Alert when a shift ends without a handover note being posted, checked at a fixed time rather than on an event. Missing handovers are structurally hard to notice: nothing arrives, nobody is blocked, and the cost shows up the next day as a question nobody can answer.
Why this one is worth an interruption
Every other alert in this cluster is triggered by something happening. This one has to be triggered by a clock, because the thing you care about is an absence.
The cost is deferred and hard to attribute. Tomorrow somebody spends twenty minutes reconstructing what happened yesterday evening, and nobody connects that to the note that was not written.
The threshold
A time-based check rather than an event trigger.
| Condition | Set it to | Why that number |
|---|---|---|
| Check at | 30 minutes after shift end | Late enough to be real, early enough to fix |
| Scope | shifts where a handover is expected | Not every shift hands over to another |
| Escalate | same person twice in a week | A pattern is a conversation, not a reminder |
| Weekend | adjust or disable | Cover patterns differ and the check will misfire |
Who should receive it
To the person whose shift ended, then to whoever is picking up.
- The person who just finished, while they are still reachable and can remember.
- Whoever is taking over, so they know to ask rather than assume nothing happened.
- A manager only on a repeat pattern, not on a single miss.
What to do when it fires
- Ask for the note rather than the reason. The note is what is missing.
- If it happens repeatedly with one person, the problem is usually that the format is too long, not that they are careless.
- If it happens across the team, shorten the template until it takes two minutes.
- Check whether the incoming shift actually reads them. A note nobody reads is a ritual, and people stop performing rituals.
When not to set this alert
Do not set this if your handover template takes more than a few minutes to complete. You will be alerting people about a task that is genuinely too long, and the fix is the template rather than the reminder.
Do not set it if shifts do not actually hand over to each other. A single-shift store has nothing to hand to anyone.
Common questions
How do you alert on something that did not happen?
With a time-based check rather than an event trigger. Look a fixed period after shift end and fire if no note exists. Absences never announce themselves.
What if the same person keeps missing it?
Usually the template is too long rather than the person being careless. Shorten it until it takes two minutes, then see whether the pattern persists.
What should a handover note contain?
What happened that the next shift needs to know, what is still open with an owner, and anything a customer is waiting on. Short enough to write in two minutes and be read in one.