Shift Pattern Management
One of the biggest challenges for shift pattern managers is ensuring holidays don’t disrupt operations. Proactive holiday planning is essential—our strategies help businesses manage time off for over 100 staff members in as little as 30 minutes per day, that's over 3,000 days of holiday each and every year. Through practical solutions, detailed explanations, and real-world examples, we empower organisations to implement efficient holiday management systems.
Once holidays are accounted for, the next hurdle is managing absences, which can be unpredictable and disruptive. With our expertise, you’ll explore different types of absences, understand their real impact (e.g., what absence rates mean in practice), and discover effective cover arrangements. We can help you seamlessly integrate absence management solutions into your shift patterns, ensuring a more resilient and adaptable workforce.
Effective shift pattern management starts with designing a system that works for you. This involves ensuring the right staffing levels to handle workload, holidays, and absences seamlessly. Flexibility is essential—it allows you to adjust to fluctuating demands while accommodating employee needs. Achieving a healthy work-life balance is at the core of a successful shift arrangement.
Managing a shift pattern goes beyond scheduling; it's about strategically aligning work, people, and resources to guarantee efficiency and reliability, ensuring everything is in place exactly when and where it’s needed.
Training Course for Shift Operations, Managers & HR Professionals
HR professionals, managers, and operations coordinators can join our exclusive in-person workshop in London to gain practical strategies for optimising shift operations.
Launched in 2008 alongside our pioneering book, How to Manage Your Shift Pattern—the first-ever publication dedicated to shift pattern management—this course has been delivered across various venues and private companies, helping refine workforce scheduling approaches. Continuously updated to reflect evolving industry standards, it equips participants with the latest techniques used by leading organisations.
Workshop Benefits
- 1-Day In-Person Training in London: A comprehensive training session with limited places for personalised attention.
- Refreshments and Lunch: Stay energised throughout the day with provided refreshments and lunch
- Exclusive Book: “How to Manage Your Shift Pattern: Holidays and Absence”—a detailed resource valued at £100.
- Notes Workbook: A companion book containing slides and notes for personal reference.
- Online Video Course Access: One-month access to an accompanying online video course.
- Downloadable Software: Simplifies shift operations.
This workshop covers the challenges of managing holidays and absences without disrupting operations. Learn how to implement efficient solutions, streamline holiday planning, and address absence rates effectively.
Join us on 18th June 2025 for this transformative training and take your workforce management strategies to the next level.
Accommodating Holidays
A simple holiday request often sets off a complex process. The manager must first assess the workload on each requested day, checking which staff members are on duty, off, or available to cover. If there’s sufficient coverage, they then review the employee’s entitlement and existing bookings to ensure enough leave is available.
If there aren’t enough people scheduled to work on the affected shifts, the manager must evaluate the effect of their absence on the organisation or reach out to potential cover options to identify who is willing to step in. Only when all shifts are adequately staffed or the loss is acceptable, can the request be approved. Otherwise, the request must be declined—leading to repeated discussions over alternative dates, frustrating both those who initially agreed to cover and the employee whose plans are disrupted.
The workshop covers all the different ways of coping to maintain operations whilst giving employees the holidays they want.
Coping with Absence
Absences, regardless of notice, can be challenging to manage. However, absences are an inevitable part of any workplace, and having a routine process in place makes handling them far easier.
Absences can generally be categorised into two types:
- Short Notice: Less than 24 hours’ notice, such as sudden illness, accidents, or emergencies like bereavements.
- Longer Notice: More advanced notice, such as planned operations, funerals, or extended recovery from illness.
Often, absences evolve in nature. For instance, while the first day of sickness may be short notice, subsequent days typically allow for better planning. It’s always helpful to ask employees calling in sick how long they anticipate being unwell. Understanding the expected duration can improve resource planning—after all, illnesses like the common cold may take up to a week for full recovery.
Establishing a clear procedure for addressing both short- and long-term absences ensures smoother operations, minimises disruptions, and keeps your team running efficiently.
The workshop covers all the ways of coping with absences so they don’t affect the operation.
Enhancing Operations and Work-Life Balance
Once you’ve established a routine for managing holidays and absences, it’s time to focus on additional factors that can improve both your operation and your employees’ work-life balance—such as training, minimising fatigue, and optimising breaks.
