How to build a fair roster for casual employees

Written by Roster Flow. Published 5 July 2026.

Most complaints about casual rosters are not about the total hours. They are about who got them. When the Saturday shifts keep going to the same two people, or a casual finds out from a group chat that their Thursday has gone to someone newer, the roster starts to look like a matter of favour. Casuals who feel that way stop offering availability, start looking for other work and leave you short in the weeks you need them most.

Fairness does not mean everyone gets the same hours. It means the hours are shared by rules the team can see, and the rules are applied the same way every week. The general steps for building any roster are in the complete guide to staff rostering. This article covers what is particular to casuals.

What a fair casual roster looks like

Ask casual staff what makes a roster unfair and the answers tend to fall into four groups. A fair roster deals with each of them on purpose rather than by accident.

• It is open. Everybody knows how shifts are offered and in what order, and could check that the order was followed.
• It is shared. Busy shifts, quiet shifts, weekends and closes move around, rather than settling on the same people.
• It respects what people told you. Shifts go inside the availability each casual gave, and nobody is pushed into hours they said they did not want.
• It is predictable enough to plan around. The roster comes out on the same day each week, and changes are explained rather than discovered.

The rules that apply to casual rosters

Under the Fair Work Act, a person is a casual employee if, when they start, there is no firm advance commitment to ongoing work and they are entitled to a casual loading or a specific casual pay rate. Among the factors the Fair Work Ombudsman lists for deciding this are whether the employer can offer or not offer work, and whether the employee can accept or reject it. A regular pattern of work does not, on its own, make someone permanent.

The award sets much of the rest, and the rules differ between awards. Confirm which one covers your staff with the Fair Work Ombudsman’s Find my award tool. The table shows the casual minimum engagement in five awards common in small business, taken from the award text published by the Fair Work Commission.

All five pay casuals a 25% loading: clause 11.1 of the Hospitality, Restaurant and Retail awards and clause 11.2 of the Fast Food award set it out, and the Clubs award builds it into its casual rates under clause 11.1. Current rates are on the Hospitality Award pay rates page and the General Retail Award pay rates page.

Two more rules are easy to miss. In the Hospitality and Restaurant awards, the roster clauses that require a posted roster and 7 days’ notice of a change (clause 15.5 and clause 15.3) apply to full-time and part-time employees, not casuals. The consultation clause is wider. Before changing an employee’s regular roster or ordinary hours, clause 39 of the Hospitality award and clause 35 of the Retail award require you to explain the change and when it starts, invite their views, including about family or caring responsibilities, and consider what they say. It excludes only employees whose hours are irregular, sporadic or unpredictable, so check it before changing the shifts of a casual who works a set pattern.

Start with what each casual wants

You cannot share hours fairly without knowing who wants them. Ask every casual for two things and keep the answers in one place: the days and times they can work, and roughly how many hours a week they would like. The second matters as much as the first. A student who wants 10 hours and a casual supporting a household who wants 30 are both treated unfairly if each gets 20.

• Ask for availability as blocks of time for each day, such as Monday 7:00 to 15:00, rather than a list of days
• Ask for hours wanted as a range, such as 15 to 20 a week, so there is room to round shifts
• Set a weekly cut off for changes, such as Wednesday at 17:00 for the following week
• Ask again at the start of each school term or semester, when timetables change

The staff availability template gives you a form to start from. When availability shifts from week to week, ask for the form again rather than rebuilding the roster from memory.

Write down how shifts are offered

Most unfairness comes from shifts going to whoever is easiest to reach. Decide the order once, write it down and share it with the team. This order works for many small businesses:

1. Regular patterns firstCasuals who have worked the same shifts for a long time keep them, unless the trade has changed. Taking a regular shift away without a reason is the fastest way to lose trust.
2. Then whoever is furthest below their shareKeep a running tally of hours given against hours wanted over the last four weeks, and offer the next shift to the person furthest behind who is available and can do the work.
3. Then skillsIf a shift needs a barista, a supervisor or someone trained on the register, offer it among the people with that skill, in the same order.
4. Then an open offerAnything left goes to everyone at once, with a stated time the offer closes, and goes to whoever accepts first within that window.

Send offers at a regular time and give people a reasonable window to answer. Employees have a right to refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact outside their working hours unless the refusal is unreasonable, and for small business employers it has applied since 26 August 2025, as the Fair Work Ombudsman explains. A shift offered by text at 23:00 and given away at 23:15 to whoever was awake is not a fair offer.

When a casual says no to a shift, record it and move on. A casual who expects one no to cost them next week will stop saying no, and stop being honest about their availability.

Share the shifts nobody wants, and the ones everybody wants

Every business has shifts people compete for and shifts people avoid. Which is which depends on your team: a Saturday that suits a student can be the only day a parent has with their children. Ask, then rotate both kinds rather than letting them settle on the same names.

• Keep a tally. Count each person’s weekend shifts, closes and early opens over four weeks, next to their total hours.
• Rotate by the tally, not by memory. The person with the fewest of a sought after shift is offered the next one, and the person with the fewest of an unpopular one takes their turn.
• Respect a firm no. If a casual is not available on Sundays, the rotation skips them rather than counting it against them.
• Pair the hard with the easy. A casual who closes on Friday night should not be the first choice to open on Saturday morning.

