Employee availability and leave management guide
Availability tells you when someone can work. Leave tells you when they will not. Most roster mistakes happen where the two meet: a shift placed on a day somebody said they could not do, or leave approved after the roster went out. This guide sets up one process for each, with the award rules for part-time availability, the leave every employee is entitled to, and the records to keep.
A roster can only be as good as what you know before you build it: who can work, who has asked for time off and who is already away. When that information lives in text messages, a note on the fridge and your own memory, shifts land on the wrong people and leave gets approved after the roster is out. This guide sets up a simple process for availability and another for leave, then builds the roster from both. The general steps for any roster are in how to make a staff roster.
Availability, unavailable dates and leave are different things
Three kinds of information feed a roster, and each needs its own handling. Mixing them up is where most disagreements start. A casual who said they cannot do Saturdays is not on leave, and a part-time employee on two weeks of annual leave has not changed their availability.
| What it is | Who decides | How long it lasts | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Availability | The days and hours someone can usually work | Agreed between you, and for part-time employees under many awards, written into their agreement | Until it is changed |
| Unavailable dates | One-off days someone cannot work, such as an exam or a family wedding | The employee asks, and you roster around it | A day or a few days |
| Leave | An absence covered by an entitlement, such as annual leave or sick leave | The rules for that type of leave, in the National Employment Standards and the award | The period of the leave |
Keep all three in one place, next to the roster, so whoever builds it sees them at the same time.
Collect availability once, in writing
Asking "who can work Saturday?" every week is slow, and it gets a different answer each time. Ask once for a standing pattern, and update it when someone’s life changes.
- Ask for a weekly patternFor each day, the earliest start and latest finish the person can work, or "not available". A range such as 7:00 to 15:00 is far more useful than "mornings".
- Keep one-off dates separateExams, appointments and weekends away go in as unavailable dates, not as a change to the pattern.
- Set a cut-offTell the team the date by which unavailable dates and leave requests must be in for each roster period, and build the roster after that date.
- Confirm it backSend each person a copy of what you recorded, so a misunderstanding shows up now rather than on the day.
- Date it and review itAsk everyone to check their pattern when a semester, school term or second job changes, and keep the date on each version.
A staff availability form gives everyone the same questions. Ask for it again whenever a timetable or second job changes.
What availability means for each type of employee
Availability carries different weight depending on how someone is employed, and awards differ on the detail. The award rules below are from the Restaurant Industry Award 2020, the Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020, the General Retail Industry Award 2020 and the Fast Food Industry Award 2020, as consolidated to 1 July 2026. Confirm which award covers your business with the Fair Work Ombudsman’s Find my award tool, and see the Restaurant Industry Award pay rates and the other award pages for rates.
Casual employees
A casual employee has no firm advance commitment to ongoing work. Among the factors the Fair Work Ombudsman lists for deciding that are whether the employer can offer or not offer work, and whether the employee can accept or reject it. In practice, treat a casual’s availability as the times an offer is likely to be accepted, and offer shifts rather than assume them. Building a fair roster for casuals covers sharing the shifts out.
Part-time employees
Under the Restaurant and Hospitality awards, you and a part-time employee agree in writing, when they start, on their guaranteed hours and their availability: the days, and the hours on those days, they are available to work those hours (clause 10.4). You must not roster them outside that availability (clause 10.7(a)). If their personal circumstances change in a genuine and ongoing way, they can alter their availability by giving 14 days’ written notice (clause 10.11). If you cannot reasonably accommodate the change, their guaranteed hours stop applying and you agree new ones (clause 10.12).
The Retail and Fast Food awards work differently. Instead of a window of availability, you agree in writing a regular pattern of work that includes the hours each day and the start and finish times (Retail clause 10.5, Fast Food clause 10.3). A change by agreement has to be recorded in writing, and both awards say a text message or email can do that. Rostering part-time and casual employees together goes further into mixing the two.
| Rule | Restaurant and Hospitality awards | General Retail award | Fast Food award |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agreed in writing at the start | Guaranteed hours and availability (10.4) | A regular pattern: hours each day, start and finish times, meal breaks (10.5) | A regular pattern: hours each day, days, start and finish times, meal breaks (10.3) |
| Work outside it | Must not be rostered outside availability (10.7(a)) | Time beyond guaranteed hours is paid at the overtime rate unless the pattern was varied by agreement (10.6, 10.8) | Time beyond the agreed hours is overtime unless the pattern was varied by agreement (10.5, 10.9) |
| Changing it | The employee gives 14 days’ written notice of a genuine, ongoing change in availability (10.11) | By agreement in writing (10.6), or by the employer with 7 days’ written notice, or 48 hours in an emergency, for anything other than guaranteed hours (10.10) | By agreement recorded in writing (10.5, 10.7) |
| Shortest shift | 3 hours under the Restaurant award (10.7(b)), 3 ordinary hours a day under the Hospitality award (15.2(a)) | 3 consecutive hours (10.9) | 3 consecutive hours (10.2) |
Full-time employees
A full-time employee works to the roster rather than a window of availability, but the roster rules still protect their time. Under the Restaurant and Hospitality awards, a full-time or part-time employee’s roster can be changed by agreement or with 7 days’ notice (Restaurant clause 15.3(d), Hospitality clause 15.5(d)). A change to someone’s regular roster also needs consultation, including about its effect on their family or caring responsibilities (Restaurant clause 33, Hospitality clause 39).
