How to make a work schedule for 3, 5 or 10 employees (with examples)

02

Example: 3 employees, one post, 7 days a week

A reception desk or shop counter open every day 08:00–20:00, one person at a time. Split the day into two 6-hour shifts — early 08:00–14:00 and late 14:00–20:00. That is 14 shifts, 84 hours a week. Three people take 5, 5 and 4 shifts: 30, 30 and 24 hours.

• Monday — early A, late B
• Tuesday — early A, late C
• Wednesday — early B, late C
• Thursday — early B, late A
• Friday — early C, late A
• Saturday — early A, late B
• Sunday — early B, late C

03

Example: 5 employees, a café with two shifts

A café open every day 07:00–23:00: two people on the morning shift (07:00–15:00), one on the evening shift (15:00–23:00), and a second evening person on Friday and Saturday. That is 23 eight-hour shifts, 184 hours a week: four full-timers on five shifts each (160 hours) and one part-timer on three shifts (24 hours).

• A — evenings Wednesday to Sunday; off Monday and Tuesday.
• B — mornings Wednesday to Sunday; off Monday and Tuesday.
• C — evenings Monday and Tuesday, mornings Friday to Sunday; off Wednesday and Thursday.
• D — mornings Monday to Thursday, evening Friday; off Saturday and Sunday.
• P (part-time) — mornings Monday and Tuesday, evening Saturday.

04

Example: 10 employees, two people on every shift, 24/7

Three 8-hour shifts a day with two people on each: 42 shifts, 336 hours a week, 8.4 FTE. Ten people on 40-hour contracts give 50 shifts — 8 more than needed, which is your margin for leave and sickness. With four weeks of leave each, 8.4 × 52 ÷ 48 ≈ 9.1 people are needed before anyone is ill.

• Do not build every week by hand: four crews of two on a four-crew pattern cover 24/7, with each person averaging 42 hours a week. The shift-patterns guide works out 2-2-2-2, Continental, 2-2-3, 4-on-4-off and DuPont.
• The other two people are relief: they cover leave, sickness and training.
• Rotate forwards — mornings, then afternoons, then nights. Each change then leaves 24 hours between shifts.
• The UK Health and Safety Executive’s good-practice guidelines suggest limiting night shifts to 2–3 in a row, allowing two nights of full sleep when switching between days and nights, and building regular free weekends into the schedule.

05

The rest rules every schedule must pass

• EU: at least 11 consecutive hours of rest in every 24 hours (Directive 2003/88/EC, article 3); a break when the working day is longer than six hours (article 4); in every seven days, 24 hours of uninterrupted rest plus the 11 hours of daily rest (article 5); an average working week of no more than 48 hours, including overtime (article 6), over a reference period of up to four months (article 16).
• UK (England, Wales and Scotland): 11 consecutive hours of daily rest; 24 hours of uninterrupted weekly rest in each seven days — or, if the employer so decides, two 24-hour periods or one 48-hour period in each 14 days; a rest break of at least 20 minutes when the working day is longer than six hours (Working Time Regulations 1998, regulations 10–12).
• Greece is stricter on breaks: 15 to 30 minutes once work goes beyond 4 consecutive hours (Labour Code, article 172) — so the 6-hour shifts in the first example need one. Weekly rest is 24 hours plus the 11 of daily rest (article 173).

06

Make it fair and predictable

• Collect time-off requests before you build the week, and place approved leave first.
• Rotate weekends and nights so they do not always fall on the same people.
• Publish early. In the EU, a worker whose pattern is entirely or mostly unpredictable cannot be required to work unless it falls within reference hours and days set in advance and they are told within a reasonable notice period (Directive (EU) 2019/1152, article 10). In Greece that notice is at least 24 hours, unless a shorter one is objectively justified (Labour Code, article 190).
• Handle shift swaps through an approval step rather than private arrangements, so the published schedule stays true and the swap does not break someone’s rest.

07

A spreadsheet or an app

• For three to five people a spreadsheet can work. Our free Excel template totals hours per week and turns a shift red when it leaves less than 11 hours of rest.
• In 365shift you save a week’s shifts as a template or copy a whole week, with or without the same people. Employees see their shifts in the mobile app, and when you publish a week each person gets an email with their own schedule, unless they have turned emails off.
• Employees ask for leave or a day off and request shift swaps from their phone; an administrator approves or rejects each request.
• You set the minimum rest between shifts for each team (11 hours by default) and a cap on weekly hours. Auto-fill, part of the AI Scheduler add-on, fills empty shifts without going over the cap.