Something useful / Free to use
A little less
juggling.
A work schedule with room for real life. Bring the shifts, the people, and their preferences. We’ll help you find a starting point.
Stays in this browser; export a copy to keep it.
No account. No email. No automatic saving.
Opening your planner…
03 / Find a rhythm
A starting point,
yours to shape.
Choose a variation, then edit a slot or swap two people. A lock keeps a slot in place next time you generate.
Your settings have changed. These variations still use the settings they were made with. Generate again to apply your changes; compatible locked slots will be kept. Editing, printing, and CSV export are paused until then.
Schedule notes
Wellbeing & workload
Information to consider. These notes do not change your schedule, selected limits, or rule-conflict count.
Only the supplied dates are checked. Hours use Monday–Sunday calendar weeks and assigned clock time, including any conflicting assignments. A week with no note is not a health or compliance assessment.
No advisory thresholds were reached within these dates. Work outside this plan is unknown.
Swap two slots Keep everyone in the loop
Swaps are checked against availability, hours, rest, and consecutive days. A conflict stays marked so you can correct it. Unlock a slot before swapping it.
Hours & preferences See the balance
| Person | Hours | Shifts | Preferences met | By department |
|---|
Keep a copy
Pick it up later.
Save the project file to pick up later with your preferences, variations and edits. For a clean printout, use Schedule · PDF or Word; CSV opens in a spreadsheet. Those three unlock once you’ve made a schedule.
Device saving is optional. Anyone using this browser profile may be able to open its saved draft.
How this planner thinks
Availability, permitted shifts, weekly hour limits, minimum rest, and consecutive-day limits are checked as rules. Patterns and preferences are wishes, so they cannot all be guaranteed.
The search is bounded and may leave cover unfilled even when another arrangement is possible. It makes suggestions, not an exhaustive proof of the best schedule. Before sharing, review the marked conflicts and confirm the plan with your team.
Rest and hours use clock times without daylight-saving or time-zone adjustments. Weekly caps use Monday–Sunday calendar weeks, and overnight hours are split at the week boundary. Availability covers every date touched by a shift, including overnight work. Patterns, consecutive-day limits, and holiday preferences use the date the shift begins.
This plan has no record of shifts before or after its date range. Rest, hours, and consecutive-day limits beyond those boundaries remain unchecked. Check any workplace-specific requirements separately.
Building humane, efficient schedules Research, options & limits
A useful schedule has room for the work and the people doing it. A full 40-hour week is the baseline here — the aim is a healthier shape to the hours someone works, not fewer hours or a smaller paycheck. These studies offer reasons to review a plan. You choose the limits; the advice never blocks generation or an edit.
Extra hours have limits.
In Pencavel’s historical munitions-worker data, output per hour tended to fall beyond roughly 50 hours per week. Additional hours brought diminishing gains. The study supports reviewing long weeks; it does not establish a universal point where work becomes pointless. Pencavel / Stanford SIEPR ↗
Make time to recover.
WHO/ILO estimates associate working 55 hours or more per week, compared with 35–40, with about 35% higher stroke risk and 17% higher risk of dying from ischemic heart disease. These are population-level associations, not a prediction for one person or one planned week. WHO/ILO ↗
Watch the turnarounds.
A cross-sectional study of Norwegian nurses found that reporting more than 30 quick returns in a year, compared with none, was associated with about three times the odds of shift-work disorder. A quick return meant less than 11 hours between shifts. That finding does not assign the same risk to one short gap. PLOS ONE ↗
Long runs are also worth reviewing. Pencavel’s historical study linked weeks without a rest day to lower output. The consecutive-day note uses your chosen maximum and counts shift-start dates; it is a prompt to consider a full rest day. Pencavel’s paper, rest-day analysis ↗
Shorter weeks are optional, and never a pay cut.
Where workplaces tried a shorter week, the trials that worked kept full pay. The UK pilot (roughly 100% pay for about 80% of the time) reported lower burnout with broadly stable revenue. Iceland’s trials held or improved productivity and services while wellbeing rose. The employer’s gain was efficiency and retention, not payroll saved by cutting hours. Results from these workplaces are not a promise for every team.
Why keeping people pays off, too
Keeping good employees is usually far cheaper than replacing them. Estimates for replacing someone run from about a third of their annual salary to well above it, depending on the role. That covers recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, training and the months before a new hire reaches full speed (often 6–12). New hires are also frequently brought in at today’s market rate, above what your current people earn. While a role sits open, momentum slips and whoever stays covers the gap. Know-how leaves with the person, and a rushed hire can be a costly wrong fit. A schedule people can live with is one of the quietest ways to keep your best. Estimates vary by role and source. SHRM ↗ · Work Institute ↗
4 Day Week Global · UK pilot ↗Cambridge · UK findings ↗Autonomy / Alda · Iceland report ↗
Check the rules where you work.
This is information, not legal advice. Verify overtime and scheduling rules for your state/city, and with counsel. The planner has no legal-compliance engine.
In the U.S., FLSA overtime generally requires at least 1.5× the regular rate for covered, non-exempt staff working over 40 hours in the employer’s fixed, recurring 168-hour workweek. That week can begin on any day or time. This planner uses Monday–Sunday calendar weeks, does not know exemption status, and cannot calculate pay owed. U.S. Department of Labor ↗
Some state and city fair-workweek or predictive-scheduling laws also address advance notice, schedule changes and rest between shifts. Coverage, exceptions and premiums vary by place, employer size and industry. Oregon’s rules are one example, not a rule for every workplace. Oregon BOLI · coverage and rules ↗
How the advisory prompts are chosen
Rest notes appear below 11h, with stronger wording below 8h. Weekly notes appear over 40h, over 50h and over 55h. The health study includes 55h and above; exactly 55h still belongs to that study category even though this planner’s extra health note starts above 55h. No boundary marks a universally safe or unsafe schedule.
Consecutive-day notes appear when a run reaches your selected maximum. Overlapping assignments remain rule conflicts; they do not create a negative-rest advisory. Time off, other jobs, prior shifts, daylight-saving changes and work outside the supplied plan are not assessed. These notes are recalculated from the selected schedule and do not change exports or the scheduling search.
Why review weekly hours?
Past roughly 50h, output per hour tended to fall in historical factory data; WHO/ILO links 55h+ weeks to higher stroke and heart-disease mortality risk. These findings inform a review, not a personal risk forecast. Pencavel ↗ · WHO/ILO ↗
Useful things, built with care. Scheduling eating your week? See what it costs. Want it off your plate? We can set up scheduling software around how your team works: the Operations Buildout, $1,500 to $4,000, one time.
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