The leave employees are entitled to
Leave comes from the National Employment Standards (NES), which set minimums that no award, agreement or contract can go below. Awards and agreements can give more, so check yours as well. The table summarises the Fair Work Ombudsman’s pages on each type.
| Type of leave | Full-time and part-time employees | Casual employees |
|---|---|---|
| Annual leave | 4 weeks a year based on ordinary hours, more for some shiftworkers, with unused leave rolling over | Not entitled |
| Sick and carer’s leave | 10 days a year for full-time, pro rata for part-time, with unused leave carried over | No paid leave |
| Unpaid carer’s leave | 2 days each occasion, once paid sick and carer’s leave has run out | 2 days each occasion |
| Compassionate leave | 2 days paid each occasion | 2 days unpaid each occasion |
| Family and domestic violence leave | 10 days paid a year | 10 days paid a year |
| Community service leave | Can be taken for activities such as jury duty and voluntary emergency work; unpaid except jury duty | Can be taken; unpaid except jury duty |
| Long service leave | Set by state and territory laws | Some long-serving casuals are eligible, depending on the state or territory |
Sick and carer’s leave builds up gradually from the first day of work, at 1/26 of an employee’s ordinary hours of work in a year. Family and domestic violence leave works differently: the full 10 days are available straight away and reset on the anniversary of the employee’s start date. Unpaid parental leave is also part of the NES, with its own eligibility and notice rules on the Fair Work Ombudsman’s parental leave pages.
A worked example: the leave three employees build up
A cafe has three permanent employees. Annual leave is 4 weeks of each person’s ordinary hours, and sick and carer’s leave is 1/26 of their ordinary hours in a year, which is 10 days for someone working 38 hours over 5 days. Taking a year as 52 weeks, this is what each builds up.
| Employee | Ordinary hours a week | Ordinary hours a year | Annual leave | Sick and carer’s leave |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full-time cook | 38 | 1,976 | 152 hours | 76 hours |
| Part-time barista | 24 | 1,248 | 96 hours | 48 hours |
| Part-time server | 20 | 1,040 | 80 hours | 40 hours |
The barista’s 1,248 hours divided by 26 is 48 hours, and 4 weeks of 24 hours is 96 hours. A casual on the same team builds up neither. They can still take 2 days of unpaid carer’s leave and 2 days of unpaid compassionate leave each occasion, and 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave a year. Your payroll system should hold the running balance for each person, and the Fair Work Ombudsman’s leave calculator checks other patterns.
Handling annual leave requests
An employee needs to ask before taking annual leave, and the process is often set out in the award, a company policy or the employment contract. You can refuse a request only if the refusal is reasonable. There is no minimum or maximum amount that can be taken at once: by agreement, an employee can take part of a day, a single day or several weeks.
- Set a request deadline. Ask for leave requests by a fixed date before you build each roster period. Late requests can still be approved, but they then have to be fitted around a roster that already exists.
- Check cover before you answer. Look at the dates first: who else can do the role, and who else is already away.
- Answer in writing. Approve or decline each request with the dates, so there is one record you can both point to.
- Decide how busy periods are shared. If several people want the same school holidays or Christmas week, decide how you will choose, such as the order requests arrive or rotating the busy weeks each year, and tell the team before the requests come in.
Three award rules come up often. To require employees to take annual leave during a shutdown, such as a Christmas closure, the Restaurant, Hospitality and General Retail awards require 28 days’ written notice of the shutdown, or a shorter period agreed with the majority of employees affected, and a direction that is in writing and reasonable (Restaurant clause 25.4, Hospitality clause 30.4, Retail clause 28.4). An employee with more than 8 weeks of annual leave, or 10 weeks for a shiftworker as the award defines one, has an excessive leave accrual, and either of you can ask to confer about reducing it (Restaurant clause 25.5, Hospitality clause 30.6, Retail clause 28.5). Leave taken before it has been accrued needs a written agreement (Restaurant clause 25.8, Hospitality clause 30.9, Retail clause 28.8).
A leave request form makes every request carry the same details. Before you plan cover for a holiday period, check the public holidays in your state as well.
Sick leave and other unplanned absences
Sick and carer’s leave cannot wait for a cut-off. An employee has to tell you as soon as possible, which can be after the leave has started, and say how long they expect to be off. You can ask for evidence, even for a single day or less. Medical certificates and statutory declarations are examples: there are no strict rules on the type, but the evidence has to convince a reasonable person that the leave was genuine. An employee who does not give evidence when asked may not be entitled to be paid for the leave.