Incorporating training into your shift pattern proactively allows for effective planning of cover arrangements. This ensures all employees receive the necessary training annually, especially if team training days are required.
Fatigue is a common issue, particularly in night shift operations. Small adjustments can significantly improve how employees feel at work, such as balancing workloads to prevent overworking and minimising stress. This not only reduces workplace accidents but also fosters a happier, more productive environment.
Finally, maintaining an appropriate staffing level is critical to meeting workload demands and deadlines while supporting employee well-being. A thoughtful approach to these extras can create a sustainable and efficient operation while prioritising your team’s health and satisfaction.
Establishing a clear procedure for addressing both short- and long-term absences ensures smoother operations, minimises disruptions, and keeps your team running efficiently.
Consultancy
C-Desk Technology is a trusted business consultancy dedicated to empowering government entities and organisations to optimise their shift operations. With expertise in innovative solutions, we help our clients improve performance, enhance profitability, and achieve strategic objectives through efficient, well-managed operations.
Our services ensure your shift operations run smoothly, even in the face of challenges, through robust contingency planning and proactive holiday and absence management procedures. We advise on critical aspects like fatigue, work/life balance, and employee well-being, making small but impactful changes to shift patterns that align with operational needs while boosting employee satisfaction.
At C-Desk Technology, we save you invaluable time—time spent analysing workloads, crafting shift patterns, managing holidays, and arranging cover. While we can’t turn back time, we can help you plan effectively for the future.
Whether you’re in production, security, utilities, call centres, or beyond, our consultancy services are tailored to your industry’s unique needs. Let us help you revolutionise your shift operations and pave the way for a more efficient, balanced, and successful future.
Contact us today to discover how we can make a difference for your organisation! +44 (0)1636 816466
Training
Creating a shift pattern or schedule from scratch can be a daunting challenge. It requires careful planning, effective cover arrangements for holidays and absences, and a solid understanding of applicable laws. Introducing a new way of working to your staff adds another layer of complexity. Fortunately, we’re here to help.
Our online training website is packed with practical resources, including videos, software, and examples, designed to guide you in building the ideal shift pattern and streamlining management tasks. With these tools, you’ll free up valuable time to focus on what matters most—whether it’s boosting revenue, enhancing products and services, or tackling other priorities.
Visit our website today and take the first step toward efficient workforce management!
If you’re seeking a more personal approach, join us at our Managing Shift Patterns workshop, 18th June 2025. This one-day, in-person session in London offers limited spaces to ensure a focused and effective learning experience. The workshop covers everything you need to master shift pattern management, and concludes with a Q&A session to address specific challenges.
Tailored to provide essential skills and tools for managing shift operations, the course includes a comprehensive textbook, access to our online training platform to support your learning, and specialised software to help you get started. Perfect for those new to shift pattern management or struggling with holiday and absence planning, this workshop equips you with the best workforce management strategies.
Text Books and Software
Changing shift patterns is a rare, career-defining experience. Many managers continue with systems set up by predecessors until rising costs demand a change. Workloads, staff skills, and resources evolve, making adaptability crucial to futureproof shift operations. No matter your budget, we’re here to simplify management with our trusted textbooks and software.
Our Essential Resources
“How to Manage Your Shift Pattern”
This indispensable reference book provides unique insights into the challenges facing shift managers today. It offers actionable solutions for managing operations seamlessly, with summary pages, worked examples, and sample shift patterns to guide you.
One key focus is holiday management. Planning holidays in advance allows managers to handle over 100 employees’ time off in under 30 minutes a day. Packed with strategies, examples, and detailed explanations, this book equips you to implement efficient systems tailored to your organisation.
Latest Release – October 2023
“Flexible Shift Working: A New Approach to Flexible Shift Working using Banked Hours”
Achieving the ideal work-life balance is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity. This guide introduces innovative concepts like Banked Hours and flexible scheduling to meet operational demands while prioritising employee well-being. Learn step-by-step approaches with real-world examples, proven strategies, and tools to integrate flexibility across diverse industries.
VisualrotaX Software
Our Excel-based software simplifies shift pattern management with features such as:
- Creating or uploading shift patterns.
- Individual calendars for staff scheduling.
- Tracking sickness, holidays, and individual hours.
- Generating comprehensive reports for efficient workforce planning.
VisualrotaX makes running shift patterns effortless, empowering managers with efficient solutions tailored to their needs.
