Rotating rosters: Are they right for your team?

Fixed vs rotating rosters: What's the difference?  

Fixed rosters allocate workers a set shift time that repeats each week. For example, a nurse may prefer to work the morning shift every day, starting at 6 AM and finishing at 2 PM, week after week.  

A rotating roster, however, allows managers to create set shift times — such as breakfast, lunch, and dinner; or morning, late, and night — and allocate these to different workers each week. For example, a staff member might work the morning shift one week, the late shift the next week and then the night shift the following week. This is common amongst hospitality employees, emergency services workers, and any other industry that provides services outside of regular hours. 

At times, you may hear "rotating roster" referred to as a "swing shift" — but be careful with this phrase. It can also refer to the second shift of the day, also known as the afternoon or late shift, as it sits in between morning and night shifts. Alternatively, some people use it to describe any non-traditional shift that overlaps with more regular shift times.  

The pros and cons of rotating rosters 

Not sure if a rotating roster is the right scheduling method for your workforce? We'll break down the pros and cons to help you make the right decision. 

Pros 

1. Increased scheduling flexibility. Managers may find it easier to source staff who are used to working irregular shifts or intervals, as opposed to staff who work on a fixed rotation. However, in Australia there are Fair Work protocols that employers must be aware of when scheduling employees on a rotating roster. It's also important to discuss the new arrangements with this employee and see what works best for them. 

2. A more balanced team. Managers can spread workers with diverse skill levels and certifications across the rotating roster, ensuring a more well-rounded team at any given time. Staff can then gain experience by taking on a greater variety of shift-specific tasks: accepting overnight stock deliveries, providing customer service at peak times, off-peak cleaning and maintenance tasks. 

3. Greater exposure to all team members. A rotating roster is a great way to expose managers, trainers, and general staff members to the wider team. It's a great way to build relationships between team members who may not have collaborated under a fixed roster.  

4. Product and service uniformity across shifts generally increases. Some employees may tend to use different software, tools, and programs than others depending on their usual work hours. Shuffling the schedules exposes all employees to one another, who can then share their tips, knowledge, and skills to put everybody on the same page. This can lead to greater product or service uniformity across the board. 

5. It may be easier to recruit staff for rotating shifts than for night or weekend shifts. Applicants may find the prospects of a rotating roster much more enticing thant repeated shifts. An applicant may be willing to work a weekend shift every three weeks rather than every week, for example. 

6. It's a fairer system overall. Rotating rosters give all employees a chance to work the more desirable shifts. For example, weekend and evening shifts at a bar are often favoured as tips are more likely. This is the opposite for hospitals, however, where weekend and evening shifts are much less desirable. With a rotating roster, employees have peace of mind knowing they're treated equally.  

Cons 

1. Organisations require robust systems to handle more complex rosters. Without effective software and seamless communication, efficient scheduling is impossible. This is especially true in industries with skills shortages and contingent staffing requirements, where managers cannot rotate entire teams through different shift times.  

2. Employees may constantly need to work with new people each shift. While this can be seen as a positive, it's also a drawback for employees who tend to lean on established co-worker relationships. Being frequently rostered with new employees means constant icebreakers, training, and relationship building which can prove to be strenuous. As a result, they may feel a diminished sense of belonging and engagement. 

3. It may be harder for employees to keep a solid routine. While some workers may enjoy changing up their work and home schedules, some may find it disorientating. Many people rely on a consistent, solid work routine to balance other important commitments, such as caregiver duties or studies. 

4. A disrupted sleep schedule. Employees on a rotating roster may find it difficult to keep a consistent sleep schedule — particularly those working week- long rotating shifts. This arrangement has been been linked to increased fatigue, health issues and social isolation. It’s often recommended that businesses use longer rotating shifts (10+ days) or shorter ones (2–3 days) to reduce the disruption to the circadian rhythm or sleeping cycle. 

Which industries benefit most from rotating rosters? 

Any organisation that operates outside of the traditional nine-to-five workday would benefit from using a rotating roster. It's a system used widely in Hospitality, Healthcare, and Events industries as these industries are required to provide high-level service at all hours, while remaining agile in the face of changing demands. 

Creating rotating rosters is easier than ever with the right workforce management technology 

Humanforce’s Rostering & Scheduling solution is a modern, AI-powered scheduling solution that elevates workforce planning for frontline organisations — and the ideal solution for creating both fixed and rotating rosters with ease. 

Managers can create optimised, cost-effective and award-compliant rosters with just a few clicks. Using sophisticated AI, rosters can be auto populated with suitably qualified and available talent who have specified their work preferences. It can even help forecast how many workers will be required based on historical data. For example, data such as projected labour demand, worker details, and availability can be entered, or converted via a suitable API to generate a roster. Managers can then view and make changes to the roster as needed. They can also can switch to multi-view rostering for a top-down view of employee schedules.  

Even better, labour costs are shown directly in the roster as it’s being created, so managers can stay within allocated budgets. 

Rostering & Scheduling delivers a seamless experience for managers and employees alike. Features like auto-generation, automated alerts for scheduling conflicts, and shift offer/shift bidding and shift swapping functionality ensure rosters are both simple to create and easily accessible via the Humanforce Work App - ideal for workers and managers who are always on the go. 

Best of all, managers can enjoy a clean, intuitive UI, complete with click-and-drag controls. 

About Humanforce 

Humanforce is the best-in-one platform for frontline and flexible workforces, offering a truly employee centred, intelligent and compliant human capital management (HCM) suite – without compromise. Founded in 2002, Humanforce has a 2300+ customer base and over half a million users worldwide. Today, we have offices across Australia, New Zealand, the US, and the UK.  

Our vision is to make work easier and life better by focusing on the needs and fulfilment of frontline workers, and the efficiency and optimisation of businesses.  

To learn more about how Humanforce’s solution can help automate people processes in your business, please contact us.