SiteIt's 3am. The sorter has stopped with a jam on the induct, and the trailers start leaving at five. Your night fitter is on it. They're the only engineer on site. The shift manager is on the radio every five minutes.
Two hours earlier, the same fitter was halfway through a gearbox oil change on the other line. Before that they reset a light curtain, chased a slipping belt and got called to a dock leveller.
Nobody else wants this shift. You've had the night fitter job on the jobs board for weeks. The day fitters will cover the odd one for the premium, but nobody wants it full time.
That's the night shift problem in one picture. The plant runs as hard as it does in the day, and it gets a fraction of the cover.
Why nights are harder to staff
Most engineers who've done years of nights don't want to go back. Ask around your own team. The reasons will sound familiar: sleep, family, health, and the feeling of being on your own when it goes wrong.
The sleep part is real. HSE's guidance on fatigue says night workers are particularly at risk because their day sleep is often "lighter, shorter and more easily disturbed". It also says accidents and injuries have been found to be higher on night shifts (HSE, fatigue).
So the shift that's hardest to fill is also the one where mistakes are most likely. And it's the one where a breakdown takes longest to fix, because there's nobody to ring for a second opinion. We've written about why breakdowns on nights take longer, and most of it comes back to cover.
The night working rules
The Working Time Regulations have extra rules for night workers. A night worker is anyone who regularly works at least 3 hours* during the night period. That's 11pm to 6am* unless you agree a different period in writing (GOV.UK, night working hours). Your night fitter is almost certainly one.
Night workers must not work more than an average of 8 hours in a 24-hour period*. The average is usually worked out over 17 weeks*. Regular overtime counts towards it. Occasional overtime doesn't. And unlike the 48-hour week, workers can't opt out of this limit.
There's a tighter rule too. If the night work involves special hazards, or heavy physical or mental strain, the fitter can't work more than 8 hours* in any 24-hour period in which they do night work (Working Time Regulations, regulation 6). There's no averaging for that one. GOV.UK says a risk assessment must be carried out to identify that kind of work. So check what yours says before you roster 12-hour nights.
Then there's health. You must offer a free health assessment before someone becomes a night worker, and offer them again at regular intervals (GOV.UK, health assessments). The worker doesn't have to accept. If a health professional says nights have affected someone's health, you must find them other suitable work where possible.
Most sites miss that last part. A day fitter who covers nights for a month becomes a night worker too, and needs the same offer.
One fitter, alone, on a big site
The biggest risk on nights is often isolation, in the human sense.
HSE's guide on lone working names maintenance and repair staff among the people who work outside normal hours. It says some high-risk work may need at least one other person present, and gives work "near exposed live electricity conductors" as an example (HSE, INDG73). It also asks you to have systems in place to keep in touch with lone workers and respond to any incident.
Think about your own nights. Who knows the fitter has gone into the palletiser? Who checks on them if they don't come back on the radio? If the answer is "the shift manager, if they remember", you need a better system. Our post on lone working on nights sets out what a good one looks like.
Ways to cover nights that hold up
There's no perfect pattern, but some work better than others.
The best fix is a proper night team. Two engineers on nights, ideally one mechanical and one electrical. It costs more, but it fixes the lone working problem, and two heads on a breakdown usually find the fault faster.
Next best is a rotating pattern, where everyone takes a share of nights on a fixed rota. That's fairer than leaving one person on permanent nights, as long as the rota gives enough recovery days after the switch. Our guide to shift patterns for maintenance teams compares the common ones.
On-call from home is fine for a site that rarely breaks down at night. Weak for a site that runs flat out, because the drive in eats the first hour. It also eats the fitter's rest. On-call rotas that people will actually do covers how to keep them fair.
Then there's outside cover for the gaps: a cover engineer who knows your site, booked for the nights you can't fill. It suits holiday weeks, sickness and peak.
What doesn't work is the pattern most sites drift into. One fitter on permanent nights, covering everything, with day fitters doing extra nights when it all goes wrong. That burns out your best people, and it leaves you exposed every time the night fitter is off.
What we'd do
Here's our view. Pay the night premium properly, and never leave nights resting on one name.
If you can't recruit a second night engineer, book cover for the nights that matter most: peak weeks, big production runs, and any night the regular fitter is off. Make sure the cover engineer has had a site induction on a day shift first, so they aren't finding the isolators by torchlight at 3am.
And treat the fatigue risk on long shifts as a safety issue first. The rules give you limits. Your risk assessment should tell you where to set them on your site.
What to do on Monday
- List everyone who has worked nights in the last 17 weeks, including day fitters doing cover. Check each was offered a health assessment.
- Work out the average night hours for each of them, including regular overtime.
- Check your risk assessment for night work. Does it say whether any tasks involve special hazards or heavy strain?
- Write down who checks on the night fitter, how, and how often.
* Night period, night worker definition, the 8-hour limits and the 17-week reference period correct as of 2 September 2026. Check GOV.UK on night working hours and the Working Time Regulations for the latest.