12 hour shift patterns for 24/7 cover: four that work

Start with the number that settles most arguments: covering 24 hours a day, seven days a week takes 168 hours of somebody's time. Split that between four teams and each one works 42 hours a week. Every 12-hour pattern in this guide lands on 42, because the arithmetic leaves nowhere else to land. What the patterns actually differ on is how those hours are arranged, and that is what people feel.

The four at a glance

4 on 4 off

Four 12-hour shifts, then four days off, repeating on an eight-day cycle. The simplest of the four to explain and the easiest to remember, because the block length never changes.

The eight-day cycle does not line up with a seven-day week, so the pattern walks across the calendar: this block is Monday to Thursday, the next is Friday to Monday. Your days off are never the same weekdays twice in a row, and you work roughly half of all weekends.

Suits: teams that value long, predictable rest blocks and do not need fixed weekdays. Full guide and a calculator for any month.

Panama, also called Pitman or 2-2-3

Two on, two off, three on, then the mirror image the following week: two off, two on, two off, three off. The cycle is 14 days and it has one property the others do not: every team gets a full weekend off every other week, because the pattern repeats fortnightly rather than every eight days.

The trade-off is that the blocks are short. You never work more than three in a row, which many people prefer, but you also never get four days off in a row.

Suits: teams where a proper weekend every fortnight matters more than long breaks. Full guide to the Panama pattern.

DuPont

The most structured of the four, on a 28-day cycle. One team's month runs: four nights, three off, three days, one off, three nights, three off, four days, then seven days off.

That last block is the reason DuPont has fans. A full week off every month, built into the rota, without booking holiday. The price is paid earlier in the cycle, where you hit a run of four nights and a single day off between blocks, which is the hardest stretch of any pattern here.

Suits: stable, experienced crews at sites that run continuously and can plan a month at a time. Harder on people who need predictable weekly childcare.

Continental (2-2-4)

Two days, two nights, four off, on an eight-day cycle. It gives the same four-day break as 4 on 4 off, but rotates you through days and nights inside every cycle instead of every few weeks.

Fast rotation like this is a genuine split among shift workers: some find it easier because you are never on nights long enough to settle into them, others find it harder for exactly the same reason. Worth asking your team rather than deciding for them. More on the continental pattern, including the eight-hour version that carries the same name.

Fixed teams or rotating nights

Every pattern above can run two ways, and the choice matters more than the pattern itself.

• Fixed: two teams always on days, two always on nights. Simpler to run, kinder to body clocks, and it makes the night teams hard to recruit and harder to keep.
• Rotating: every team takes a turn on nights. Fairer, and it means everyone understands what the night shift is actually like. Costs you in sleep disruption every time the swap happens.

The common middle path is rotating on a slow cycle, swapping days and nights every few weeks rather than every block.

The 42-hour problem

Four teams on 12-hour shifts average 42 hours a week, while most contracts are written for 37.5 or 40. Over a year that gap is 100 to 200 hours a person, and it has to be dealt with somewhere: an unpaid break inside each shift, annualised hours in the contract, or paying the difference. None of those is wrong. Leaving it undecided is, because it turns into a payroll argument once a year.

Work out what your own pattern comes to per person with the timesheet calculator, or check a specific month with the 4 on 4 off, 3 on 3 off and 7 on 7 off calculators.

Picking one

1. Longest possible break matters most? DuPont, with its seven days.
2. Weekends matter most? Panama, with a full weekend every other week.
3. Simplicity matters most? 4 on 4 off. Everybody can hold it in their head.
4. Short night blocks matter most? Continental, never more than two nights in a row.

Running one of these without a spreadsheet

None of these cycles fits a seven-column week, which is why they are miserable in Excel by the second month. Sketch the pattern in our free rota maker to see it laid out, and when it has to run for real, InShift keeps the cycle going, shows each person their next shift on their phone, counts night hours and shifts crossing midnight correctly, and exports the period to Excel for payroll. Free, with no cap on people or sites. See how production teams run it.