The Overloaded Night Shift
You supervise a 14-person cleaning crew at a distribution centre. Night shift runs 22:00–06:00 and must cover 9 zones before the 06:30 dispatch. Two crew members called in sick, leaving 12 staff for tonight. One of the remaining staff, Priya, is a new hire in her third week and has only been signed off on zones 1–4. Marcus, a senior cleaner, tells you privately that he will not work alongside Priya because 'she slows everyone down'. Your operations manager has already warned that any missed zone will trigger a contract penalty of £400 per zone. You have four hours of shift remaining.
1. How should you allocate staff and address Marcus's refusal, and what is your reasoning?
Read the worked answer
First, separate the two problems: coverage and conduct.
Coverage: with 12 staff and 9 zones, you cannot simply assign one person per zone and absorb the two missing people. Map Priya to zones 1–4, where she is signed off, and pair her with a competent buddy rather than isolating her. Redistribute the remaining zones so no one is working alone in a high-risk area, and check whether any zone can be done in a shorter cycle tonight (for example, spot-clean rather than full deep-clean) without breaching the contract specification. The £400-per-zone penalty is a guide to priority, not a licence to cut mandatory safety tasks.
Conduct: Marcus's refusal is a performance and conduct issue, not a scheduling preference. You should not reward the refusal by removing Priya from his area, because that teaches the team that refusing work succeeds. Instead, state the expectation clearly: he is assigned to the buddy pair, the work is within his competence, and refusing a lawful instruction is a disciplinary matter. Offer him a chance to raise any genuine concern about Priya's pace privately, and commit to following up after the shift. If he continues to refuse, document it and escalate.
Reasoning: the supervisor's job is to protect the contract and the safety of the team while dealing with behaviour through the proper channel, not by quietly rearranging the rota to avoid conflict. Splitting the two issues keeps the operational decision defensible and the conduct decision fair.
2. The shift ends with zone 7 only 70% complete. What do you do in the final 30 minutes, and what do you report?
Read the worked answer
In the final 30 minutes, triage zone 7 rather than trying to finish everything. Identify the tasks within zone 7 that are contract-critical or safety-critical (for example, fire exits, walkways, spill hazards) and complete those first. Defer non-critical tasks and record them explicitly.
Before 06:00, brief the incoming day supervisor verbally so they know zone 7 is short, and leave a written note in the handover log stating exactly what was and was not done, by whom, and when. Do not mark zone 7 as complete. Falsifying completion to avoid the penalty is a disciplinary and potentially contractual offence.
Report to the operations manager the same morning: the two absences, the 12-person coverage, the triage decision, the specific shortfall in zone 7, and any contributing factors (for example, equipment failure or an unusually heavy zone). Include a recommendation for next shift, such as a two-person catch-up on zone 7 or a review of the rota's resilience to two absences. The report should be factual and take responsibility for the decision rather than blaming the absent staff.