How to plan labour for a quiet January

Written by Roster Flow. Published 14 October 2026.

For plenty of small businesses, January is the slowest stretch of the year. Offices close, regulars go away and the Christmas trade is over. Other businesses, in holiday towns and on the coast, get busier. Either way, the roster that worked in November will not fit, and the time to plan for that is December, while there is still room to talk about leave, tell casuals what is coming and give notice of any change.

This article is about planning the hours for the whole month. The Christmas close itself is in the Christmas trading roster checklist.

Check whether your January is really quiet

Start from last January rather than a feeling. Pull sales by week and by day for the same weeks last year, then look for these:

• The shape of the month. Whether the quiet is spread evenly or sits in the first week or two and lifts as people go back to work.
• Days that change. A weekday lunch trade that depends on nearby offices can fall away while weekends hold up.
• Public holidays. In 2027, New Year’s Day is Friday 1 January and Australia Day is Tuesday 26 January. Check the 2027 public holidays for your state.
• School going back. Check when schools return in your state, because both trade and staff availability often change that week.
• Last year’s one-offs. A heatwave, a closed road or a local event can make last year a poor guide for a particular week.

If January turns out busier than November, the same method works in the other direction: forecast early and roster up. How to review last month’s rosters sets out how to pull the numbers.

Forecast each week, not the month

A monthly figure hides the weeks that matter. Forecast each week of January on its own: take the same week last year, adjust it by how this year is running against last year, and round it to a figure you can plan with. Then split each week into days, because a quiet week with a busy Saturday needs a different roster from a week that is flat all the way through. How to forecast staffing requirements from weekly sales goes through the method in detail.

Turn the forecast into hours

The simplest link between sales and the roster is sales per labour hour: a week’s sales divided by the hours worked that week. Work it out from a few normal weeks you were happy with. If a normal week took $25,000 with 200 hours worked, that is $125 of sales for every hour.

labour hours = forecast sales ÷ sales per labour hour

Two checks keep the formula honest. The first is a floor: the fewest hours it takes to open each day with the people and skills you need to open, serve and close safely. Never roster a day below it, however quiet the forecast. The second is cost, because hours are not dollars. Under the Restaurant Industry Award, for example, Sunday and public holiday hours are paid at a higher percentage of the minimum rate than weekday hours (Table 8 in clause 24.2). Check each week in the roster cost calculator and against your wage budget, and see how to build a roster around a weekly wage budget for the dollars side.

Use annual leave where it helps

January suits leave. Staff who want a break get one, and a week off in a quiet week needs far less cover than the same week off in a busy month. Ask the team in early December who would like leave in January, and answer every request before the January rosters are built. How to manage annual leave when building a roster covers the request process.

Keep two points in mind. Annual leave is paid leave, so it does not lower that week’s wage bill: it lowers the hours you need to roster, and it saves paying cover for the same person’s time off in a busier month. And the employee asks for it. Under the National Employment Standards an employer can only refuse a request if the refusal is reasonable, and there is no minimum or maximum amount that must be taken at once, so a few days by agreement can be as useful as a fortnight.

When you can direct staff to take leave

A quiet month on its own does not let you make someone take annual leave. The Fair Work Ombudsman says an employer can only direct an employee to take annual leave in some situations, such as a closure over Christmas and New Year or an excess leave balance, and that the rules are set out in awards and registered agreements. For employees with no award or agreement, an employer can require paid annual leave during a temporary shutdown if the requirement is reasonable.

Count the days if you decide in December to close for part of January. Written notice given on Tuesday 8 December is 28 days before Tuesday 5 January, so a shutdown that starts earlier than that needs the majority agreement the clause allows. A direction to take excess leave needs at least 8 weeks, so one given in December cannot start the leave before February.

Other awards differ: the Fast Food Industry Award, for one, has no shutdown clause. Confirm yours with the Fair Work Ombudsman’s Find my award tool, and if an enterprise agreement applies, check its terms instead.

Trim hours without breaking agreements

Once leave is settled, the rest of the reduction comes from the hours on the roster. What you can change depends on the kind of employee.