Paid sick and carer’s leave is paid at the employee’s base pay rate for the hours they would normally have worked in that period, not including overtime, loadings, allowances or penalty rates. The Fair Work Ombudsman does not consider it reasonable for an employer to contact the employee’s doctor for more information. If you plan to ask for evidence as a rule, tell the team in advance what you will ask for. For covering the shift itself, managing hospitality sick calls walks through the changes to the roster.
Build the roster from availability and leave
With availability and leave in one place, build every roster in the same order, so people who are away never reach the page.
- Block out approved leaveMark every approved period of leave first, including part days, so nobody on leave can be rostered by mistake.
- Mark unavailable datesAdd the one-off dates that came in before the cut-off.
- Place full-time employeesFill their ordinary hours around the leave already marked.
- Place part-time employeesRoster their hours inside their availability or agreed pattern, as their award requires.
- Offer the rest to casualsOffer the remaining shifts to casuals whose stated availability covers them.
- Fill the gaps leave createsWhere leave leaves a role uncovered, sort it out now, while there is still time to ask, rather than the day before.
- Publish it with the dateSend the roster to everybody with the date it was published, so a later request can be checked against it.
Publishing early helps here too: the sooner the roster is out, the sooner someone notices a clash with their leave. How far in advance to publish a roster covers the timing.
Keep the records
Employers must keep time and wages records for 7 years, and they must include any leave taken and how much leave each employee has. Keep the rest of the paper trail with them:
- The written part-time agreement and every variation to it, which the General Retail award (clause 10.7) and the Fast Food award (clause 10.4) require you to keep
- Leave requests and your answers, with the dates
- Any agreement to take annual leave in advance, which the Restaurant award requires you to keep as an employee record (clause 25.8(c))
- Evidence given for sick, carer’s or compassionate leave, stored privately
- Past rosters: the General Retail award requires each completed roster to be kept for at least 12 months (clause 15.9(c))
Information about family and domestic violence leave needs particular care. The Restaurant award notes that it is sensitive, that the Fair Work Act sets confidentiality requirements for it, and that there are rules about what can be reported on payslips (clause 29).
Roster Flow keeps this process 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 availability and leave
- Every employee has a dated, written availability pattern, and every part-time employee has their written agreement
- Unavailable dates and leave requests have a cut-off before each roster is built
- Part-time employees are rostered inside their availability or agreed pattern
- Annual leave requests are answered in writing and refused only for a reasonable reason
- The team knows how to report sick leave and what evidence you may ask for
- Approved leave is blocked out before anyone is placed on the roster
- Leave taken and leave balances are in your records, kept for 7 years
Questions
Can a part-time employee be rostered outside their written availability?
Not under the Restaurant or Hospitality awards, which say a part-time employee must not be rostered outside the availability agreed in writing (clause 10.7(a)). The General Retail and Fast Food awards use an agreed pattern of work instead, and extra hours outside it are paid as overtime unless the change is agreed and recorded in writing.
Can I say no to an annual leave request?
Yes, but only if the refusal is reasonable. Give the reason, such as cover you genuinely cannot arrange, and suggest other dates where you can.
Can I ask for a medical certificate for one sick day?
Yes. You can ask for evidence for as little as a day or less. A statutory declaration can also be acceptable, as long as the evidence would convince a reasonable person the leave was genuine.
Do casual employees get any leave?
Casuals do not get paid annual leave or paid sick leave. They can take 2 days of unpaid carer’s leave and 2 days of unpaid compassionate leave each occasion, 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave a year, and community service leave.
How much notice does a part-time employee need to give to change their availability?
Under the Restaurant and Hospitality awards, 14 days’ written notice, where there is a genuine and ongoing change in their personal circumstances. If you cannot reasonably accommodate the change, you agree a new set of guaranteed hours.
Can I make staff take annual leave over a Christmas closure?
Under the Restaurant, Hospitality and General Retail awards, you can direct employees to take accrued annual leave during a shutdown with 28 days’ written notice, or a shorter period agreed with most of the employees affected. The direction must be in writing and reasonable.
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: find my award
- Fair Work Ombudsman: National Employment Standards
- Fair Work Ombudsman: annual leave
- Fair Work Ombudsman: taking annual leave
- Fair Work Ombudsman: paid sick and carer’s leave
- Fair Work Ombudsman: notice and medical certificates
- Fair Work Ombudsman: payment for sick and carer’s leave
- Fair Work Ombudsman: unpaid carer’s leave
- Fair Work Ombudsman: compassionate and bereavement leave
- Fair Work Ombudsman: family and domestic violence leave
- Fair Work Ombudsman: community service leave
- Fair Work Ombudsman: long service leave
- Fair Work Ombudsman: casual employees
- Fair Work Ombudsman: record-keeping
- Fair Work Ombudsman: rosters