Care Home Shift Scheduling: Making Complex Rules Work Together

“Sorry, we have so many exceptions and special rules.” While working with one care home, we heard this more than once. There was no need to apologise. Scheduling around requirements like these is exactly what ShiftScheduler.ai is for.

This anonymised case study comes from a real customer. It shows how different working patterns, staffing requirements and individual exceptions can fit into a single rota.

The team and the staffing requirements

The team included day nurses, nurses working a day-and-night rota, and care workers. The customer needed the schedule to account for four things:

• A day nurse or a rota nurse should be available every day from 7:00 to 19:00. Short gaps were allowed where shifts did not quite meet; the rules below define the exact periods requiring nursing cover.
• One day nurse had an individual working pattern.
• At least two people should be on duty throughout the day and night, across the different shifts.
• One rota nurse was on long-term sick leave.

The aim was to make routine planning easier and produce a fairer rota.

Setting up the shifts

We first configured the shift templates and open slots for each day. The first screenshot shows this starting point. It includes GO and GO2 as alternatives: the scheduler chooses one of them.

The initial setup includes day, afternoon and night shifts, plus the alternative GO and GO2 slots.

The 19 scheduling rules

Nurse 1 and Nurse 2 below correspond to Nurse1 and Nurse2 in the screenshots. Shift codes are unchanged. Notes on each person identify their group: day nurse, rota nurse or care worker.

1. People marked as rota nurses or care workers may work no more than 35 hours per week.
2. Rota nurses and care workers may only work C (7:00–19:00), N (19:00–7:00) and O (13:00–19:00) shifts.
3. People marked as day nurses may work no more than 37.5 hours per week.
4. Nurse 1 may only work D (06:30–14:30) and O (13:00–19:00) shifts.
5. Each person may have only one shift per day, except Nurse 2.
6. Nurse 2 may only work S21, S22, S23, G24, S15, GO, GO2 and O (13:00–19:00) shifts.
7. Nurse 2 may only work the O afternoon shift (13:00–19:00) on Wednesdays and Fridays.
8. Avoid assigning day nurses to the 13:00–19:00 afternoon shift unless necessary.
9. A night shift should be followed by a day off.
10. Do not assign an N night shift on the day before annual leave.
11. Never schedule two or more C shifts on consecutive days. A C shift must be followed by a day off or a different shift.
12. Do not assign a C shift on the day immediately after an O shift.
13. A rota nurse or day nurse must be available every day from 7:00 to 12:00.
14. A rota nurse or day nurse must be available every day from 13:00 to 14:30.
15. A rota nurse or day nurse must be available every day from 15:00 to 19:00.
16. Avoid assigning GO2 to Nurse 2 unless necessary.
17. Do not assign an N night shift on the day before ŠK (training).
18. Neither O nor C may be assigned on the day after a night shift.
19. Where possible, use the sequence C – N – at least one day off.

Some rules set firm boundaries; others express preferences, such as avoiding GO2 unless needed or favouring C – N – time off. That distinction matters when building the rota.

Why the AI chose GO2 on Thursday

We asked the AI agent to fill the unassigned shifts. One particularly useful decision involved Nurse 2 on Tuesdays and Thursdays: the algorithm had to choose between GO (15:00–17:00) and GO2 (15:00–19:00). The unused alternative was deliberately left unassigned.

Look at Thursday the 15th in the result below. With GO, Nurse 2 would have finished at 17:00. Care workers would still have been on duty, but there would have been no nurse available from 17:00 to 19:00. Choosing GO2 kept a nurse on duty until 19:00, as the customer required.

This is why “avoid GO2 unless necessary” is a preference. On that day, the longer shift was needed to provide nursing cover for the full period. The empty GO slot represents an unused alternative, not an overlooked assignment.

On Thursday the 15th, Nurse 2 works GO2 until 19:00. The shorter GO alternative remains unassigned.