I recently was dropped into a night shift because our computer deptartment has somebody out on long term medical leave (2 months or so)
I was rather amazed to learn that this department is staffed 24/7 by only 7 people. At least 2 during the day, often 3, and 1 who works a 10 hour night shift.
I told my boss (not THIS department manager, I was trawled frome her dept.) that not only is this stupid, it’s probably borderline illegal.
After 4 nights of sleep deprivation, I’m ready to go screaming at the dept. manager. According to the people I’m working with, the previous manager (recently released for reasons unknown, probably incompetande) was told that “the numbers don’t justify more people.”
Meanwhile, the 6 that aren’t out on med leave are some of the unhealthiest people as a group that I’ve ever known. Overweight, back problems, carpel tunnel problems, etc.
So, before I go screaming, what’s the minimum number of people needed to run a mission critical department 24/7? Does anybody know of any guidelines?
Sorry if this is a little disjointed, lack of sleep does not contribute positively to my composition skills
Check with the appropriate state agency in Minnesota (assuming that your location is correct) that governs labor relations. Rules about this can vary by state.
My guess would be at least 10 people. There are 8,760 hours in a 365 day year. Without asking for overtime, and assuming normal holdays and other leave, I don’t think you can expect a person to work more than 220 8-hour shifts in a year, or 1,760 hours. Divide the 8,760 by 1,760, and you get just under 5 – which means 5 people, cunningly organised, could just cover the year.
However, if the thing is mission-critical, I think you need 2 people there at all times, to cover things like meal breaks and emergencies. You might be able to get through an 8-hour shift with just one person there, but you shouldn’t be doing that regularly, even during the midnight to dawn shift. So 10 people has to be a minimum.
There’s cops and security guards around my workplace who do 12 hour graveyard shifts, four times a week. The facilities that they are guarding are extremely mission critical, in the parlance – in that it is required by Federal law that someone maintain a presence at their stations 24 hours a day. They are spelled every once in a while (I’m guessing every two hours) for a bathroom break, etc.)
IANAL, but so long as your are afforded breaks for bathroom, food, etc, at reasonable intervals, I can’t see what might be legally wrong about the situation that you describe. It may be a pain in the ass to work graveyard, yes, but “borderline illegal?” Not from what I read.
Back in the bad ol’ days when I was managing a Blockbuster (this was several years ago - pre-Netflix), I was on the phone with computer support one night when my system died. I mean, I was on the phone ALL NIGHT with this guy, unplugging wires and plugging them back in, hitting reboot commands, just everything under the sun, while my employees wrote every transaction out on paper and had to gasp make change by hand. Finally, as we were waiting for some reboot that was taking forever, I decided some small talk was in order.
I asked him how many people worked in computer support at one time.
He laughed, “how many would you guess?”
“Well, let’s see, Blockbuster has about 8,000 stores in the US -”
“We do Canada and Mexico, too” he interjected.
“Gosh, that’s well over 10,000 stores! And all the computer support is done by one office?”
“Uh-huh. Guess how many of us there are working right now. Saturday night. Busiest night of the week for video rentals.”
“I dunno, a couple hundred?”
“Seven.”
“Seven HUNDRED?”
“No, seven. Seven guys.”
:eek:
I seriously hope he was pulling my leg.
But knowing Blockbuster, I’m afraid not. So, um, if you work for Blockbuster computer support, I’m afraid seven is all you get, and it’s been that way for a long time.
My brother in law is an anthestist in a small town. There are two that cover 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. They work two weeks on, two weeks off.
Generally, they schedule surgery for a few days a week. The rest of your two week period you can’t wander more than ten minutes away from the hospital (they both live several blocks away) and might get called in the middle of the night.
This is better than the guy he covers for once a year for vacation. That guy works on an Indian reservation in Montana and gets one week off a year, when my brother in law subs for him. Otherwise, he covers 24x7.
Generally, its a sweet job. You might have surgery for a few hours on Monday and Wednesday, then Monday and Wednesday the next week. You might have to get in for a baby once or twice during the shift, and maybe an emergency call or two. Most of the difficult surgery is done at the big city hospitals. But then there are the bad weeks, where you have a lot of surgery Monday, then an emergency Monday evening, a baby Monday night. Another baby Tuesday morning, a three car accident keeping you up most of Tuesday afternoon and evening, catch a few hours of sleep at the hospital because you need to be there at 5:30 am for the scheduled surgery Wednesday morning.
Since hospital care is mission critical, and I’d say one, if you hire a contractor to cover vacations. But it does depend on what you are doing on your shift - obviously these guys sleep while they are scheduled.
Where I work, there are three full-time people in Operations, and two in Engineering. We keep four radio stations running 24/7/365. Engineering makes sure the equipment, automation computers and transmitter work. Each of us in Ops have different duties which, up until just recently, did not overlap. If one of us couldn’t come in, something got screwed up. Now, we’re learning each others’ jobs. I can’t think of another place I’ve worked where so few were responsible for running the ship. Realistically, if we had even one more person, we’d have to come up with something for him or her to do.
I work in a call centre that provides 24/7 service. During the day (0700 EST to 2200 EST, thanks to time zone coverage), we usually have aprox 120 people working. Overnights, however, since it’s normally slow, we have a skeleton staff of two (based in EST), who work 2000 to 0600. This forms a core group of four people who split the ten hour overnights, in a “2 on 3 off” “3 on 2 off” manner.
All well and good so far, but, you ask what about vacation? That’s where I come in. I just finished six months of nights as one of the core group. I worked a day shift today, and flip back to nights for the rest of the next two weeks. Then a week of days, then back to nights. It’s been determined at a higher level that having one shift flipper is easier on a 24/7 department then having everybody do it. Unfortunately, I can’t fault that logic. Somebody has to flip, and for the next little while, it’s me.
I must say though, with a mood light and loud music when there are no calls, one can adapt pretty easily to night work, if that’s all you do.
If in the next few months, my posts start to seem like they’re all :eek: :eek: :mad: :o :rolleyes: :eek:
I’ve been told that the standard rule-of-thumb for 24/7 staffing is that you need five people for each position. People get sick, take vacations, have to attend training sessions, etc.
