Continental rota for 20 people: 4 teams of 5, 15 on duty every day

Continental at 20 people is 4 teams of 5 rotating forward through mornings, afternoons and nights on a 28-day cycle. A day on this pattern takes three crews rather than two, so 15 of the 20 are working on every date in the grid below, and the team that is off is off as a unit of 5.

The unit here is the run, not the shift. Every work run in the cycle is 7 days long, and each one walks the same way: mornings first, then afternoons, then nights, then a break. That is why the night block caps at 3. Nights are the tail of a run rather than a stretch of their own, and the pattern holds 0 permanent night teams, so the tail belongs to whichever of the 4 lines has reached it. Each of the 20 averages 42 hours a week, built from 8-hour shifts.

The grid below is 364 dated days, 13 turns of the 28-day cycle, one line per team.

People

4 teams of 5

Hours a week

8-hour shifts

Cycle

28 days

13 cycles in the grid

On duty

every day of the cycle

Take the grid

364 dated days, 13 complete cycles, starting 2026-08-24 and ending 2027-08-22. Every shift is checked for coverage before the file is written, so no date in it leaves a shift unstaffed.

Download CSV Team A calendar Team B calendar Team C calendar Team D calendar

The first four weeks

Each row is a week, each cell a team's shift on that date. The full 364-day grid is in the download.

DDay06:00–14:00SSwing14:00–22:00NNight22:00–06:00

First four weeks of the Continental, 20 people rota
Team	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
Week 1, from 2026-08-24
Team A	D	D	S	S	N	N	N
Team B	S	S	N	N	·	·	·
Team C	N	N	·	·	D	D	D
Team D	·	·	D	D	S	S	S
Week 2, from 2026-08-31
Team A	·	·	D	D	S	S	S
Team B	D	D	S	S	N	N	N
Team C	S	S	N	N	·	·	·
Team D	N	N	·	·	D	D	D
Week 3, from 2026-09-07
Team A	N	N	·	·	D	D	D
Team B	·	·	D	D	S	S	S
Team C	D	D	S	S	N	N	N
Team D	S	S	N	N	·	·	·
Week 4, from 2026-09-14
Team A	S	S	N	N	·	·	·
Team B	N	N	·	·	D	D	D
Team C	·	·	D	D	S	S	S
Team D	D	D	S	S	N	N	N

What this configuration costs

Never more than 3 nights in a row is the reason to pick continental, and it is a real reason. The catch is what makes it possible. Nights are short here because they are the last part of a run, which means the rotation happens inside the working week instead of between weeks. Nobody on this pattern is on mornings. They are partway through a 7-day run that opened on mornings and will end on nights, and the answer to what shift they are working changes more than once before they reach the break at the end of it. That sounds like hair-splitting until somebody tries to plan around it. A partner, a childminder or a five-a-side team wants to know what shift you are on this week, and on continental that question has no answer, only a position in a run. The break that closes the run is 3 days at its longest and the others are shorter, so the recovery and the resetting both have to fit in there. The pattern does pay something back for it. Nobody accumulates a night career on continental, nobody is the person who always gets the graveyard, and the sleep cost is spread across all 20 rather than parked on 5 of them.

Weekends, by team

The 28-day cycle divides into whole weeks, so every team gets the same 13 full weekends off and nobody can argue the rota favours anyone.

Team	Sequence	Full weekends off
Team A	DDSSNNNOODDSSSNNOODDDSSNNOOO	13
Team B	SSNNOOODDSSNNNOODDSSSNNOODDD	13
Team C	NNOODDDSSNNOOODDSSNNNOODDSSS	13
Team D	OODDSSSNNOODDDSSNNOOODDSSNNN	13

Who runs this shape

Continental belongs to sites where the 8-hour shift was settled long before anyone opened a rota tool, usually in a collective or works agreement, and the only live question is how fast to move people through the three of them. European continuous process is its natural home: something that cannot be switched off, three named shifts with fixed start times, and a crew size the plant will not go under. At 20 people that crew is 5, and it is 5 on the night as well as on the morning. Sites take this over the slower 8-hour rotation because of the night block. A cap of 3 nights in a row is a proposal you can put in front of a works council. A full week of them is a negotiation. What gets accepted in exchange is that nobody ever gets a long stretch away from the place: the biggest break the 28-day cycle contains is 3 days. Continental fits a workforce that lives near the site and is the wrong shape for one that travels to it, and that is a question about where your 20 people live rather than about the rota.

What breaks first

Watch the direction, not the hours. Everything continental claims comes out of sequence: mornings, then afternoons, then nights, in that order, on every run. Hours-based checks cannot see sequence. Somebody can pick up an afternoon shift the day after finishing a night, stay inside 42 hours a week, keep every legal rest gap intact, and still have rotated backwards, which is the single thing this pattern exists to prevent. It happens quietly, because backwards cover is the convenient kind: on any date there is a team just off nights and a team about to start mornings, and the one just off nights is the one that reads as available. So check the shifts people actually worked against the 4 lines you published, name by name, cycle by cycle. If someone's shift types keep coming out of order, you do not have a continental rota any more. You have a continental grid with an improvised one running on top of it, and it will keep passing an hours check for as long as an hours check is all you run.

Questions

How many people do you need to run a continental shift pattern?

20, if a crew of 5 has to be present on every shift. A continental day takes three crews rather than two, so 15 of the 20 are working on any date in the grid, and the 5 who are not are all on the same team. Each of the 20 averages 42 hours a week, built from 8-hour shifts. What the number 20 does not tell you is how those 5 are made up. The same crew covers mornings, afternoons and nights inside one run, so whatever mix of skills you need at night has to be the same mix that worked the morning.

How many nights in a row do you work on a continental rota?

Never more than 3. Nights are the end of a run rather than a block of their own: each 7-day run opens on mornings, moves through afternoons and finishes on nights, so a night shift is always worked by a crew already several days into that run. No line is exempt and no line is stuck: all 20 people reach that tail, and none of them stay on it. Everyone works nights and nobody works many, which is the whole trade this pattern makes.

How many weekends off do you get on a continental rota?

13 full weekends across the 364-day grid, and it is the same 13 for every team. The grid is more revealing about the weekends people do work. Both days of a worked weekend are always the same shift, and across one cycle each team takes a weekend of mornings, a weekend of afternoons, a weekend of nights and a weekend clear. So the argument on this rota is rarely about the count of 13. It is about which worked weekend you own, because a weekend on mornings hands back both evenings and a weekend on nights takes both of them.

How the pattern works

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