2nd shift hours

What is a 2nd shift?

A second shift, or 2nd shift, is the work period that starts in the afternoon and ends late in the evening, most often from 3pm to 11pm. It follows the first shift, the day shift, and hands over to the third shift, the overnight shift, in businesses that run two or three shifts a day.

Second shift is also called the afternoon shift, the late shift in the UK, or the swing shift, because it swings from day into night. The name only tells you where the shift sits in the day. A second shift can be 8 hours, 10 hours, or a shorter closing shift in a store.

Typical second shift hours

Most second shifts run from 3pm to 11pm, the middle block of a day split into three 8-hour shifts: 7am to 3pm, 3pm to 11pm and 11pm to 7am. Where the first shift starts earlier or later, the second shift moves with it, so the hours in a job ad are that employer's own split of the day.

How long is a second shift?

A standard second shift is 8 hours of work, or 8.5 hours on site when a 30-minute meal break is unpaid, five days a week. That adds up to 40 hours, which most employers treat as full-time. The US Department of Labor notes that the FLSA does not define full-time or part-time employment, so the employer's policy decides what counts as full-time.

1st, 2nd and 3rd shift side by side

Together the three cover 24 hours, which is why factories and distribution centres that never stop usually run three. The first shift opens the day and the third shift carries the operation through the night. Businesses that only need extra hands across lunch and the early evening add a mid shift, for example 11am to 7pm, which overlaps the first two.

Second shift pay and the shift differential

No federal law makes second shift pay more. The US Department of Labor says the FLSA does not require extra pay for night work and leaves it to agreement between employer and employee. Many employers still add a shift differential to fill the evening, as a flat amount per hour or a percentage of the base rate, written into their pay policy or a union contract.

Federal blue-collar employees are the one group where a rule ties a rate to second-shift hours. Under the Federal Wage System, OPM pays a 7.5% night shift differential when the majority of a shift's hours fall between 3pm and midnight, and 10% when they fall between 11pm and 8am, for the entire shift (5 CFR 532.505). That majority test is a clear way to define second shift in your own policy: a 2pm to 10pm shift has 7 of its 8 hours after 3pm and counts, while an 11am to 7pm mid shift, with exactly half its hours after 3pm, does not.

A second shift differential in an overtime week

Once a differential is paid to a non-exempt employee, it is part of the regular rate, because 29 CFR 778.207(b) includes nightshift differentials in it. Take a warehouse picker on $18.00 an hour with a $1.50 second shift differential who works six 8-hour second shifts in one week, 48 hours in total.

Straight time is 48 hours at $19.50, which comes to $936.00. The regular rate is $19.50, so each of the 8 overtime hours earns a half-time premium of $9.75, $78.00 in total, and the week pays $1,014.00. Payroll that multiplies only the base rate by 1.5 and adds the differential afterwards pays $28.50 for each overtime hour instead of $29.25, which leaves the picker $6.00 short that week and repeats every week with overtime.

Planning the second shift

The 3pm hand-off is where second shifts lose time. Orders the first shift didn't finish, a machine that played up after lunch, or a resident whose condition changed need to reach the people who just walked in. Many operations plan a short paid overlap for this. In a distribution centre with nine pickers on second shift, a 15-minute overlap five days a week is 11.25 paid hours a week, so it belongs in the shift times you publish and pay.

Evening hours also decide who takes the shift. Parents of school-age children and people with a day job are often unavailable after 3pm, while students with morning classes and people who prefer a late start ask for it. A fixed second shift crew learns the evening routine and keeps it. A rotating shift spreads the evenings across the whole team but asks people to change their sleep every few weeks.

Check the next morning before you publish. An employee who closes at 11pm and is scheduled on first shift at 7am has 8 hours between shifts, commute included. That pattern is a clopening, and some US cities and states limit it in their predictive scheduling laws. Oregon is one: retail, hospitality and food service employers with 500 or more employees may not schedule anyone in the 10 hours after the previous day's work unless the employee asks or agrees, and hours inside that window are paid at 1.5 times the regular rate.

Second shift in the UK

In the UK the afternoon-to-evening shift is usually called the late shift, and it rarely makes anyone a night worker. Under regulation 2 of the Working Time Regulations 1998, night time is 11pm to 6am unless an agreement sets another period of at least seven hours that includes midnight to 5am, and a night worker normally works at least three hours of their daily working time in it. A 3pm to 11pm late shift has no hours in that window and a 4pm to midnight shift has one. A 5pm to 2am shift has three, which brings the night work limits of the Working Time Regulations into play.

Second shift in Shiftbase

Employee scheduling in Shiftbase starts from shift templates. You save the second shift once with its start and end time, set how many second shifts each department needs per day, and the schedule shows which of them are still open. A rate card adds a differential as a percentage for the evening window on each weekday, and when an overtime surcharge covers the same hours, the higher of the two counts. Employees see their shifts in the app and clock in there, so planned and worked second shift hours sit side by side when you approve them for payroll.