| So you've got 6 people and want to have 8. There's a big problem with being on call for one week out of 6 or 8: you lose touch with the procedures. Sure, your four year veterans know everything by heart - but the first few shifts of a newbie are going to be perilous. I recommend making the shifts shorter and more frequent. Presumably one person is on-call and everyone else can be called in / woken up as necessary. So - split each day into two halves, and ask people to be on-call for a 12 hour period. Rotate the roster around so that Jane doesn't always have the same Friday-afternoon shift, nobody has 2 shifts in a row, and put it in a shared calendar so you can always see who has the watch. With 6 people, you'll take 2 and a seventh shifts per week. At 7, it's an even 2 shifts per week. Benefits: - much less of a burden that a whole week of readiness - brains work better when they haven't been pummeled for a week at a time (at least, mine does) - easily scales fairly when you have more people, or when someone leaves, but keeps everyone in the loop. When you have 14 people in Ops, you only have one shift a week, but you get one every week. - much more family-friendly OK, why 2 12 hour periods instead of splitting the day into 8, 6 or 4? Because people lose track too easily. Trying to schedule around your kid's concert or music lessons with smaller chunks is hard to keep in your head - and trying to work that in with a one week shift is nigh-impossible. Why not a 24 hour shift? Because it's really hard to recover from that. Humans are generally awake for about 15-17 hours a day. Shifting a few hours is generally doable. I would recommend that for anyone who took an alert call during non-core hours, you automatically expect them to take the next normal day to recover. I know that when I get woken up at 4AM, I'll run out of steam by 2 or 3PM. |