Blog · · 3 minute read
The five minutes at shift change
Shift change is the most frequent meeting in a group home, and nobody calls it a meeting. It happens two or three times a day, it lasts about as long as it takes someone to find their keys, and the next eight hours run on it.
The doorway version
You know the one. Somebody already has a coat on and a hand on the door.
“How was it?” “Good. Quiet.” “Okay. See you Thursday.”
Most days that's plenty, because most days really were quiet. It's the other day you plan for — the one where “good, quiet” was true of seven hours and not the eighth.
Four questions, in that order
A handoff that fits in five minutes and still covers the day is about four questions. The order is what keeps it short.
What changed today? An appointment moved. There's a new name on Saturday. The washer is making the noise again.
What didn't get done? Nobody's confessing here. The next person is the one who'll be standing in front of it, so they should hear it from you and not find it.
What starts before I'm back? The six o'clock ride. The bag that gets packed tonight. The call someone is expecting in the morning.
What would I want to know if I were you? This one sweeps up whatever the first three missed, and it's the only question on the list that gets answered with something you weren't expecting.
Walk it instead of reciting it
Say it standing next to the thing. Stop at the counter, stop at the board, stop at the log. It's harder for two people to picture different versions of something they're both looking at.
Walking it also surfaces the stuff nobody thinks to say out loud. The note taped to the microwave. The laundry still in the machine. The sticky drawer that's been sticky since June and that the new hire will absolutely wrestle with at seven tomorrow morning.
It takes about ninety seconds if the house is small and it doubles as the walkthrough someone was going to do anyway.
Write the one thing down
The people who most need the handoff usually aren't in the room for it. They're off until Thursday. They're the float who has never worked this house. They're the nurse who'll ask on Monday what happened Friday.
So whatever the one thing was, write it in whatever the house actually uses — the book, the log, the clipboard by the phone. One line, dated, initialed. Nobody needs three paragraphs at the end of a double.
Here's the test for whether the written version is any good: someone who wasn't there reads it and knows what to do next. If they'd have to call you to find out, give it another eight words.
What the five minutes buys
Mostly it buys phone calls that never happen. The nurse who doesn't have to reconstruct Friday from three sources. The morning person who starts the day even instead of behind. The manager who hears about the washer while it's still a work order.
And it's worth taking one thing off the handoff entirely. Where people work next week is a question with an answer, and it doesn't need any of your five minutes. When the schedule is published, staff can pull up their own shifts on their phone — this week, next week, and whatever else has been posted — so “am I on Saturday?” gets asked of the phone and not of someone with their coat on.
Then the last thirty seconds can go where they belong. Anything I can do before I go? Usually the answer is no. Now and then it's the part of the shift you both remember.
Try it on this week See what it costs
Fourteen days, your real schedule, no card. $20 a month plus $1 per staff member.