In my last 4 posts, I recommended evaluating potential schedules by using the following criteria:  (1) effectiveness, (2) efficiency, (3) sleep, and (4) employee satisfaction. This post will cover the fourth and final criterion - employee satisfaction.

Employee schedule preferences are largely driven by demographics (age, gender, parents with young children, single parents, students, etc.) and past experiences with different schedules. The best way to determine their preferences is to show them a broad set of approaches, such as: (a) higher staffing levels vs. built-in overtime, (b) different shift lengths, (c) fixed vs. rotating shifts, (d) fixed vs. rotating days of work, (e) relief coverage vs. more coverage, and (f) others. Once you have zeroed in on the “best” overall approach, you may want to drill down into specific options, i.e. examples of different on-off work patterns associated with the preferred approach.

Larger organizations can do this in a multi-step process. They can begin with a survey of the employees that identifies their lifestyle patterns and general preferences for different aspects of the schedule such as start times, overtime, rotating vs. fixed shifts, longer shifts vs. fewer days off, longer breaks vs. fewer consecutive work days, and so on. The next step would be to show them examples of different options that meet the business requirements and let them vote on the options they like best.

If you start out by asking employees if they want to change to a 12-hour shift schedule, most will say, "No way! I'm not working that many hours." But when they are questioned about the various tradeoffs required and then shown actual examples of what that means, they are better prepared to make a choice that satisfies most of the needs.

In my next post, I will show you how to combine all four criteria into a single evaluation survey.