A pattern that repeats makes rotation automatic. The rotating roster template lays out a cycle so weekends and closes come round in turn.

Make every shift worth the trip

A short shift across town can cost a casual a fare and most of an afternoon. Even where the award allows it, very short shifts are one of the quickest ways to make a roster feel unfair, because the cost falls on the person least able to refuse. Keep casual shifts at or above the minimum engagement in your award, and where the trade allows, a little longer.

If the trade only justifies a short peak, see whether one longer shift can cover the peak and the setting up or packing down either side of it. Remember too that the minimum is about pay, not only the roster: under clause 11.3 of the Hospitality award, a casual must be engaged and paid for at least 2 consecutive hours each time they are required to attend, so sending someone home after an hour does not save the second hour. The glossary entry on minimum engagement has more.

Give notice, and change rosters with care

Casuals often juggle study, other jobs and family, and a roster that arrives on Sunday night for a week starting Monday leaves no room to plan. Pick a publishing day and keep to it, ideally a week or more before the roster starts. Where the award’s notice clauses cover only full-time and part-time employees, giving casuals the same notice still removes most of the last minute scramble.

Changes need the same care. If a shift has to come off the roster, tell the casual as early as you can and say why. If a casual’s regular pattern needs to change, follow the consultation clause in your award before deciding. For sick calls and late gaps, managing hospitality roster changes and sick calls sets out an order for filling them.

A worked example: sharing 56 casual hours

A cafe has 56 casual hours to give out each week once its full-time and part-time staff are rostered: 16 shifts of 3.5 hours. Its four casuals have said how many hours a week they would like, 64 in total, so there are not enough hours for everyone to get what they asked for. The owner shares the hours in proportion to what each person wants. The figures are an example of the method, not a recommendation for any business.

Each share is the hours wanted divided by 64, and the hours given are that share of 56. Mia wanted 20 of the 64 hours, which is 31.25%, and 31.25% of 56 is 17.5 hours, or 5 shifts. Everyone receives 87.5% of what they asked for, so nobody carries the shortfall alone. With hours wanted in B2 to B5 of a spreadsheet, this gives the hours for the first casual:

=B2/SUM($B$2:$B$5)*56

Six of the 16 shifts each week fall on a Saturday or Sunday, so four weeks hold 24 weekend shifts. All four casuals are available at weekends and want some, so the owner aims for 6 each. After four weeks the tally shows Mia on 9, Sam on 6, Priya on 5 and Tom on 4. Priya is 1 short and Tom is 2 short, which matches Mia’s 3 extra. Next month those 3 weekend shifts are offered to Priya and Tom first, and Mia gets 3 weekday shifts in their place, so her hours stay the same.

Every shift is 3.5 hours, above the casual minimum engagement in each of the five awards in the table earlier.

Watch for casuals who have become regular

Under the National Employment Standards, a casual who has been employed for at least 6 months, or 12 months with a small business employer, and believes they no longer meet the definition of a casual, can give written notice that they want to change to full-time or part-time employment. The employer must consult them and respond in writing within 21 days, and can refuse only for the reasons the law sets out. The Fair Work Ombudsman’s page on becoming a permanent employee explains the steps.

This matters for rostering because of what the law does not allow. An employer can’t reduce or vary an employee’s hours, change their pattern of work or end their employment to avoid those obligations or the employee’s right to change. Trimming a long serving casual’s shifts because they might ask to go permanent is not a decision the roster can make.

Keep a record of offers and hours

A fair system stays fair only if you can show it. Keep each published roster, the offers you made with who accepted or declined, and the running tally of hours and weekend shifts. If a casual asks why they had fewer hours this month, the answer should take a minute to find. Some awards set their own rules here: under clause 15.9 of the General Retail Industry Award, the roster must be available to all employees and each completed roster kept for at least 12 months.

Roster Flow keeps that work in one place: availability and leave from staff phones, the roster published to everybody at once, clock ins that become timesheets, and approved hours sent to Xero, MYOB or a CSV file.

A checklist for a fair casual roster

• Every casual’s availability and hours wanted are recorded and current
• The order for offering shifts is written down and shared with the team
• Offers go out at a regular time, with a clear window to answer
• Weekends, closes and early opens are tallied and rotated
• Every shift is at or above the minimum engagement in the award
• The roster is published on the same day each week, well before it starts
• Changes to a casual’s regular pattern are discussed with them first
• No casual’s hours are cut to head off a request to become permanent

Sources

• Fair Work Commission: Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020 [MA000009]
• Fair Work Commission: Restaurant Industry Award 2020 [MA000119]
• Fair Work Commission: General Retail Industry Award 2020 [MA000004]
• Fair Work Commission: Fast Food Industry Award 2020 [MA000003]
• Fair Work Commission: Registered and Licensed Clubs Award 2020 [MA000058]
• Fair Work Ombudsman: casual employees
• Fair Work Ombudsman: becoming a permanent employee
• Fair Work Ombudsman: right to disconnect
• Fair Work Ombudsman: find my award

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