During my years as a Sheriff’s Chaplain I taught several classes in stress management for law enforcement officers. I was also frequently asked to address the families of newly-sworn officers about how having an officer in the family affected their family life. One might think that the biggest sources of stress for officers might be the danger inherent in the profession. I did often try to put that into perspective for family members, who often imagined that law enforcement was a particularly dangerous occupation. I would remind them that there are many career choices that carry with them higher risk of on the job injury and death, among them commercial fishing, roofing, and logging. Statistically, law enforcement is a relatively safe career choice. In our work with officers we discovered that one of the greatest sources of stress for officers was the different shifts that officers are required to serve. Law enforcement is a 24 hour a day, seven days a week profession. That means that all shifts have to be covered during the night, on holidays, and on weekends. Officers have to be alert and on the job when others are at home with their families. They also have to learn to work at night and sleep in the day. Even in a relatively large law enforcement agency such as the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office, covering all of the shifts means that some officers have to switch from one shift to another, working days sometimes and nights at other times.

During my time, the Sheriff experimented with different staffing configurations, including having officers work four ten-hour shifts a week instead of five eight hour shifts. Sometimes we had different officers working different lengths of shifts. It made scheduling a real challenge. In addition, rank and length of service gave officers a bit of flexibility when it came to choice of shifts. Often the officers who were newest were working the least desired shifts.

It is a challenge that is not unique to law enforcement. Hospitals need to provide care 24/7. Fire departments and ambulance services need to be ready to respond regardless of what time it is. And the job of defending our nation from attack requires constant vigilance. Law enforcement operates as a paramilitary organization, adopting many policies and principles from the military. Since the various branches of the United States military have larger crews than law enforcement, more studies have been conducted about various staffing configurations and scheduling schemes in the military than in other organizations. Our Sheriff tried to learn from those many studies and adopted some practices from the military. However it was never as simple as simply copying schedules or adopting policies directly. Among other factors is that law enforcement agencies have to operate within limited budgets and overtime pay can be very expensive.

A certain amount of overtime was inevitable during my time at the Sheriff’s office. Officers might be called to respond at the end of a shift and a call could require them to continue working beyond the normal quitting time. Sometimes the paperwork associated with a specific action had to be done before the end of a shift regardless of how long that took. Seeking to minimize those challenges, shift changes were timed to correspond to levels of activity in the community. Experience taught that certain types of calls came in at certain times of day and shift changes were adjusted to be at what were commonly slack times in the flow of activity. To make scheduling more complex, a certain amount of overlap is required as a new shift needs to be briefed before going out into the field.

In my time our office did not regular schedule 12 hour workdays, so the families in my care as chaplain usually had time for family even if a second wage earner in the family was working full time. We had several families who had two officers in the same family. Even if they were working different shifts, something that some chose to limit childcare requirements, they had time when both were off duty and awake at the same time.

I have been thinking about shifts and scheduling as our son-in-law who often takes vacation time when we visit, returned to work last night after being off for the first few days of our visit. He is currently working 12 hour night shifts. It appears that in his particular area the work is covered by two shifts per day instead of three. There is still a challenge for schedulers as they are covering seven days a week. I don’t fully understand the entire schedule, but I know that it involves some times when there are three days off in a row and other times when there are four days off. Of course, in the event of a national crisis, military personnel have to defer days off and work more continuously, but the schedule is not currently based on that situation.

12 hours of work and eight hours of sleep leaves four hours a day for awake time with the family. However that four hours is more realistically three hours as it takes time to prepare for work and wind down after a shift. With a preschool attending school in the mornings and dad no night shifts that means that family time generally falls into the late afternoon. It also means that mealtimes don’t always align. Our daughter and her husband have many years of experience with military schedules and have learned to cope well with the challenges. Blackout curtains and a temperate climate that allows a lot of out of doors play for the preschooler help. Still, I know it is a challenge for the family to get the amount of time together they need. I also know that our visit poses additional challenges as we are around for family time and the couple might get less time alone together. On the other hand, we can care for their son to give them time that they would not otherwise have if we were not part of the team.

Their grace and flexibility makes everything work smoothly despite the challenges. Those qualities are not something that can be taught in a stress management workshop. I’ve learned a lot from observing their family that I did not know when I was teaching those classes, however. I suspect that those who make scheduling decisions continue to learn about what works best for families and what creates lower stress which in turn leads to better job performance. I’m certainly no expert, but I think our society still has much to learn about how to help families handle the constant juggling act of work, leisure, sleep and family time.