Two 12-hour shifts, then two days off, on a four-day cycle. Enter an hourly rate to get average weekly hours, annual hours and gross pay, with a check against the 48-hour Working Time Regulations limit.
Open the free rota maker with two-day blocks of 12-hour shifts already laid out for the next four weeks, for two day crews and two night crews, and see each week's hours as you go, which on 2 on 2 off swing between a short week and a long one. No account needed to build it — sign up to print or download it and the rota comes with you.
Cycle length
4 days
Average week
42 hours
Annual hours
2,190
The shortest of the common continuous patterns: two 12-hour shifts on, two off, then straight back. The four-day cycle means a worker returns to the same weekday every four weeks — 28 days is the first point at which the rota repeats against the calendar.
In each four-day cycle a worker does 24 hours. Scaled to a week that is 42 hours, and across a year about 2,190 hours — identical to 3-on-3-off and 4-on-4-off. That surprises people: the three patterns differ in rhythm and recovery, not in total hours. If you are choosing between them, hours worked is not the deciding factor.
More transitions. Two-on-two-off produces roughly 91 shift blocks a year against 46 on 4-on-4-off. Every block is another commute and, on rotating rotas, another sleep-cycle adjustment. Fatigue research generally favours fewer, longer runs for night work.
Faster recovery. The flip side is that no one works more than two long shifts back to back, and a day off is never more than 48 hours away. Staff with caring responsibilities often prefer it for exactly that reason.
Weekly rest. Workers are entitled to 24 hours uninterrupted rest per week, or 48 hours per fortnight. The two-day gap satisfies this, but only if overtime is not routinely dropped into the off days — which is exactly where this pattern tends to leak.
As with any pattern that ignores the seven-day week, deducting leave in days is unfair. A booked week costs three or four shifts depending on where it lands, so two people taking the same week off can lose different amounts of entitlement.
Track it in hours instead. At a 42-hour average, 5.6 weeks of statutory leave is 235.2 hours a year. Deduct the real shift length and the cycle stops mattering. See the holiday entitlement calculator for the underlying statutory maths.
Common in security and door supervision, smaller control rooms, veterinary and animal care, and hospitality operations running long service days. It suits sites where cover must be continuous but each shift is not physically punishing — the frequent transitions are more tolerable when the work itself allows some recovery in post.
TimeTally lets you save 2-on-2-off weeks as templates and copy them forward, flags anyone over the weekly hours limit you set, and deducts leave in hours so short cycles stay fair.
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