Two more rules apply whatever the employment type. If you plan to change someone’s regular roster or ordinary hours, you must discuss it with them first: explain the change and when it starts, invite their views about its impact, and consider what they say. The Restaurant and Hospitality awards set this out in clauses 33 and 39. And a quiet month is not grounds for a stand down: the Fair Work Ombudsman says employers cannot stand an employee down just because the business is quiet or there is not enough work.

Give casuals the picture early

Casuals carry most of a quiet month, and the good ones are the people you need back when trade returns. Tell them in early December what January looks like, ask who is going away, and share the shifts you have fairly rather than keeping a few people on full hours. How to build a fair roster for casual employees sets out a way to do it.

• Ask for January availability by a set date, and put time away on the roster before any shift
• Say roughly how many hours a week the casual team will share in each week of January
• Offer extra shifts to everyone at once when trade picks up, not to whoever answers first
• Tell them when you expect hours to come back

Put the quiet weeks to work

Quiet weeks are the cheapest time for work that busy weeks crowd out, as long as the hours are planned and counted rather than added to fill out a shift.

• Training. Pair a new starter with an experienced person on a quiet morning, with the hours in the budget. How to train new starters without blowing the wage budget covers the costs.
• Cross-training. Teach a second person the coffee machine, the opening checks or the ordering, so February’s roster has more options.
• Deep cleaning and maintenance. Roster it as its own shift with a task list, not as something to do if it gets quiet.

A worked example: a cafe plans its January

A cafe open seven days usually takes about $25,000 a week with 200 hours worked, which is $125 of sales per labour hour. Its team has a full-time cook on 38 hours and three part-time employees with guaranteed hours of 30, 24 and 20, so 112 hours a week are fixed. Casuals work the other 88. The least it takes to open each day is two people from 6:30 to 15:00, which is 119 hours across the week.

Last January’s weekly sales were $16,700, $17,900, $19,000 and $21,400. This year is running about 5% ahead, so the owner forecasts each week at 105% of last year, rounded to the nearest $250. The part-time barista on 30 hours has approved leave in the first week, and the cook in the second.

The first week needs 60 fewer hours than normal. The barista’s leave accounts for 30 of them, so casual hours fall by the other 30. In the second week the cook’s 38 hours of leave cover most of a 50 hour drop, and casuals lose only 12, although some of their hours now go to covering the kitchen. The week to warn casuals about is the third: sales are rising, but both people on leave are back, so casual hours fall to 48, 40 below normal. Every week stays above the 119 hour floor.

The hours are the plan, not the cost. In the first week the cafe pays for 140 hours worked plus the barista’s 30 hours of paid leave. The last week includes Australia Day, and hours worked on a public holiday cost more, so that week gets costed on its own before the roster is published.

Watch January week by week

A January plan is a forecast, and forecasts miss. At the end of each week, compare sales with the forecast and actual hours with rostered hours, then adjust the next roster before it goes out. Make the changes through casual shifts first, and give part-time and full-time employees the notice their award requires.

Do not cut so far that service suffers. A short-staffed quiet week can still lose sales and wear out the people on shift, as how overstaffing and understaffing affect profit explains.

Roster Flow keeps a changing month 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. See how leave requests work.

A quiet January checklist

• Last January’s sales pulled by week and by day
• Each week forecast on its own and turned into hours
• A minimum crew set for each day, with no day rostered below it
• January leave asked for and answered in early December
• Any shutdown or excess leave direction checked against the award’s notice periods
• Part-time guaranteed hours left alone unless the employee agrees
• Roster changes discussed first, with the notice the award requires
• Casuals told the plan, with shifts shared fairly
• The public holiday week costed on its own
• Each week compared with the forecast before the next roster goes out

Sources

• Fair Work Ombudsman: annual leave
• Fair Work Ombudsman: taking annual leave
• Fair Work Ombudsman: directing an employee to take annual leave
• Fair Work Ombudsman: direction to take annual leave during a shutdown
• Fair Work Ombudsman: direction to take excess annual leave
• Fair Work Ombudsman: rosters
• Fair Work Ombudsman: stand downs
• Fair Work Ombudsman: casual employees
• Fair Work Ombudsman: find my award
• 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]
• NSW Government: public holidays

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