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What is a shift bid?
A shift bid is how an agency assigns officers to watches and rotations — usually by seniority, and usually once or twice a year. What you bid decides which tour you work and which days you have off until the next bid comes round.
How it usually works
The available slots are posted, officers put in preferences, and the assignments come out in seniority order. In most agencies it is governed by the collective agreement rather than by a supervisor's discretion, which is why the process is so consistent from year to year.
What it decides
Your tour, your rotation and your days off — which between them decide most of your life outside work for the next six or twelve months. It is the single most consequential piece of paperwork most officers fill in.
What it does not decide
The shifts you pick up afterwards, the court dates that land in the middle of the cycle, the training weeks and the off-duty work. The bid gives you the skeleton; the rest of the year gets added on top.
Bidding with the whole year in front of you
The useful thing before a bid is being able to see what a pattern actually does to your calendar — which weekends it gives you, how the days off move, where the long breaks land. That is easier to judge drawn out month by month than described in a paragraph.
Where it turns up
Which schedule is best? · PlanIt, TeleStaff and your own calendar · Every pattern, drawn day by day
Put your own rotation on the calendar
Save the pattern your agency runs once and the year fills itself in — forward as far as you want to look, and back over the months you have already worked.
Scan to install — or hold it up for the officer next to you.
