page_title: Shift work
section_title: Scheduling
hierarchical_section_title: Shift work / Management / Scheduling
caption_attribution_description: Български: Часовников автомат за отчитане на работно време, началото на XX век. Експонат на Националния политехнически музей в София, България. English: Aclock-automat for calculation of the working hours, beginning of XX century. Exhibit of the National Polytechnic Museum in Sofia, Bulgaria.
context_page_description: Shift work is an employment practice designed to make use of, or provide service across, all 24 hours of the clock each day of the week. The practice typically sees the day divided into shifts, set periods of time during which different groups of workers perform their duties. The term "shift work" includes both long-term night shifts and work schedules in which employees change or rotate shifts.
  In medicine and epidemiology, shift work is considered a risk factor for some health problems in some individuals, as disruption to circadian rhythms may increase the probability of developing cardiovascular disease, cognitive impairment, diabetes, and obesity, among other conditions. Shift work can also contribute to strain in marital, family, and personal relationships. A marriage where one partner works an irregular shift is six times more likely to end in divorce than a marriage where both partners work days.
context_section_description: Algorithmic scheduling of shift work can lead to what has been colloquially termed as "clopening" where the shift-worker has to work the closing shift of one day and the opening shift of the next day back-to-back resulting in short rest periods between shifts and fatigue. Co-opting employees to fill the shift roster helps to ensure that the human costs are taken into account in a way which is hard for an algorithm to do as it would involve knowing the constraints and considerations of each individual shift worker and assigning a cost metric to each of those factors. Shift based hiring which is a recruitment concept that hires people for individual shifts, rather than hiring employees before scheduling them into shifts enables shift workers to indicate their preferences and availabilities for unfilled shifts through a shift-bidding mechanism. Through this process, the shift hours are evened out by human-driven market mechanism rather than an algorithmic process. This openness can lead to work hours that are tailored to an individual's lifestyle and schedule while ensuring that shifts are optimally filled, in contrast to the generally poor human outcomes of fatigue, stress, estrangement with friends and family and health problems that have been reported with algorithm-based scheduling of work-shifts.
  Missing income is also a large part of shift worker. Several companies run twenty-four hour shifts. Most of the work is done during the day. When the work dries up, it usually is the second and third shift workers who pay the price. They are told to punch out early or use paid time off if they have any to make up the difference in their paychecks. That practice costs the average worker $92.00 a month.
caption: A clock-based device for recording workers' working hours, from the  beginning of 20 century. Exhibit of the National Polytechnical Museum in Sofia, Bulgaria
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