Rosters and timesheets: the plan, the hours actually worked, and changing shifts

A roster is a plan, not a record

Section 130 of the Employment Relations Act 2000 requires a wages and time record for every employee, showing the number of hours worked each day in each pay period and the pay for those hours. There is one shortcut. Where an employee's hours and pay are agreed and they work exactly those hours, stating the usual hours and pay in the record, the employment agreement or a roster is enough.

That shortcut lasts until the first late finish. Someone stays an hour to cover a no-show, someone else goes home early on a quiet night, two people swap a Saturday. The roster still shows the plan, and now it is wrong. From that day, the record has to show what was worked.

Section 4B adds a wider duty: keep records in enough detail to show you have met minimum entitlements, such as the minimum wage and holiday pay. If a pay claim reaches the Employment Relations Authority and your record was not kept, or could not be produced, and that hurt the employee's ability to make an accurate claim, section 132 lets the Authority accept the employee's account of the hours, days and times they worked, unless you can prove it wrong. A roster that was never corrected is weak evidence against someone's own notes.

Agreed hours and changing them

Section 67C says agreed hours of work must be in the employment agreement. They can include the number of guaranteed hours, the days of the week, the start and finish times, and any flexibility in those days and times. A roster has to fit inside what each person's agreement says, so Employment New Zealand's rostering advice starts with reading the agreements: some set days a person can or cannot be rostered.

Inside the agreed flexibility, you roster as the business needs. Outside it, you are changing the agreement. Employment New Zealand says that where hours are in the agreement, you cannot change them without the employee's agreement, and even where the agreement lets you change them, you still have to act fairly and reasonably. Cutting someone's hours as an alternative to redundancy needs the usual change process, with a fair chance to consider and respond.

Predictable rosters help everyone. Employment New Zealand calls it best practice to make rosters as even and predictable as you can, and to publish them as far ahead as possible, because people have the care of dependants, sport and other commitments to arrange around them.

Cancelling a shift: notice and compensation

Section 67G covers employees whose agreement requires shift work. You must not cancel one of their shifts unless the agreement specifies two things: a reasonable period of notice before a cancellation, and reasonable compensation if you cancel without that notice. When you cancel, you either give that notice or pay that compensation. Nothing in the section lets you cancel a shift if doing so would breach the agreement.

A cancelled shift paid in full counts towards the employee's ordinary weekly pay and relevant daily pay for holiday pay under the Holidays Act 2003. Employment New Zealand's advice for an over-rostered quiet shift is to use the time for restocking, cleaning or training rather than sending people home, because once someone is at work, sending them home early means paying the whole shift anyway. It also suggests noting each unexpected quiet period and why, so the next roster is better.

Read the cancellation clause before you rely on it. The Act says the notice must be reasonable given your business, including how far you could foresee the cancellation, the work, and the person's guaranteed hours, and the compensation must take into account the notice period, what they would have earned and any costs of getting ready for the shift. Then write each cancellation down as it happens: the shift, when and how you told the person, and whether notice or compensation applied. Months later, a dated note settles the question in a way memory cannot.

Availability provisions

An availability provision requires an employee to accept any work you make available. Under section 67D, it can only sit in an agreement that has guaranteed hours, and only for time on top of them. You need genuine reasons based on reasonable grounds for it and for the number of hours it covers, and it must pay reasonable compensation for being available. A clause that misses any of those cannot be enforced.

Without a valid one, section 67E lets an employee refuse work beyond their guaranteed hours, and section 67F says you must not treat them worse for refusing, such as by offering them fewer or less popular shifts. Asking someone to pick up an extra shift is always fine; it is requiring it, without a valid availability provision, that the Act limits. An agreement that does not meet sections 67C, 67D or 67G, or a breach of section 67F or of the notice and compensation rule in 67G, can each be grounds for a personal grievance.

Casual staff need particular care. Employment New Zealand says an employee is unlikely to be truly casual if they are allocated work in advance on a roster, work a regular pattern or have to get agreement when they will not be available. Our article on casual versus permanent part-time explains where the line falls and what changes when someone crosses it.

Comparing the two each week

The routine that keeps a roster true is short. Each week, before pay is run, so corrections go into this pay rather than arrears, put the roster beside the hours actually worked, person by person, and look at every difference:

• a later finish or an extra shift: make sure it is paid, at any overtime rate the agreement sets;
• an early finish: note why, and if you sent the person home, pay the whole shift;
• a cancelled shift: check the notice you gave against the agreement;
• a long shift with no break noted: check it against the minimum rest and meal breaks in our article on rest and meal breaks;
• a swap: record who worked, not who was rostered.

Keep both versions. The roster shows what was planned and when people were told, which matters for shift cancellations and for casual status. The hours worked are what you pay from and what section 130 asks for. A pattern of differences, such as the same shift always running 40 minutes late, is a roster to fix.

Team timesheets from jobtracker.co.nz covers the second half of that comparison. It records the hours your people work against projects and tasks, with start, finish and breaks, for those who choose to share them with you. It is not a rostering tool: it has no roster, no shift swaps and no approval step, and it does not run payroll or calculate pay. It costs $6.99 a seat a month, GST included, for at least three seats. Use it beside whatever you roster with, and compare the two each week.

The hours worked, beside the roster you already use