Also called the 2-2-3 or Panama pattern: two on, two off, three on, then the mirror image. Enter an hourly rate to get average weekly hours, annual hours and gross pay across the full 14-day cycle.
Lay out the mornings, afternoons and nights in the free rota maker, one row per person, and see the hours per person and per day as you go. It flags anyone given less than 11 hours' rest between shifts, which is where a fast rotation usually goes wrong. No account needed to build it — sign up to print or download it and the rota comes with you.
Cycle length
14 days
Average week
42 hours
Teams for 24/7
4
A team works two days on, two off, three on — then the next week inverts it: two off, two on, three off. Over 14 days that is seven 12-hour shifts, or 84 hours a fortnight, an average of 42 hours per week and roughly 2,190 hours a year.
The design goal is the weekend. Because the cycle is exactly two weeks long, it locks to the calendar — and every team gets a full three-day weekend every other week, at the same predictable point. That is the single biggest reason it is chosen over 4-on-4-off, which drifts across weekdays and never guarantees a weekend.
The names are used loosely and often interchangeably in UK workplaces. In practice:
Panama almost always means the 2-2-3 rotation on 12-hour shifts, as described here.
Continental is sometimes used for 2-2-3, and sometimes for a faster-rotating 8-hour version (2 mornings, 2 afternoons, 2 nights, 2 off) that averages closer to 42 hours across a longer cycle.
2-2-3 is the unambiguous term. If a contract or rota agreement is being drafted, write the actual sequence and shift length rather than the name.
Four teams for continuous cover. Two teams on days and two on nights gives unbroken 24/7 cover with no team exceeding a 42-hour average. Running it with three teams pushes the average to 56 hours and requires signed opt-outs.
Rotating day/night variants. Where teams swap between days and nights, the changeover should run forwards (days → nights) rather than backwards. Night workers keep the 8-hour average limit and the right to a free health assessment.
The three-shift run. Thirty-six hours across three days is the heaviest stretch in the cycle. Where the work is safety-critical, this is the block a fatigue risk assessment should focus on.
The 14-day cycle makes leave slightly easier than six- or eight-day patterns, because a fortnight always contains exactly seven shifts. It is still safer to deduct in hours: 5.6 weeks of statutory leave at a 42-hour average is 235.2 hours, and hours-based deduction means a worker who books the heavy three-shift stretch is treated the same as one who books the light week. The pro rata holiday calculator covers part-time and mid-year variants.
TimeTally lets you save each team's weeks as templates and copy them forward, flags anyone over the weekly hours limit you set, and deducts leave in hours.
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