Guide · For schedulers and shift workers
Two on, two off, three on — and every second weekend free
The Pitman schedule is a fourteen-day rotation in which four teams work 12-hour shifts to a 2-2-3 pattern: two days on, two off, three on, two off, two on, three off. Each team works seven shifts a fortnight, averaging 42 hours a week, and every team gets a full weekend off every second week.
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At a glance
- The Pitman schedule is a 2-2-3 pattern over fourteen days: two on, two off, three on, two off, two on, three off. Seven 12-hour shifts a fortnight, and the cycle then repeats exactly.
- It averages 42 hours a week, which is arithmetic rather than design: 168 hours of coverage a week shared between four teams is 42 each, whatever shape you pour it into.
- Its selling point is the alternating weekend. Every team is off a complete Saturday and Sunday every second week, permanently, without asking and without it being anyone's turn.
- The longest run is three consecutive twelves, which is the gentlest of the common four-team patterns; DuPont asks for four consecutive nights.
- The real decision is fixed versus rotating. Fixed keeps the predictability that made you choose it and concentrates every night onto the same people; rotating shares the nights and gives away the predictability.
What is the Pitman schedule?
The Pitman schedule is a fourteen-day, four-team rotation of 12-hour shifts following a 2-2-3 pattern, designed so that a workplace is covered continuously and every team is off a full weekend every other week.
Four teams is the structural requirement, not a preference. Covering 24 hours means two 12-hour shifts a day; covering seven days a week without anybody working every day means two teams on each of those shifts, alternating. Two of the four teams cover days and two cover nights, and the two on each side are exact complements: when A is on, B is off. That complementarity is what makes the coverage close with no gaps and no overlaps, and it is why the pattern cannot be adapted to three teams or five without becoming a different rotation that happens to share the name.
The name comes from the pattern's use in continuous-operation industries — it is common in police and fire services, in dispatch centres, in manufacturing plants that never stop, and in hospital departments running twelve-hour nursing shifts. It is sometimes called the 2-2-3 for the shape of the run, and occasionally the 'every other weekend off' schedule for its most-advertised feature.
How does the 2-2-3 schedule work over fourteen days?
One team's fortnight runs: two shifts on, two off, three on, two off, two on, three off. That is seven shifts in fourteen days, and the fifteenth day starts the identical cycle again.
Laid out as a fortnight, with the days of the week fixed, the useful property appears immediately. Because the cycle is fourteen days long and a week is seven, each team's pattern lands on the same days of the week every other fortnight — so the schedule is genuinely predictable years ahead rather than merely repeating. A worker on Pitman can answer 'am I working the second Saturday in March' without looking anything up, once they know their team.
The three-off block at the end of the cycle is what produces the weekend. Arrange the start so that block covers Saturday and Sunday and the team has a complete weekend, every second week, for as long as they stay on that team. The complementary team gets the alternate weekends. Nothing has to be requested and no favour is being done.
Why is it called a 2-2-3 schedule?
Because the working runs, in order, are two shifts, then three, then two — with rest between each. Written as a fortnight it is 2 on, 2 off, 3 on, 2 off, 2 on, 3 off. Some workplaces write the same pattern as 2-3-2, starting the count at a different point in the cycle; it is the same rotation read from a different day.
How many hours a week is the Pitman schedule?
42, averaged. Seven 12-hour shifts a fortnight is 84 hours, which is 42 a week. Individual weeks alternate between 36 and 48 hours, which matters for overtime rules in places that calculate weekly rather than over an averaging period — worth checking before adopting it rather than after.
Should the Pitman schedule be fixed or rotating?
Fixed means a team stays on days or nights indefinitely; rotating swaps the day and night halves each cycle. This is the only decision in Pitman that genuinely matters, and it has no correct answer.
Fixed is the version most people mean when they say Pitman, and it is what makes the pattern so predictable: a night team knows it is a night team, its weekends are known, and its life can be arranged around a shift pattern that will not change. The price is that the health cost of permanent night work is concentrated onto four people rather than spread across sixteen, indefinitely, and it accumulates.
