Seven-day trading rosters without burning out your core team

Written by Roster Flow. Published 25 August 2026.

Trading seven days a week rarely starts as a plan. A cafe adds Sunday trade for one summer and keeps it. A shop opens on Mondays because the centre does. Each step makes sense, but the roster usually grows by asking the people who already know the business to cover the new day, and a few months later the two or three people you rely on most are working six days, closing and then opening, and never getting a weekend.

That is how good staff leave, and how tired people make mistakes. This article is about the structure of a roster for a business that never closes. It sits alongside fair weekend and closing-shift rotations, which covers sharing out the least popular shifts.

Count who is carrying the week

Start with the last four weeks of real rosters and timesheets, not the roster you meant to run. For each person, count:

• Days worked in each week and across the four weeks.
• The longest run of days in a row without a day off.
• Days off together: how many weeks gave them two days off in a row.
• Sundays and public holidays worked.
• Close then open: every time they finished late and started early the next day.

The pattern in the example is common. The full-time staff carry the Sundays and the long runs, while the part-time employee and the casuals are rostered around their availability. The answer is not to work everyone harder, but to change the order in which the roster is built.

Build the roster from days off outward

1. Fix the days off firstGive each core employee their days off for the whole roster cycle before placing a single shift. Two days together do more for recovery than two scattered days.
2. Rotate the weekendsDecide how often each core person has a Saturday and Sunday off, and write it into the cycle rather than granting it on request.
3. Place the core shiftsPut the core team on the shifts that need their skills, such as opening, closing and the busiest trade, on the days they are working.
4. Fill the rest from the wider teamGive the remaining shifts to part-time and casual staff trained to cover the core roles. Filling open shifts covers finding people quickly.
5. Repeat the cycleA fixed four-week cycle lets everyone plan their lives. The rotating roster template is a starting point.

The award rules on days off

Awards set their own rules on days off and consecutive days, and they differ in ways that matter for a seven-day roster. These are from three common awards, as consolidated to 1 July 2026. Confirm which award covers you with the Fair Work Ombudsman’s Find my award tool.

Under the Retail award, the consecutive days off rule and the Sunday rule can be varied only by an agreement made at the employee’s written request and recorded in the time and wages records, and nobody can be required to agree as a condition of employment (clauses 15.7(d) and 15.8). The awards also set a break between one day’s work and the next. Under the Retail award it is at least 12 hours, or 10 hours if the employer and employee agree, and an employee who starts again without the break is paid 200% of their minimum hourly rate until they have had it (clause 16.6). Under the Restaurant and Hospitality awards it is 10 hours for full-time and part-time employees, or 8 hours at a changeover of rosters (clauses 15.1(e) and 15.5(e)).

Sundays and public holidays cost more

Trading seven days means paying for the most expensive days of the week every week. Under all three awards, weekend and public holiday hours attract penalty rates, and the rates differ between full-time and part-time employees and casuals. For ordinary hours:

The percentages are of the employee’s minimum hourly rate under the Retail and Restaurant awards and of the ordinary hourly rate under the Hospitality award, and the casual rates include the casual loading. Two things follow for the roster. A Sunday given to a casual does not automatically cost less than a Sunday worked by a full-time or part-time employee, because the casual Sunday rate is the same or higher in each of these awards. And under the Restaurant Industry Award, a full-time or part-time employee who works on a public holiday is paid for at least 4 hours, even if they work a shorter time (clause 24.4(a)).

Current rates are on the General Retail, Restaurant and Hospitality award pay rates pages, and the weekend hours calculator separates weekend and public holiday hours from the rest of the week.

Public holidays on a roster that never closes

A business that trades every day still has to treat public holidays differently. The Fair Work Ombudsman’s public holidays pages explain that all employees have a right to be absent from work on a public holiday. An employer can request an employee to work on one, but the request has to be reasonable, and an employee can refuse if they have reasonable grounds. Employees other than casuals who normally work on the day are paid their base pay rate for the ordinary hours they would have worked if they are away because of the public holiday, and a roster cannot be changed to deliberately avoid that payment.

• Ask, and ask early. Put public holiday shifts to people as requests well ahead, and keep a note of who worked the last few.
• Rotate them through the core team and the casuals, rather than defaulting to whoever always says yes.
• Budget for the days you close. Full-time and part-time staff who normally work that day are still paid for it.
• Check each state’s dates. The public holidays page lists the dates for each state and territory.

