Using the minimum & maximum hours per week warnings on your roster
If you have employees with Employee Agreements or have specific visas that have specific working hour limitations, it is important to comply with their agreements by properly managing your roster.
In such cases, setting the minimum and maximum weekly working hours on the Employee profile can be a useful feature for your business. This feature will warn your rostering managers when these requirements aren't met.
A few key scenarios that this feature can be used for are:
- Set the Minimum hours per week for:
- PT or FT employees who have negotiated a minimum amount of hours per week as per their Employment Agreement
- FT employees who must work a minimum of 38 hours per week
- Set the Maximum hours a week for:
- Students and juniors
- Employees on certain visas
- Employees with medical restrictions who have a recommended max hours from their doctor
- Employees returning to work from WorkCover
- Any FT employees whom you would like to display a warning for when they exceed 38 hours and therefore may be eligible for Overtime
In this article, we will cover:
- How to set the minimum or maximum hours on an Employee Profile
- Export to easily view and check the accuracy of your employee min/max hours
- Importing min/max hours in bulk
- How to roster effectively using the warnings created by min/max hours setting
Permission Reminder: Any admins with access to employee profiles and permission to 'Edit Employee Details and Configuration' can make changes to the min/max hours on an employee's profile.
If you want to ensure managers respect the maximum or minimum hours specified in Employee Agreements when creating rosters, you can set these guidelines on the employee profile.
This tool does not prevent rostering an employee if they go over the maximum or below the minimum. Instead, it provides a prominent visual warning to the roster manager to consider other options. When an employee's profile has a minimum or maximum weekly hours, a warning will be shown on the roster if the hours are not met or exceeded.
Please note: Setting a min/max on an employee's profile does not impact how overtime and other Award rulings trigger. For any Employee Agreements with specific overtime rules please refer to this guide.
When Maximum hours are not set on a profile, by default the maximum hours will be pulled from the maximum ordinary hours per week as set in the relevant Award and Agreement.
Below we will cover the instructions for:
- Setting the maximum or minimum ordinary hours for an employee on the profile.
- Bulk importing or adjusting the maximum or minimum hours for employees.
- Understanding the Default maximum hours.
- Exporting the min/max hours from your People menus for reporting purposes.
Set the min/max hours for an employee
This action is performed individually on the Employee Profile.
To do so:
- Navigate to People > Approved People and select the relevant employee.
- To adjust the 'Maximum hours per week' or 'Minimum hours per week', select the edit pencil.
- Enter the hours and Save. This number can be a decimal point for employees who work an exact amount of hours each week. This partial number will be accurately validated in the roster.
Hot tip: You may consider using a comment on the employee's profile as to why the minimum or maximum was set for clarity for other managers in your business.
In the example below, we have set a maximum of 12 hours per week for Callum who is a 14-year-old junior. We also apply a comment on his profile as to why we have done so and show how this can be viewed on the roster.
Default maximum hours
As mentioned above, if an employee does not have a maximum hours set in their profile, the default maximum hours will be pulled from the maximum ordinary hours per week set in the relevant Award.
This means that on the roster:
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Employees will still show an 'exceeded max hours' shift warning when they exceed the maximum hours set in the Award (see below).
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This warning will only display on a shift and not on the employee's name, as the warning is coming from the Award and not the employee profile.
In the example below, Piper has no max hours set on her profile. However, an 'exceeded max hours' warning shows on her Friday shift. This is being pulled from the maximum ordinary hours per week as set in the Award she is paid under.
Example of the default 'maximum ordinary hours per week' pulled from the Award.
To get a list of employees who have a minimum or maximum hours per week set, you can report it via a People export (approved or pending). This export will be helpful if you want to identify any gaps in junior, student, or visa-holder positions. Once gaps have been identified, you can assign or adjust the missing hours fields.
To produce this export:
- Navigate to the relevant people menu (Approved or pending) > Bulk Actions > Export all Filtered.
- Under the Work heading, select the badges for:
- Minimum hours per week
- Maximum hours per week
- Hot tip: Other useful fields to include for this particular export depending on your reasoning may be age or position (to locate junior employees), right to work or passport country (for visa holders), employment type (for PPT).
- Select any other relevant fields and once ready, select Export CSV.
Tip: If this is an export you intend to run consistently, after making your field selections, select the Save as template toggle and name your template to use in the future.
To effectively use the minimum and maximum hours on the employee profile, you may need to import these hourly guidelines in bulk or make adjustments to them. This can be done through an import process, which will save you valuable time!
You'll want to bulk update the min/max hours for your employees in the below use cases:
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- When setting these hours against all employees in a new platform.
- To adjust an employee's minimum and maximum hours after changes to their visa restrictions, contract alterations, or updates to their work patterns.
To apply this feature in bulk, you will use a key export from the relevant people menu along with a CSV import.
- An export from either Approved or Pending people- Exporting key fields including the existing min/max hours for all relevant employees.
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The Employee (advanced) import - This will allow the import of new figures for min/max hours in bulk. This includes:
- Employees who don't yet have a min/max set
- Allow modifications to the existing minimum/maximum figures for employees.
The below process details the steps to make changes to the existing min/max for your employees. If you have no data set in these fields in the employee profiles or are bulk-adding employees, please skip to Step 2 or refer to our guide on Bulk Importing your Employees.
