Shift scheduling for telecom and field service teams

Stagger shifts to cover the service window

If customers can book visits from 8 am to 8 pm, one 9-to-6 shift leaves the evening slots uncovered, and those are the slots working customers want. Split the cluster into an early shift from 8 am to 5 pm and a late shift from 11 am to 8 pm, each with an hour's break. Dispatchers follow the same split, with one shift running to 9 pm to close the day's tickets.

Senior engineers who move between escalations suit a flexible shift instead. In ZeniaHR a flexible shift can have core hours, such as 11 am to 4 pm, and a minimum of effective hours for the day, so the engineer chooses when to start but is reachable when the escalations usually arrive.

Weekly offs spread from Monday to Saturday

Home installations peak on Sundays, so most clusters cannot give everyone Sunday off. A simple fix: give each technician a personal weekly off on one weekday. In a cluster of 12, two people take Monday, two Tuesday and so on through Saturday. That leaves 10 at work every weekday and all 12 on Sunday. Rotate the weekday offs every quarter so nobody is stuck with Tuesday forever, and pair it with a rotation template that alternates early and late shifts week by week.

A separate rota for outages

On-call is not a shift: the splicer on call works his normal day and stays reachable at night in case a fibre is cut. Keep the weekly on-call rota as a pinned post on the Company Wall for each cluster, so the network operations centre and the team leader see the same names. Hours actually spent on a night fault come from the ticket's open and close times and are paid as an overtime input in payroll or given as comp-off, and a technician who works through the night should not be rostered on the early shift the next morning.

Tower crews always in pairs

Riggers never climb alone, so the roster must keep trained pairs together, and swaps must keep them together too. A rigger who wants to trade a day sends the request to a colleague; after the colleague says yes, it goes to the team leader and then HR, and the roster is updated only once HR signs off. The team leader should reject any swap that leaves a climber with a partner who has no current height training.

How to set it up in ZeniaHR

1. Add an early shift from 8 am to 5 pm and a late shift from 11 am to 8 pm, plus a flexible shift with core hours for engineers.
2. Set a personal weekly off for each technician, spread across Monday to Saturday so Sunday stays fully staffed.
3. Create a two-week template of one early week and one late week, offset person by person, and apply it to the whole cluster in one bulk assignment.
4. Pin a weekly on-call rota for each cluster on the Company Wall, addressed to that department.
5. Allow shift swaps with the team leader and then HR approving, and check tower pairs before approving.
6. Review the day grid each week to confirm every cluster has enough technicians on both shifts.

Read more about shifts and rosters in ZeniaHR.

Roles this applies to

Frequently asked questions