Rest between shifts: how to plan enough of it
How to work out the gap between two shifts, set a sensible minimum for your team and stop late finishes running into early starts.
6 min readFor owners and managers
In short
- Rest is the time from the end of one shift to the start of the next, not the time someone spends asleep.
- Many countries set a legal minimum, and the figure and exceptions differ. Check the rules that apply to you.
- Short rest usually slips in at four points: a close followed by an open, a swap, an extra shift, or a shift that ran late.
- Pick one house minimum, write it down and check every change to the schedule against it.
On this page8 sections
A shift that ends at 23:00 and another that starts at 07:00 the next morning look fine as two boxes on a schedule. For the person working them, there are eight hours in between to get home, eat, sleep, get up and travel back. Most people will manage it once. Few will do it well, and nobody wants it every week.
Planning enough rest between shifts is one of the simplest ways to make a schedule fairer and safer. It needs one number, one habit and a few minutes of attention each week.
What counts as rest
Rest between shifts is the unbroken time from when one shift ends to when the next begins. Breaks during a shift are a separate matter. So is weekly rest, which means a longer block away from work once in every week or fortnight.
Remember that the gap is not all sleep. Take away travel in both directions, a meal and time to wind down, and a ten hour gap can leave six hours in bed.
What the law says depends on where you are
Many countries and regions set a minimum daily rest period in law. The number of hours is not the same everywhere, and there are often different rules for young workers, night workers, drivers and particular industries. Some places have no general rule and leave it to contracts or collective agreements.
We will not quote figures here, because one that is right for one reader would be wrong for another. Look up the rule for your country and your industry, or ask an adviser, and treat that as the floor. Nothing in this article is legal advice.
How to work out the gap
Count from the scheduled finish to the next scheduled start. If the shifts are on different days, count to midnight and then add the hours of the next morning.
- Friday shift: 15:00 to 23:00. Saturday shift: 07:00 to 15:00.
- From 23:00 to midnight is 1 hour. From midnight to 07:00 is 7 hours. Rest: 8 hours.
- The business has a house minimum of 11 hours, so this pair fails by 3 hours.
- Fix one: move Emma's Saturday start to 10:00 and let Ben Carter open. Rest becomes 11 hours.
- Fix two: give Friday's close to someone who is not working Saturday morning. Emma's rest is no longer a question.
The 11 hours in that example is only an illustration of a house rule. Your own number should be at least whatever the law requires where you are.
Where short rest slips in
| How it happens | Example | How to prevent it |
|---|---|---|
| Close then open | Late finish, early start next day | Never give the same person both in a row |
| A swap or a taken shift | Someone takes an early shift after their own late one | Check rest before the change goes through |
| An extra shift added mid-week | Called in the morning after a late night | Look at yesterday before you ask |
| A shift that overran | Planned finish 22:00, real finish 00:30 | Compare worked time with the plan, and move the next start |
- How it happens
- Close then open
- Example
- Late finish, early start next day
- How to prevent it
- Never give the same person both in a row
- How it happens
- A swap or a taken shift
- Example
- Someone takes an early shift after their own late one
- How to prevent it
- Check rest before the change goes through
- How it happens
- An extra shift added mid-week
- Example
- Called in the morning after a late night
- How to prevent it
- Look at yesterday before you ask
- How it happens
- A shift that overran
- Example
- Planned finish 22:00, real finish 00:30
- How to prevent it
- Compare worked time with the plan, and move the next start
The last row catches many managers out. A schedule can respect every rule on paper while the real hours do not. If closing regularly takes longer than planned, change the planned finish time so the schedule tells the truth.
Set your own minimum in five steps
- Find the legal minimum for your country, industry and the ages of your staff.
- Decide whether to go further. Think about how far people travel and how physical or safety-critical the work is.
- Write the number down and tell the team, so that they can raise a problem if the schedule breaks it.
- Decide what happens in a real emergency: who can agree an exception, and how the person gets the rest back.
- Check the schedule against the number before you publish, and again whenever a shift changes hands.
When staff ask for a short gap
Sometimes the request comes from the employee. They want a late shift and the early one after it, to fit the hours into fewer days or to earn more. Whether you can agree depends on the law where you are; in some places the minimum cannot be waived even if the worker asks.
Where it is allowed, treat it as an occasional exception and not a pattern, and keep a note that it was their request.
How ClockinBee handles rest between shifts
When you use auto-schedule to build a week, ClockinBee takes rest between shifts into account when it decides who gets which shift, along with approved time off, each person's availability and their contract hours. The result arrives as a preview in draft, so you can look it over and change anything before the team sees it. What cannot be filled within those limits becomes an open shift for you to deal with.
When you plan by hand in the week planner, every person's shifts for the week sit in one row, so a late finish next to an early start is easy to see before you publish. Shift templates help too: if your standard close and standard open are saved as templates, you place the same reliable times every week.
Be aware of the limits. ClockinBee does not know the law in your country, and it is still your job to choose a minimum that meets it. You can also still place a shift by hand that leaves a short gap, because real businesses have real emergencies. Check the week before you publish.
Questions people ask
Does travel time count as rest?
In everyday terms the journey home is not work, so it usually falls inside the rest period. That is exactly why a gap that looks adequate can feel very short. Legal definitions vary, so check the rules that apply to you.
What about split shifts?
A split shift has a long unpaid gap in the middle of the day. That gap is not the daily rest period. Count rest from the end of the last part of the day to the start of work the next day.
What if a shift overruns and eats into the rest?
Where you can, move the next day's start later by the same amount, or give the opening shift to someone else. If overruns are common, lengthen the planned shift so the schedule matches what really happens.
Do I need a rule if the law where I am has none?
It is still worth having one. A clear minimum is easy to explain, makes the schedule fairer and gives you a reason to say no to a risky swap.
How to do this in ClockinBee
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This guide is general information, not legal, tax or payroll advice. Working time, pay and time off rules differ by country and contract, so check the rules that apply to you.