How to give staff predictable hours without losing flexibility

Written by Roster Flow. Published 9 September 2026.

Hours that jump around from week to week cost a small business more than it looks. People who cannot plan childcare, study or a second job around the roster ask for swaps, turn down shifts or look for work elsewhere. But a roster frozen in place is no answer either, because trade is never the same two weeks running.

The way through is to decide which hours are certain and which are not, and to treat them differently. This article shows how to find the certain hours in your rosters, who should work them, how the part-time rules in four awards support the arrangement, and how to keep the flexible part fair.

Split the week into core hours and flex hours

Look at any small business roster over a few months and two layers show up. Some hours are needed every week whatever the trade: someone to open, someone to close, the smallest team that can run the quietest weekday. Other hours come and go with bookings, weather, school holidays and events. Rostering both layers the same way is what makes hours feel random.

Find your core hours in past rosters

Your core is the least cover you have needed, not the average. Work it out from what actually happened rather than from memory.

1. Gather 8 to 12 weeks of rosters and timesheetsInclude a quiet stretch. Timesheets show who was sent home early and who stayed back.
2. Split each day into blocksSuch as opening, morning, lunch, afternoon and close.
3. Find the lowest head count for each blockThe fewest people who worked the block across those weeks without service suffering is the core for that block.
4. Join the blocks into shiftsSuch as 6:30 to 15:00 for an opener, checked against the daily minimum and maximum hours in your award.
5. Call everything above the core flexNote when it tends to appear: Saturdays, school holidays, the week of a local event.

The roster vs actual hours calculator helps with the comparison, reviewing last month’s rosters makes it a monthly routine, and forecasting staffing from weekly sales shows the flex layer coming.

Put the core on a fixed pattern

Give the core shifts to named people on a pattern that repeats: the same days and times every week, or a two or four week cycle if weekends rotate. A fixed roster is the simplest version, fair weekend and closing rotations covers the cycle, and recurring shifts and roster patterns shows how to roll a pattern forward each week.

• Set the core for the quiet season. A core that only holds up in December gets cut in February, and then it is not predictable.
• Leave room for leave. Keep at least one person who can step into a core shift when someone is away.
• Put the pattern in writing. For part-time employees, the awards below require it.

What the awards say about part-time hours

Part-time employment is built for predictable hours. The Restaurant and Hospitality awards define a part-time employee as one engaged to work at least 8 and fewer than 38 ordinary hours per week who has reasonably predictable hours of work (clause 10.2 of each), and the General Retail and Fast Food awards also describe reasonably predictable hours (clause 10.1 of each). How each award fixes those hours decides where your flexibility sits. Other awards and enterprise agreements set their own rules, so check yours with the Fair Work Ombudsman’s Find my award tool.

Under the Restaurant and Hospitality awards, the guaranteed hours are the predictable part. The employer may roster a part-time employee for their guaranteed hours and any additional hours (clause 10.6), inside their availability (clause 10.7(a)), so someone with 20 guaranteed hours and five days of availability has room for more in a busy week. The roster can be changed by mutual agreement or with 7 days’ notice (clause 15.3(d) of the Restaurant award, 15.5(d) of the Hospitality award), and time worked beyond the employee’s rostered hours is paid at the overtime rate (clause 10.13(b)).

Under the General Retail and Fast Food awards, the agreed pattern is the predictable part, and extra hours need a variation agreed and recorded in writing or they are paid as overtime (clauses 10.6 and 10.8 of the Retail award, and 10.5 to 10.9 of the Fast Food award).

Flex hours can also turn into core hours. Under the Restaurant and Hospitality awards, a part-time employee who has regularly worked more ordinary hours than their guaranteed hours for at least 12 months may request in writing an increase, and the employer may refuse only on reasonable business grounds, notified in writing (clauses 10.8 to 10.10). The General Retail award has its own review, with a written response due within 21 days (clause 10.11). The Restaurant Industry Award pay rates page shows what ordinary and overtime hours cost under that award.

Keep the flex layer for casuals, and keep it fair

Casual employment suits the flex layer. The Fair Work Ombudsman’s casual employees page explains that a casual employee has no firm advance commitment to ongoing work and is entitled to a casual loading or a specific casual pay rate, and that having a regular pattern of work doesn’t mean an employee is permanent.