How to Manage Your Shift Pattern
New on-line course is now available so that you can learn anywhere, any time. Review lessons again and again.
The aim of this course is to provide you with the tools and techniques that will be applicable to anyone who manages shifts and would like to improve their methods for dealing with the day-to-day problems associated with working shifts. It includes:
- Introduction to Running a Shift Pattern
- Holiday Management
- Absence Management
- Bank (Reserved) Hours Management
- Fatigue and Shift Working
- Holiday Management Plan
Click here to visit our on-line school. dr-moore.thinkific.com
Learning Objectives:
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- Learn holiday management tactics
- Be able to implement coping strategies for absences
- Be able to identify the most common problems and formulate coping policies
- Know how to tackle fatigue on shift work
Shift Managers
This course is aimed at shift managers. It is a comprehensive course which should take about three days to complete, however the great thing about e-learning is that you can learn at your own rate, when and where you want to. As part of this course you will learn all about shift patterns. Find out which shift patterns are the most popular and how you can improve your shift pattern to make it more efficient. Receive a complimentary copy of VisualrotaX to help you with the day-to-day running of your shift pattern. Watch some of our videos to give you a taste and sign up to today.
Holidays Included or Holidays Excluded?
There are two approaches to Holiday Management. You can either use a Holidays Included Shift Pattern or a Holidays Excluded Shift Pattern with a Holiday Management Plan.
Holidays Included Shift Patterns are almost effortless, very efficient, minimal management involvement & everyone loves it. Basically, all the holiday entitlement is incorporated into the shift pattern. This optimises everyone's holiday, giving them the best quality time off in a fair and regular way. If you would like to find out more please read our ebook Holiday Included Shift Patterns available from Amazon for only £6.64.
If a Holidays Included Shift Pattern is not for you, then the alternative is a Holidays Excluded Shift Pattern. This is what most companies operate; where the staff are rostered onto additional shifts and then they can select their holiday on a first come first served basis.
With a Holidays Excluded Shift Pattern you can't eliminate the effort entirely. However you can vastly reduce the effort of managing them with a Holiday Management Plan. A Holiday Management Plan will set limits on the number of staff allowed on holiday on any shift, the timetables for requests and information. This works best if the holiday resources have already been organised to match expected holiday requests. If you would like to find out more please read our ebook Holiday Management available from Amazon for only £6.24.
Positive Absence Management
Absence is the largest unplanned expense companies face daily.
We cannot avoid absences and they are very distracting to managers, use a disproportionate amount of management time and often fail in being covered if an informal cover plan is used irrespective of the effort involved.
The use of a formal cover arrangement carries a cost but the income generated by maintaining operations is much higher.
C-Desk Technology works with many organisations round the world, to help them manage their shift operations more effectively. A large part of this work is about managing Absence. We help companies understand their Absence Rate, and create the policies and procedures to ensure that Absence never affects their operations.
Every company needs an absence policy to cover key workers. The policies are all very specific to a company, but all have a similar framework. One of the aims of the cover arrangements is how to motivate the staff to provide the cover. As every individual is different, it is often difficult to find a single solution, hence a menu of rewards is often set up. Money and Time Off In Lieu (TOIL) are the main motivators.
When deciding what sort of absence cover arrangements you want, you need to consider the shift pattern/rota too. How you cover for an eight-hour shift is very different to covering for a 12-hour shift etc.
Your Absence Rate will tell you how many hours you need to cover for absence next year. When planning a Cover Arrangement policy you will also need to know how these absences will occur. Our e-book “Understanding your Absence Rate” is filled with tables to help you plan your absence strategy better.
Creating a Shift Pattern
Would you like a tailor-made shift pattern that perfectly matches your requirements?
You can save money and be more productive with a new shift pattern
Managing a Shift Pattern
Managing a shift pattern can be easy if you plan ahead.
Manage holidays, sickness and training effortlessly.
Negotiating a Shift Pattern
If you find the right shift pattern then you just need to implement it.
Do you know how?
Our Clients
10 Downing Street | CSM | Novartis | Johnson & Johnson | NCR | University of Sheffield | ICI | McCain | AJ Barr | Continental Tyres | National Grid | NPower | Coors | Royal Bank of Scotland | Worldwide Fruit | Heidelberg | Barclays | HSBC | SOCA & Diplomatic Police | Fujifilm | Scottish Power | Warburtons