The 4 on 4 off shift pattern: hours, rota and how to run it

Four days on, four days off, and the site never closes. The 4 on 4 off pattern runs everything from A&E departments to distribution centres, and once it clicks it is one of the simplest ways to cover 24 hours a day. The catch is in the hours it quietly adds up to, and in keeping four teams from tripping over each other. Here is how it works.

What 4 on 4 off means

You work four days in a row, then you are off for four days in a row, and the cycle repeats. The pattern is eight days long, not seven, so your working days walk across the calendar: this block might be Monday to Thursday, the next runs Friday to Monday. Your days off are never the same two days each week.

Almost always the shifts are 12 hours, because that is what covers a full day with two teams: one on 07:00 to 19:00, one on 19:00 to 07:00. Shorter shifts would leave gaps.

The hours it really adds up to

This is the number that surprises people. Four 12-hour shifts every eight days averages out like this:

A standard 5-2 week at 40 hours works out to roughly 2,080 hours a year. So 4 on 4 off runs a little higher. Many employers close the gap by counting an unpaid break inside each 12-hour shift, or by annualising the hours in the contract. Either way, decide it on purpose: the difference is over 100 hours a person a year, and that is real money once you multiply it across a team.

How the teams fit together

To cover 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you need four teams. Call them A, B, C and D. At any moment one is on days, one is on nights, and two are off. Over a longer cycle each team rotates through both, so nobody is stuck on permanent nights unless you want it that way.

A common full rotation looks like this for one team:

• 4 day shifts
• 4 days off
• 4 night shifts
• 4 days off

That is a 16-day cycle that shares days and nights out evenly. The alternative is fixed teams: A and B always days, C and D always nights. Fixed is simpler to run and easier on people's body clocks, but it makes one team carry every night, which is harder to recruit for.

Who it suits

• Good fit: anywhere that runs around the clock and needs steady numbers on every shift, such as security, manufacturing lines, warehouses, care homes and control rooms.
• The upside people like: four days off in a row, every week, is close to a short break each time. Two-thirds of your calendar is your own.
• The downside to plan for: 12-hour shifts are long, nights are tiring, and weekends move around, so the pattern lands better when the whole team knows the rota weeks ahead.

Where a spreadsheet starts to hurt

The eight-day cycle is exactly what a weekly spreadsheet cannot hold. A seven-column week never lines up with an eight-day pattern, so by the second month you are counting on your fingers to find who is on nights. Cover a single sickness and the knock-on runs through four teams. And at month end someone has to total the hours by hand, including the nights and the long shifts, to get payroll right.

Running 4 on 4 off in InShift

You set up your two shift types once, days and nights, and build the rota around your four teams. From there InShift does the counting: it adds up everyone's hours as the rota is worked, long shifts and nights included, and exports a timesheet to Excel for any period you pick, whether your pay run is weekly, four-weekly or monthly. Everyone sees their next shift in the app, so nobody has to decode the cycle, and if someone needs a day covered they can request a swap without a group chat.

It is free with no cap on the number of people or sites, so a four-team operation costs the same as a two-person one: nothing.

Start with a free rota template if you want to sketch the pattern first, or see how security teams run it. When the spreadsheet stops keeping up, create a free account and let the hours add themselves up.