How many people does your coverage actually take?
Every coverage window has one honest arithmetic behind it: hours to staff, divided by hours a person can work. These pages show that work for the configurations teams actually run, including the ones where the honest answer is to change the plan.
How many employees do you need for 24/7 coverage?
One position staffed every hour of the week is 168 hours, which is 4.2 full-time equivalents at a 40-hour week before anyone takes a single day off. Priced honestly, with holidays, leave, and sickness included, the answer is 5 to 6 people per position, and the exact figure is national: the relief factor library derives it per country from sourced inputs, from 4.47 employees per post in the United States to 6.15 in France. The pages below run the same arithmetic for every other coverage window.
Start from the coverage window
You know the hours the operation has to run; the question is headcount.
How many employees do you need to cover 24/7 with 8-hour shifts?
168 hours/week, minimum 5 people, realistic 6
See the math24/7 · 12h shiftsHow many employees do you need to cover 24/7 with 12-hour shifts?
168 hours/week, minimum 5 people, realistic 6
See the math24 hours a day, 5 days a week · 8h shiftsHow many employees do you need to cover 24/5 with 8-hour shifts?
120 hours/week, minimum 3 people, realistic 4
See the math24 hours a day, 5 days a week · 12h shiftsHow many employees do you need to cover 24/5 with 12-hour shifts?
120 hours/week, minimum 3 people, realistic 4
See the math16 hours a day, 7 days a week · 8h shiftsHow many employees do you need to cover 16 hours a day, 7 days a week with 8-hour shifts?
112 hours/week, minimum 3 people, realistic 4
See the math16 hours a day, 5 days a week · 8h shiftsHow many people do you need to cover 16 hours a day, Monday to Friday, with 8-hour shifts?
80 hours/week, minimum 2 people, realistic 3
See the math12 hours a day, 7 days a week · 12h shiftsHow many people do you need to cover 12 hours a day, 7 days a week with 12-hour shifts?
84 hours/week, minimum 3 people, realistic 3
See the mathStart from the team you have
You know the headcount; the question is what it can carry. Some of these answers are rotations, and some are honest reasons to hire.
Can 2 people cover a 24/7 schedule?
168 hours/week across 2 people is 84h each
See the math3 people · 24/7Can 3 people cover a 24/7 schedule?
168 hours/week across 3 people is 56h each
See the math4 people · 24/7What is the best 24/7 shift pattern for 4 people?
168 hours/week across 4 people is 42h each
See the math5 people · 24/7How do you cover 24/7 with 5 people?
168 hours/week across 5 people is 33.6h each
See the math6 people · 24/7How do you schedule 6 people to cover 24/7?
168 hours/week across 6 people is 28h each
See the mathStaffing to call volume instead?
When the driver is demand rather than a coverage window, the math changes from division to queueing. The call center ladder gives precomputed Erlang C answers for 25 to 1000 calls an hour and 100 to 2000 a day: agents on the phones, scheduled headcount, and what one agent either way does to the queue.
Open the call center ladderWhere does the 25 percent come from?
Every page here prices absence at a flat 20 to 25 percent, which is a serviceable rule of thumb and not an answer. The things it stands in for, statutory leave and the length of a contracted week, are set nationally: the same round-the-clock post needs 4.47 employees in the United States and 6.15 in France. The relief factor library derives that number for 17 countries from sourced inputs instead of assuming it.
Open the relief factor libraryAnd how many of them can be off at once?
Sizing the team is one question; deciding whether to approve today's leave request is the other. Averages are no help there, because rosters break on the days when more people are away than usual rather than on average days. The leave capacity library runs that distribution for 16 team sizes, and the answer does not improve smoothly: a team of seven is expected short on about 57 days a year, a team of eight on about 18.
Open the leave capacity libraryThe method behind every page
Each page follows the same worked arithmetic: coverage hours per week, divided into shifts, divided by what a person can sustainably work, then adjusted for the 20 to 25 percent of paid time that leave, sickness, and training consume, or a country-specific figure from the relief factor library. The numbers are computed, not copywritten, so the headline, the derivation, and the options table always agree.
Headcount is only half the decision. The other half is which rotation makes those hours livable, which is what the shift pattern library covers, with interactive calendars for the rotations these pages recommend. For demand-driven staffing (how many agents for the call volume, not the coverage window), start from the Erlang C calculator instead.
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