That cuts both ways. A casual who works the same three shifts every week for a year is part of your core in practice, and under the National Employment Standards casual employees have the right to access a pathway to permanent employment in some circumstances, as the Fair Work Ombudsman’s becoming a permanent employee page sets out. If someone’s casual hours have settled into a pattern you rely on, talk about part-time work on that pattern.

For the casuals who genuinely fill the flex layer, predictability comes from a steady process:

• Publish flex shifts by the same day each week. How far in advance to publish the roster covers the timing
• Ask for availability before you build the flex layer, not after
• Share flex hours on a rule people can see, such as rotating first offer. A fair roster for casuals sets out a few
• Check the minimum engagement before offering a short peak shift: under the Restaurant Industry Award, a casual must be engaged and paid for at least 2 consecutive hours each time (clause 11.3)

A worked example: a cafe’s core and flex

This example is for illustration only. A cafe covered by the Restaurant Industry Award trades from 7:00 to 15:00 every day, and its past rosters show it needs a barista and a cook from 6:30 to 15:00 every day, even in the quietest weeks: 14 core shifts a week. Each has a 30 minute unpaid meal break at 10:00, after the first hour, within the first 6 hours and not later than 5 hours after starting, so no additional paid meal break applies (clause 16.2). Each shift is 8 paid hours, and the core is 14 × 8 = 112 hours.

Every day has one barista and one cook. Each guaranteed figure is the days worked × 8 hours, every rostered day sits inside the 3 to 11.5 hours in clause 10.7(b), and everyone has at least 2 days off each week (clause 10.7(c)). On top of the core, the cafe adds casuals when trade calls for it: from 8:00 to 12:30 on weekends, and from 11:30 to 14:30 on a busy weekday.

The week moves by 18 hours between busy and quiet without touching the four guaranteed patterns, and because the core was set from the quiet weeks, nobody is asked to give hours back. If the part-time cook who works Tuesday to Thursday wants more hours in a busy week and has Saturday morning in their availability, the cafe can agree with them to add a Saturday flex shift instead of calling a casual: 24 + 4.5 = 28.5 hours over 4 days.

Change the core carefully

Sooner or later the core has to change: new trading hours, a lost lunch trade, a second venue. Because it is the part people plan their lives around, change it on the award’s terms.

• Consult first. For a proposed change to an employee’s regular roster or ordinary hours of work, provide information about the change, invite their views about its impact, including on family or caring responsibilities, and consider those views. This is clause 33 of the Restaurant award, 39 of the Hospitality award, 35 of the Retail award and 29 of the Fast Food award, and it does not apply to employees whose working hours are irregular, sporadic or unpredictable. The Fair Work Ombudsman’s rosters page explains the same steps.
• Give the notice the award requires. Under the Restaurant and Hospitality awards, a full-time or part-time employee’s roster can be changed by mutual agreement or with 7 days’ notice (clauses 15.3(d) and 15.5(d)). Under the Retail award, a permanent roster change for employees other than part-time employees needs at least 7 days’ written notice, extended to at least 14 days in total if the employee disagrees (clause 15.9(e)).
• Get written consent for guaranteed hours. Under the Restaurant and Hospitality awards, any change to a part-time employee’s guaranteed hours may only be made with their written consent (clause 10.5).

Once the decision is made, communicating roster changes covers telling each person affected so nobody misses it.

Roster Flow covers the weekly side of this: 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 predictable hours

• Core hours are set from the quietest weeks, block by block
• Core shifts belong to named people on a repeating pattern
• Part-time agreements record what the award requires: guaranteed hours and availability, or a regular pattern of work
• Extra part-time hours stay inside availability, or are agreed and recorded in writing where the award requires it
• Flex shifts are published by the same day each week and shared on a rule people can see
• Casuals whose hours have settled into a pattern get a conversation about permanent work
• Changes to the core come with consultation and the notice the award requires

Sources

• Fair Work Commission: Restaurant Industry Award 2020 [MA000119]
• Fair Work Commission: Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020 [MA000009]
• Fair Work Commission: General Retail Industry Award 2020 [MA000004]
• Fair Work Commission: Fast Food Industry Award 2020 [MA000003]
• Fair Work Ombudsman: casual employees
• Fair Work Ombudsman: becoming a permanent employee
• Fair Work Ombudsman: rosters
• Fair Work Ombudsman: find my award

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