Fatigue is a roster problem

Safe Work Australia’s fatigue page describes fatigue as a state of physical, mental or emotional impairment that can prevent people from functioning safely, arising from both work-related and non-work-related sources. Persons conducting a business or undertaking, such as employers, must eliminate or minimise the risk of fatigue so far as is reasonably practicable. Its guidance on managing fatigue risks gives example controls that apply directly to a seven-day roster:

• Limit the length of shifts and allow at least 12 hours for workers to recover between shifts.
• Avoid long hours over a week, limit the number of consecutive workdays and allow at least one full day off a week.
• Keep shift patterns as regular as possible and avoid last minute changes.

Long weeks also have a legal limit. The Fair Work Ombudsman’s maximum weekly hours fact sheet says an employer must not request or require a full-time employee to work more than 38 hours in a week, unless their award or enterprise agreement specifies different hours or the additional hours are reasonable, and that an employee may refuse to work additional hours if they are unreasonable.

Grow the bench so the core can rest

The lasting fix for a seven-day business is more people who can do the core jobs. It costs training time up front.

• Train a second opener and closer for every day of the week. A skills matrix shows the gaps.
• Plan training shifts on quieter days, alongside a core employee. Training new starters without blowing the wage budget shows how to cost them.
• Recruit for the days you struggle with, such as weekend casuals for Saturday and Sunday.
• Keep a relief list of trained people who are happy to be called when someone is sick.

A worked example: a four-week cycle for a full-time employee

The shop in the count above sells homewares, is covered by the General Retail Industry Award and trades from 9:00 to 17:30 every day. Jo, a full-time employee, had worked every Sunday for months. The count showed 22 days worked in four weeks and a run of 8 days in a row, more than the 6 consecutive days allowed by clause 15.7(e).

The shop’s full-time arrangement is 152 hours over 4 consecutive weeks, one of the ways of working an average of 38 hours a week in clause 15.6(g). After consulting Jo about the change, as clause 35 requires, and giving at least 7 days’ written notice (clause 15.9(e)), the owner rosters Jo on a fixed four-week cycle of 8 hour days: 9:00 to 17:30 with a 30 minute unpaid meal break.

Check the cycle against the award. Jo works 5, 5, 4 and 5 days, 19 days in all, and 19 × 8 = 152 hours, the full-time total for 4 weeks. No week has more than 5 days of ordinary hours (clause 15.7(b)), and every week includes 2 days off together (clause 15.7(d)). The longest run of work is 5 days, inside the maximum of 6 (clause 15.7(e)). Because Jo regularly works Sundays, week 3 ends with Saturday and Sunday off, followed by Monday and Tuesday of week 4: 4 consecutive days off including a Saturday and Sunday, more than the 3 that clause 15.8 requires.

Each 8 hour day includes two 10 minute paid rest breaks, one in each half of the shift, and the 30 minute meal break at 13:00 comes 4 hours in (clause 16.2, Table 3). Finishing at 17:30 and starting at 9:00 the next day leaves 15.5 hours between shifts, more than the 12 hours in clause 16.6 and in Safe Work Australia’s example control.

Jo now works 3 Sundays in 4 instead of every Sunday. The fourth Sunday goes to a weekend casual who has been trained to open, paid 175% of the casual’s minimum hourly rate against 150% of Jo’s (Table 12), so moving the shift does not automatically save money. In return, Jo has a four-day break in every cycle, and the shop has a second person who can open on a Sunday.

Roster Flow helps keep a seven-day roster steady: 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 seven-day roster checklist

• Days worked, longest runs, Sundays and public holidays are counted for each person over four weeks
• Days off are fixed for the whole cycle before shifts are placed
• Weekends off rotate through the core team on a written cycle
• The cycle meets your award’s rules on days off, consecutive days and Sunday workers
• Every employee has the break between one day’s work and the next that your award requires
• Sunday and public holiday hours are costed at the right rate for each type of employment
• Public holiday shifts are requested early and rotated
• A second trained opener and closer exists for every day
• Changes to regular rosters are consulted on and given the notice your award requires

Sources

• Fair Work Commission: General Retail Industry Award 2020 [MA000004]
• Fair Work Commission: Restaurant Industry Award 2020 [MA000119]
• Fair Work Commission: Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020 [MA000009]
• Fair Work Ombudsman: public holidays
• Fair Work Ombudsman: not working on public holidays
• Fair Work Ombudsman: maximum weekly hours fact sheet
• Safe Work Australia: fatigue
• Safe Work Australia: managing fatigue risks
• Fair Work Ombudsman: find my award

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