Rosters provide a schedule of your employees’ working hours - generally for a week, fortnight or month ahead. When you are preparing rosters for your employees, remember to keep in mind their ordinary hours of work, break entitlements and the minimum hours of work for part-time and casual employees.
What does a roster need to include and where do you need to display it?
You must display your roster somewhere where your employees can easily access it - such as a notice board at your business. The roster should show:
- the name of each employee
- the starting and finishing times of work
- the days of the week on which work is to be performed.
Changing rosters
You can change a roster by giving your employees 7 days’ notice. You can change the roster with less notice in the case of emergency or by agreement with your employee. This agreement needs to be recorded in your time and wages records.
Best Practice Tip
Be prepared to be flexible! Your employees will be more flexible with requests from you if they have a say in when they work and if their needs are taken into consideration.
What do you do when someone can’t come into work?
If there is an unexpected staff absence, such as someone calling in sick, an employee’s roster can be changed by mutual agreement, as long as you contact them before they get to work. For example, you may wish to call in a casual employee to cover a shift.
Remember that your full-time and part-time employees must be paid overtime rates if they work more than 38 hours or more than 5 day in a week - find out more in the overtime section.
If an employee is called back to work after finishing work for the day, overtime rates must be paid for a minimum of 2 hours.