Fair Work roster rules: notice, breaks and records

Australian rostering rules live in two places: the Fair Work Act, which covers every employer, and your award — for most venues the Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020 (MA000009) — which adds the specifics. Here are the ones that decide whether your roster practice is compliant, checked against the award in October 2026.

The roster must actually be posted

The hospitality award requires a roster showing, for each full-time and part-time employee, their name and the times they start and finish — posted somewhere conspicuous and easily accessible to staff. A roster that lives in the manager's head, or in a chat thread someone has to scroll for, doesn't meet that. An app your staff all carry does, and timestamps when each version went up.

Changes: agreement any time, otherwise 7 days

Once posted, a roster can be changed by mutual agreement at any time — or by the employer with 7 days' notice. In practice that means: plan the week properly before publishing, and treat late changes as something you ask for, not announce. Where practicable, the award also expects around two weeks' notice of rostered days off. The award has a separate consultation clause for ongoing changes to rosters or hours, which matters when you're permanently restructuring someone's pattern rather than moving one shift.

Breaks between shifts: 10 hours, or 8 on changeover

An employee must get a 10-hour break between finishing ordinary hours one day and starting the next — 8 hours when the roster itself is changing over. The classic violation is the "clopen": closing at midnight and opening at 7am is a 7-hour break and a breach. This is exactly the kind of rule a tired person writing a roster at 10pm misses, and exactly the kind software should catch — Rostru flags short rest while you're still dragging the shift, not after it's published.

Records: seven years, and they must be real

Under the Fair Work Act, employee records — including hours worked and pay — must be kept for seven years, be legible, and not be altered except to correct an error. Time and attendance records matter most in a dispute: "the roster said 5pm but I worked till 7" is unanswerable without a record of when the person actually clocked off. Records where corrections are new entries with an author, rather than silent edits, are the standard worth holding yourself to.

A compliance checklist for the week

• Roster published, with names and start/finish times, where every staff member can see it.
• Published at least 7 days before the week starts — changes after that by agreement.
• No one rostered with less than 10 hours between shifts.
• Actual clock-on and clock-off times recorded, not just the rostered ones.
• Approved hours exportable and kept for seven years.

If your current process fails two or more of those, fix the process before it meets a dispute. Our guide to writing a roster covers the workflow; the penalty rates guide covers what the hours cost.