Please note: It is highly recommended that you have experience with CSV imports before proceeding with this action. Making incorrect changes to fields such as employee email or mobile can compromise your employee data.
Bulk importing min/max hours
As shown in the image above, bulk updating min/max hours will require two key steps, which we will outline below.
Step 1: Export current data using a people export
- Navigate to People > select the relevant people menu (Approved or Pending) and export the following fields. These are the minimum required fields for the import in Step 2.
- First name
- Surname
- Mobile
- Minimum hours per week
- Maximum hours per week
- Once ready, select Export CSV. This export will show all the min/max hours for the relevant employees.
- After exporting, you can now adjust the minimum and maximum hours, including setting guidelines for employees who do not have a defined schedule and modifying existing hours. Please consider the following.
- Enter 'Not set' to clear the hours and create 'Not set' on the profile.
- Enter 0 to create a 0.
- Numbers can be up to 2 decimal places.
- The minimum hours must be less than the maximum hours.
After making changes to your CSV, you are ready to reimport it. This process occurs in a different area of the platform than where the file was exported.
Step 2: Import data using the Advanced employee import
- Navigate to the main menu > Import/ Export > CSV Import.
- From the drop-down > select Employee (advanced) and Download Blank File.
- Copy and paste your exported fields from your people export into the corresponding columns on the blank file. You can choose to hide or delete any optional columns from the spreadsheet before importing.
- Save all changes to your CSV.
- To begin the import, select Choose File, and locate the updated CSV you have saved.
- Select Import CSV.
The below bold fields are required for using this import so we have listed the following validations for those fields in addition to the minimum hours and maximum hours for the import:
| Column Name | Column definition |
Mandatory Field |
Accepted format |
| First Name | Employee's first name. | Y | Minimum 2 characters |
| Surname | Employee's surname. | Y | Minimum 2 characters |
| Employee's unique email address. | Y | Email address unique to the employee. | |
| Mobile | Australian mobile phone number. | Y |
0412345678 0412 235 678 412345678 +61412345678 +61412 345 678 |
| Minimum hours per week |
The minimum hours an employee can work in a week. To clear the hours, enter 'Not set'. |
N |
Numerical (2 decimal places) 'Not Set' Min hours < than max hours |
| Maximum hours per week |
The maximum hours an employee can work in a week. To clear the hours, enter 'Not set'. |
N |
Numerical (2 decimal places) 'Not Set' Min hours < than max hours |
Permission warning: To perform this action in bulk, users will need the permissions 'Access Approved People' or 'Access Pending People' and 'Edit Employee Details and Configuration' to create the export and make changes to min/max profile hours. Users will also need 'Access CSV Import' to do the CSV Import.
We highly recommend that you have experience with CSV imports before you attempt this action.
As a visual roster tool, the area around the employee's name will turn yellow if they have not met the requirements set on their employee profile.
This will happen if any of the below conditions are not met including:
- Minimum hours are not met.
- Maximum hours have been exceeded.
Please note: If an employee has paid or unpaid leave hours in a week, this will not count toward the minimum or maximum hours requirement.
Using the roster display feature
In addition to the ability to access the employee's min/max hours via the employee ellipsis (as shown above), we recommend using the roster display feature to easily view these details.
To view the min/max hours warning on the roster:
- On your roster, navigate to the display settings (eye icon).
- Enable the 'min/max hours' toggle and Save for this preference to take effect.
You'll now see the min and max hours displayed under each employee on the roster.
Hot Tip: If you have multiple employees with a minimum hour per week threshold, you should consider using the 'pin empty rows' Display setting so that this group of employees will always be ready on your roster each week for you to assign hours to!
How 'Exceeds max hours' displays on the Roster and Approve shifts
Where an employee has exceeded their maximum hours on the Roster, you can expect to see:
- A warning sign and yellow area around the employee's name.
- An exceeded max hours warning on the shift that exceeded the limit.
In the below example, Alice has 20.5 hours rostered which exceeds her weekly maximum of 20 hours. To remedy the warning, we need to reduce her hours or reassign a shift to another employee and then refresh our page.
This warning will also be displayed on the same relevant shift in Approve shifts
How 'Below min hours' displays on the Roster
Where an employee has not met their minimum hours on the Roster, you can expect to see:
- A warning sign and yellow area around the employee's name.
In the below example, Caitlin has 5 hours rostered which falls short of her weekly minimum of 12 hours. To remedy the warning, we need to roster her more shifts and then refresh our page.
Warnings for below minimum hours will not show in Approve Shifts, as they should be addressed on the roster.
When reviewing the warnings on your roster, you may wonder what is the best way to deal with the exceeded max hour scenarios.
Any yellow warning on your roster still allows managers to publish the roster but it is best practice to review these warnings as to address issues where possible.
To address the 'Maximum hours exceeded' warning message you can choose to:
- Review the warning and reassign the shift to another employee.
- Review the warning and continue to publish the roster - please be aware this may cause the employee to work more than a contract allows, exceed their weekly hours and possibly be paid Overtime etc. Be sure you are happy to proceed.
- If the maximum hours aren't correct for this employee - consider updating the 'maximum hours per week' on the employee's profile.