How to make a staff rota that covers the week

How to build a staff rota from what each day needs, share the hours fairly, stay inside working-time rules and give people notice to plan around it.

A staff rota answers two questions at once: is every part of the day covered, and is each person's week workable? Most rotas are built from the second question, who is free, and checked against the first too late, when the gap is already on the floor.

The order below reverses that. It takes a little longer the first time and much less every week after.

Start from what each day needs

Write down the cover before any names: how many of each position, from when to when, with the peaks. Two servers from eleven, a third through the evening, a head chef until close. Include the cover that isn't a position: a key holder to open up, a first aider whenever the doors are open.

Once the need is written down, a gap is something the rota shows you on Tuesday afternoon, not something the shift discovers on Saturday night.

Then fit the people

Build from a pattern rather than a blank page. Most weeks look like last week, so copy it or start from a template and change what is different; a rotation that repeats every few weeks can generate itself.

Check the rules before you publish

A rota is where working-time law either holds or quietly doesn't. The limits for adult workers in Great Britain:

Workers under 18 have stricter limits: no more than eight hours a day or 40 a week, 12 hours' rest between working days, and a 30-minute break when they work more than four and a half hours.

Count the cost and the fairness

Before publishing, look at two numbers. The labour cost of the week against what the site can afford, and each person's hours against their target. A rota that covers every hour but puts one person on six closes and another on none is covered and still unfair, which the team notices long before a manager does.

Publish once, with notice

Publish the whole week at once, as early as you can, and tell each person what changed for them rather than asking everyone to spot the difference. Changes after that go through a request someone approves, not a private message: a swap between two people who can both do the shift, or an open shift anyone qualified can claim.

Related

What happens between the shifts on the rota is covered under shift handover, and recording the hours actually worked under timesheets and clocking in. The rota itself is shift scheduling in EasyBee.