Closes, early opens and weekends are the shifts people trade favours over. When the same two or three people keep getting them, they quit or stop covering for others. The fix is to count the tough shifts and hand the next one to whoever has the fewest. Doing that by hand for six people over two months is tedious; a roster search can do it while it fills the week. We measured how much it helps.
An invented six-person team, all on $15 an hour and available any time, up to 40 hours each, and the roster builder's example cafe shifts (open, lunch and close on weekdays, Saturday and Sunday). That is 8 weeks of plans, each carrying the last week's tally forward. A "tough" shift is a weekend shift, a close at 10pm or later, or an open at 6am or earlier. Only the Spread weekend, closing and opening shifts setting changed.
| Spread setting | Most tough shifts (one person) | