Weekly shift schedule template

Start with the constraints

Before you put a single name in the table, ask employees which days they cannot work, and mark leave that is already approved. A schedule built without this comes back to you as swap requests.

Hand out the hard shifts first

Nights, Fridays, Saturdays and holidays are the slots everyone wants to skip. Fill them first, on a fixed rotation, and only then fill mornings and evenings. The count table under the schedule shows each employee's shifts, nights and hours for the week, so you see at once if someone is getting more than their share.

Balance against job scope

A half-time employee who gets five full shifts is no longer half-time. Compare each employee's weekly hours with their job percentage. The job percentage calculator converts a percentage into hours per week and per month.

Publish early, and record changes

The earlier employees see the schedule, the fewer last-minute swaps. When something changes after publishing, update everyone in the same place and note what changed, so two versions of the same week are not going around.

Rest and hours rules the schedule must meet

• At least 8 hours between one working day and the next. Someone who finished an evening shift at 23:00 does not start a morning shift at 07:00 unless 8 hours have passed. The check under the table flags such cases.
• Weekly rest of 36 consecutive hours. For a Jewish employee it includes Saturday. Work during weekly rest requires a permit and is paid at 150% at least.
• A regular working day is 8.6 hours in a 5-day week and 8 hours in a 6-day week. Every hour beyond that is overtime.
• Night work: a day with at least two hours between 22:00 and 06:00. A night working day is 7 hours, so in an 8-hour night shift the eighth hour is overtime. The law also limits night work to no more than one week out of two.
• Up to 12 hours a day including overtime, and up to 16 overtime hours a week, under the general overtime permit. That is the limit for double shifts.
• Breaks: a working day of 6 hours or more includes a 45-minute break, with 30 consecutive minutes in it. Details in the break deduction guide.

The full explanation is in the guide to the Hours of Work and Rest Law, and all the numbers in one table in how many hours you may work a day.

This is general information, not legal advice. Collective agreements, sector extension orders and personal contracts may set different terms, sometimes better ones, and some sectors work under special permits.

When a table is no longer enough

A template like this works well for a small team. It gets heavy when the schedule goes around as photos on WhatsApp, when every swap takes a round of phone calls, and when there is no way to know whether the person scheduled actually showed up.

In RayClock shift scheduling you define shift templates with times and a color and assign people in a weekly table, and you can copy a whole week. The schedule stays a draft until you publish it; then employees get a notification and see their shifts in the app and in the browser. Employees mark in advance when they are unavailable, request swaps that a manager approves, and request open shifts. While you assign, the system warns about an employee who marked themselves unavailable, is on leave or sick, or is already scheduled that day. And the schedule connects to the time clock and the hours calculation.