Rotating spreads that cost. It also destroys the thing that made the pattern attractive, because a rotation that swaps every fortnight is asking everybody to re-adjust their sleep permanently, which is its own well-documented cost rather than a neutral alternative. There is no arrangement of 168 hours across four teams that removes the night shift; every choice here moves who carries it.
The one thing worth saying flatly is that this is a decision for the people who will work it. A unit that picks fixed because it is easier to schedule, without asking whether the four people who will be permanently nocturnal want that, has made a real decision and has disguised it as an administrative one.
Who does the Pitman schedule actually suit?
Continuous operations with enough staff for four genuine teams, where predictability is valued above shift variety, and where 12-hour shifts are already accepted.
The size threshold is the one people trip over. Pitman needs four teams that can each cover a shift on their own, so a department that can only fill three is not running a small Pitman — it is running something else and calling it one, usually with somebody permanently on call to plug the gap. Work out whether you have four viable teams before choosing the pattern rather than after publishing it.
It suits people whose lives need planning: childcare, a second commitment, a long commute, anything that has to be arranged weeks ahead. It suits them considerably better than a schedule that is fairer on paper and different every month. And it suits places that have already decided on twelve-hour shifts, because Pitman is not available in any other shift length — a four-team pattern on eight-hour shifts is the Southern Swing, which is a different rotation with a different feel.
What a shift pattern cannot do for you
Fill itself. A pattern is a shape, and every real problem with a roster is about the people you put into the shape.
The pattern does not know who is in team C, whether all of them are qualified for the unit, whether one has a licence expiring in week three, or whether two of them have booked the same fortnight off in August. It does not know that the team is one person short and has been since March. Every one of those turns a correct rotation into a bad month, and none of them are visible from the grid.
Nor does the pattern know what its shifts are worth in hours. A 19:00–07:00 Pitman night is eleven real hours the weekend the clocks go forward and thirteen the weekend they go back, and a payroll built on 'twelve, times seven' is wrong twice a year in a way that shorts somebody. MedAligna computes hours on real elapsed time for that reason, and checks credentials, rest and availability against the pattern before a name goes into it.
Questions people actually ask
- How many hours a week is the Pitman schedule?
- 42 on average. Seven 12-hour shifts every fourteen days is 84 hours a fortnight. Individual weeks alternate between 36 and 48, so check how your overtime rules treat a week before adopting it: somewhere that calculates weekly rather than over an averaging period will trigger overtime on every 48-hour week.
- Why is the Pitman schedule also called 2-2-3?
- Because the working runs are two shifts, three shifts and two shifts, separated by rest: 2 on, 2 off, 3 on, 2 off, 2 on, 3 off. The same pattern is sometimes written 2-3-2, which is the identical rotation counted from a different starting day rather than a different schedule.
- Does everyone get every other weekend off on Pitman?
- Yes, if the cycle is aligned so the three-day rest block lands on the weekend, which is how it is normally set up. Each team is off a complete Saturday and Sunday every second week, permanently. The complementary team covers those weekends and takes the alternate ones.
- Is the Pitman schedule better than the DuPont schedule?
- Neither is better; they trade differently. Both use four teams and both average 42 hours. Pitman's longest run is three shifts and its reward is a predictable alternating weekend. DuPont asks for four consecutive nights and a hard turnaround, and pays for it with seven consecutive days off every cycle. Ask your night staff which price they would rather pay.
- How many staff do you need to run a Pitman schedule?
- Enough for four teams that can each cover a shift unaided, which in practice means at least four times your minimum shift staffing, plus cover for leave and sickness. A department that can only fill three teams is not running a reduced Pitman; it is running a different pattern with somebody permanently plugging the gap.
- Can I generate a Pitman schedule on real dates?
- Yes, free and without an account. The rotating shift schedule generator linked below lays Pitman onto real calendar dates for four teams you can rename, and exports it as a spreadsheet. Its coverage is verified by tests: every shift covered by exactly one team, no team ever on two at once, every team carrying the same number.
Related
The pattern is the easy half. The people
MedAligna puts real staff into a rotation and checks each one — credentials, rest, hours across the clocks change. Fourteen days free, no card.