Our time is shaped various ways by the spinning of events such as the Earth rotating around the Sun or shift workers shifting between evenings and days. Some of these events happen every day while others are less predictable and more irregular.
For instance, many people are aware that the Earth revolves around the Sun every 24 hours. It is less well-known that the speed at which Earth rotates can change and make a day seem shorter or longer than it should. This is why nuclear clocks which maintain a standard time have to be periodically adjusted by adding or subtracting seconds. This is known as leap seconds.
One of the more regular occurring events in the world of rotation is precession which is the cyclical wobble of Earth’s axis of rotation similar to a spinny slightly off-center spinny toy top. This axial shift with respect to fixed stars (inertial space) has a period of 25,771.5 years, and is the cause of various weather patterns, including the alternating direction of cyclones in the Northern and Southern hemispheres.
Scientists have also observed that the speed of Earth is slowing over time, which causes solar days to become longer. On June 29 the world added an extra leap second to the atomic clocks in order to better align them with the rotation of the Earth. While the addition of one second might seem like a small amount but it has significant implications for businesses that depend on the changing of schedules. For multinational companies with a global workforce managing the changing schedules of calls by fumbling around static wiki pages or spreadsheets can be costly in terms of revenue and reputation. This is the reason why more organizations are turning to on-call rotation software to reduce service interruptions and manage the coverage of transfers and offer transparency to employees.