First, what do we mean by shift work?
Well, some businesses operate on a simple schedule. You open your doors at 9 am and close them at 5 pm daily. Therefore, all of your employees work the entire time. However, other businesses need to stay open longer than this. As a result, shift work breaks up your running hours into different chunks – or shifts. Some employees work the morning shift, then they get swapped out for others that work the day shift, and then you could have people working a night shift. It ensures that you always have someone working at any given time without burning out your employees.
You might think about adopting this approach in your business, but what are the pros and cons of shift work? Let’s find out!
It opens up the talent pool
An excellent positive of shift work is that it opens up the talent pool for your business. There could be plenty of highly talented individuals that would be unable to work for you if you only operated on a 9-5 basis. With shifts, you unlock the potential of people who can work at strange hours. Perhaps they’re unable to work during the day, but they can work in the evenings. It gives you a chance to select the best candidates without scheduling becoming an issue.
It offers flexibility for employees
Flexibility is always very important for employees. In fact, many people hate working the same hours every single day. It leads to a boring and monotonous life, and they start resenting their employers. Shift work changes this by giving more options to your employees. If they want a lie-in, they can ask to work one of the later shifts. Or, if they need to be home to get the kids from school every afternoon, they can work a morning shift. Employees can also swap shifts amongst themselves, allowing them to work when it suits them best. Thus, this flexibility improves employee happiness – which is always beneficial for things like retention and productivity.
It lets you work more hours every day
From a business perspective, shift work is fantastic because you can keep your company open for longer. The longer you’re open, the more work you can get done, and the more customers you can gain. It also lets you operate at hours that your rivals don’t, so while they’ve all closed for the day, you’re still active and ready to snap up any leads that they could miss.
It requires a lot of management
The first downside of shift work is that it requires a great deal more management than a 9-5 working day. If your employees all work 9-5, you will have the same people coming in every single day. The only thing to manage is punctuality – are people coming in on time? You also have to deal with absences, but that’s not too hard to handle.
With shift work, you have way more admin to deal with. You need to design the shift schedules for each week, then keep updated with any changes your employees make amongst themselves. Sure, you can use employee work and shift scheduling apps to make this easier, but there’s no denying you need to handle so many extra things with this style of work.
It can be harder for employees to make plans
The flexibility of shift work is a big positive for employees, but there is also a potential negative. When working shifts, employees won’t always know their hours that far in advance. If they are contracted to work a typical 9-5 job, they know exactly when they are working. This allows them to plan things like vacations way in advance. When they work shifts, they might not know when they’re working in a few weeks’ time. So, it can be harder for them to plan their lives, which might make them dislike working like this. While you get the benefits of shift work potentially improving employee happiness, it could also make employees unhappy if they don’t know when they’re working until the last minute.
It could be expensive
Finally, shift work could be a more expensive option for your business. Why? Because you need to hire way more employees. However, you have to balance this with the fact that staying open could earn more money. It’s a cost-benefit thing, so run the calculations to see if it is worth investing in more employees.
Ultimately, your business might not need to offer shift work. But, if you think it could be a good idea, be aware of the pros and cons before making a decision.
