Whether it’s the world rotating around the Sun or shift workers who switch between days and nights, our time is shaped by many spinning events. Some of these happen every day and some are more irregular and unpredictable.

Most people are aware that the Earth revolves every 24 hours around the Sun. It is not widely known that the speed of rotation can fluctuate and make the day appear shorter or longer than it actually is. This is the reason that atomic clocks that keep a standard time have to be periodically adjusted by adding or subtracting seconds. This change is called leap seconds.

Precession is a normal rotational event. It is a oscillation of the Earth’s axis. It’s like the spinning top of a toy that is a little web link off-center. This axial shift with respect to fixed stars (inertial space) is a time period of 25,771.5 years, and is responsible for various weather patterns, including the changing direction of cyclones in the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

Scientists have also noticed that the speed of Earth rotation slows down over time, leading solar day to become longer. On June 29, the world added a leap second to the atomic clocks in order to better align them with the rotation of the Earth. While one second may seem minor, it has significant implications for businesses that depend on changing schedules. For instance multinational companies that depend on a global workforce, fumbling through static wiki pages and spreadsheets to keep track of changing call schedules could be costly in terms of revenue and company reputation. On-call rotation software is becoming more popular as it reduces interruptions to service and manages the coverage of transfers and provides transparency for employees.