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3 on 3 off schedule
Three twelve-hour shifts, three days off, repeating — the simplest 12-hour pattern after 4 on 4 off, and a favourite of smaller departments.
- Shift length
- 12 hours
- Cycle
- 6 or 12 days
- Average week
- 42 hours
- Squads
- 4
What the 3 on 3 off schedule is
Three twelve-hour shifts, then three days off, over and over. Six days from start to repeat if your tour never changes, twelve if you flip between days and nights halfway through.
It is popular with smaller agencies because officers can hold it in their head. Three on, three off. Nobody needs a chart to know whether they are working tomorrow — though they do need one to know which Saturday they lose.
Departments often wrap it in a longer six-week rotation so squads move through day and night tours and the weekends land differently each block.
How the cycle runs
The twelve-day version, three days then three nights:
Set a start day, set the length to 12 days, and paint each one. This pattern walks, so each time round it lands on different weekdays — which the app works out for you.
Start day: 1 September 2026Days: 12
Day shiftNight shift24-hour tourDay off
Set the template once. Your days show up on every month after it.
September 2026
Print this rotation (PDF) One page — the cycle above, and a blank grid for your own dates.
Weekends off on this rotation
This cycle is 12 days, which does not divide by seven — so it drifts through the week and every squad gets much the same share. Around 16 to 18 full weekends a year, wherever you sit in it.
A year on this rotation: 18 full weekends off, spread through the calendar. A weekend counts only when both the Saturday and the Sunday are free. All 21 rotations compared →
The three-day break
Three consecutive days off after every three shifts is the strongest thing about this pattern. It is enough time to sleep off a run of nights, take a trip, or work a block of paid duty jobs without cutting into recovery.
The cost is that six does not divide into seven. Your days off walk through the week, so a standing Tuesday commitment will be worked about half the time.
Hours and overtime
Three twelve-hour shifts every six days averages forty-two hours a week — the same as Panama, Pitman and 4 on 4 off.
That two hours over forty is where the overtime argument lives, and how your agency handles it depends on your work period and your contract.
Who works it
The pattern shows up wherever a post needs continuous cover and the roster is not huge:
- Municipal police services
- RCMP detachments
- Dispatch centres
- Corrections
- Hospital security
- Industrial and site security
BlueShifts. Plan Your Year. Own Your Time.
The shift calendar built for your rotation, off-duty work, and life on and off the clock.
Save this pattern once and the year fills itself in — forward as far as you want, and back over the months you have already worked.
The trade-off
What works
- Three days off after every three shifts
- Easy to remember and easy to plan around
- Fewer consecutive shifts than 4 on 4 off
- Long enough breaks to recover from nights
What hurts
- Days off drift through the week
- Weekends are worked about half the time
- Twelve-hour shifts are long when calls stack up
- Forty-two hour average weeks
Put it on your calendar
Three on, three off runs on a six-day cycle, so your days off move by one every week and never settle.
Save it once and the moving pattern is drawn out for you, months ahead and months back.
What Canadian law does to this rotation
The cycle is the same shape in both countries. What sits underneath it is not, and in Canada it is provincial rather than federal — so the same rotation can be worked and paid differently depending on where you are.
The daily ceiling follows your shift, not the statute. Ontario's Employment Standards Act caps the working day at eight hours or the number of hours in an established regular workday, if it is longer than eight. On a 12-hour rotation that established day is 12-hour, so the ceiling is 12-hour — the rotation itself sets it. Going past that needs a written agreement, and no agreement lets anyone be required past 60 hours in a week.
Eleven consecutive hours off between shifts is the ESA minimum and it applies whatever the pattern. A 12-hour shift leaves 12 hours before the next one is due, so this cycle clears it — but a held-over shift or a court appearance on the turnaround eats straight into that margin.
The weekly rest rule is the one long runs meet. The ESA requires at least 24 consecutive hours off in each work week, or 48 consecutive hours off in every period of two consecutive work weeks. This cycle runs 3 shifts back to back, so it is the two-week version that has to carry it.
Overtime is triggered differently by province, and this rotation averages 42 hours. The weekly threshold runs from 40 hours in Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, the territories and federally, through 44 in Ontario and New Brunswick, to 48 in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Ontario and Quebec have no daily trigger at all; British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the territories have both, so exceeding 8 hours in a day counts even if the week does not. BC adds double time past 12 hours in a day. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador calculate overtime at 1.5 times the minimum wage rather than your own rate. Same roster, a different answer in almost every jurisdiction.
And one Quebec rule that catches shift workers out: premiums added to the hourly rate, such as night or evening shift premiums, are not taken into account when calculating overtime. Your overtime is worked out on the base rate, so a night premium does not carry into it.
Averaging is what makes a cycle like this work on paper. Where the pattern does not fit a calendar week, hours can be averaged over two to four weeks for the purpose of overtime, by written agreement. If you are in a union, your union can make that agreement with your employer — and in a policing or fire service it usually has, which is why your collective agreement rather than the statute is the document that decides your pay.
Two employers sit outside all of that. The RCMP works under one national agreement with the Treasury Board rather than provincial standards — its default workweek is forty hours from Monday to Friday with a workday of a minimum of eight consecutive hours, and separate articles for variable and shift work that take a detachment off that default. Federal enforcement uses a Variable Shift Schedule Arrangement, negotiated branch by branch, so two workplaces under one contract can run different rosters. In both cases the agreement is the whole answer and the province you live in does not enter into it.
Checked 7 August 2026. Provincial rules are quoted from the Employment Standards Act of the province named and, for Quebec, from the CNESST; federal provisions from the Treasury Board agreements. Employment standards are amended and collective agreements are renegotiated — check the current text before relying on a threshold or a figure.
Common questions
How many hours a week is a 3 on 3 off schedule?
About forty-two on average — three twelve-hour shifts every six days.
Is 3 on 3 off better than 4 on 4 off?
It trades longer breaks for shorter ones. Four on four off gives you four days off at a time but asks for four shifts in a row; three on three off keeps the runs shorter in both directions.
Do you get every other weekend off?
No. A six-day cycle does not line up with a seven-day week, so weekends move through the pattern rather than alternating.
Put the 3 on 3 off schedule on your calendar
Save the 3 on 3 off schedule once, tell BlueShifts the day your cycle starts, and the rest of the year draws itself. Leave, court and the work you take on your own time go in around it.
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