FIFO rosters explained: 2/1, 4/1, 8/6 and what each one really does to your life

Between my husband and me there is a FIFO household of my own: two-and-one, four-and-one, six-and-one, eight-and-six drum rosters, offshore, all of it. I have also spent twenty years in HR on the hiring side watching families make roster decisions on the pay rate alone. Here is what each one actually does to your life, because the roster you can live with matters more than the number on the offer.

First, how to read a roster

Rosters are written as time on, then time off. Two-and-one is two weeks on site, one week home. Eight-and-six is eight days on, six off. The catch nobody explains is travel: "two weeks on" is closer to thirteen days plus two travel days, and "one week off" is closer to six days by the time you are home and awake. Every roster is worse than it reads by about a day at each end.

Two-and-one

The most common mining roster. Manageable, in our experience, if the person at home has their own life, their own work or study, and their own people. If the person at home is waiting for you to come back, it grinds. The mid-swing slump hits around day seven, the sleep crash on the first day home is real, and the "who are you and why are you in my kitchen" adjustment on day two home is a running joke in FIFO families because it is true.

Four-and-one and six-and-one

These are project rosters. They exist on construction jobs and remote work, and they are money rosters, not family rosters. You do a four-and-one for a defined goal with a defined end date: the deposit, the debt, the business. You do a six-and-one for a project, and then you stop. We have done both. Neither is sustainable as a lifestyle, and anyone who tells you otherwise is not the one at home. The people who do these well treat them as a sprint with a finish line written on the fridge.

Eight-and-six

The drum roster: eight days on, six off, rolling. It is now common on the big iron ore sites and it is the one we found most liveable over the long run. You are never away long enough for the household to fully re-form without you, and you are home often enough to be part of the week, not a visitor to it. The trade-off is that the roster drifts through the calendar, so you will miss some weekends and some birthdays, and the person at home needs a shared calendar and a sense of humour.

Offshore

Offshore is its own world. Longer swings, a platform or a vessel you cannot leave, helicopter transfers, its own safety training and its own card (the Maritime Security Identification Card, which involves a background check that takes weeks). The money is at the top of the industry. The isolation is at the top too. It suits people who can be in a small space with the same faces for weeks and not let it wear on them.

The question to actually ask

Not "what does it pay" but "what does it do to the person at home". Have that conversation before you accept anything, with the roster written down and a date for when you will review it. The families who last in FIFO are the ones where both people chose the roster, not one. If that conversation is hard, that is information, and it is far cheaper to have it now than eighteen months in.

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