The rules a shift schedule has to satisfy
Every team's rules differ, but the categories are remarkably consistent. The constraints worth enforcing fall into five groups.
1. Rest between shifts
The hours that must stay free between two shifts. Someone finishing a 16:00–08:00 night shift and starting again at 16:00 the same day is unacceptable in most places. Defining this in hours is more accurate than "no shift the next day", because shift lengths are not uniform.
2. Consecutive working days
Some teams never allow two days back to back; others allow two and refuse three. Expressing it as a number of days is the cleanest form: set it to 1 and no one is ever rostered on consecutive days.
3. Weekly maximum shifts and hours
Totals from Monday to Sunday. The hour cap matters most, because statutory weekly working limits (45 hours in many jurisdictions) are about duration, not shift count. Three 16-hour nights are heavier than five 8-hour days.
4. Holiday shifts per person
This is where fairness is most visible. Capping weekend and public-holiday shifts per person works better than equalising totals.
5. Seniority and role pairing
Not a workload rule but a safety rule. If two inexperienced people must never cover a shift alone together, the schedule itself has to know it. Once roles exist, deciding which pairs may or may not share a shift is enough.
Rules versus preferences
These do not carry equal weight. Rest time is a hard rule; "don't roster these two together" is a preference. A schedule should separate the two and present the first as an error and the second as a warning — otherwise what matters disappears into the same list as what does not.
How this works in practice
The same problem looks different depending on the team. These pages work through it for specific sectors:
Bring this into one place
Shiftera keeps the team, the rules, the time off and the schedule in one plan — generates the rota against your rules and shows you what broke.
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