout. Using an electronic health record system for administrative tasks might help in automating repetitive workflows, freeing up time for nurses to take care of patients.

Improve nurse-to-patient ratios

Not only are proper staffing levels important for CMS compliance regarding things like PBJ reports, but they are also important for nurse well-being. The more patients each nurse looks after, the higher the risk of burnout. Improving nurse-to-patient ratios could help prevent burnout and also benefit both patients and hospitals.

By improving nurse-to-patient ratios, it’s possible to improve mortality rates in hospitals. A study found that with every nurse hired, there was a 7% reduction in mortality rates. Clearly, there’s a strong case for improving nurse-to-patient ratios, and while improving nurse-to-patient ratios may require bringing on additional staff, the investment can offset other expenses, such as high nurse turnover, poor patient satisfaction, and even poor patient outcomes.

One way to go about improving nurse-to-patient ratios is to utilize demand-based scheduling. Automation like this uses historical foot traffic and demand data to optimally build schedules around appropriate nurse-to-patient ratios. Managers can easily match the right amount of nurses to projected demand every day and make edits in real-time when conflicts arise, ensuring hospitals are never over or understaffed.

Leaders should collaborate with nurses

Leaders should work collaboratively with nurses to support nurse well-being. They should constantly monitor burnout rates through regular check-ins with nurses and step up to control burnout rates. Controlling nurse burnout becomes possible through the use of technology, having open dialogue with nurses, making them a part of well-being initiatives, and recognizing and appreciating their contributions.

To find out more about how workforce management prevents nurse burnout, contact us today or sign up for a free trial to see how nurse scheduling software can help.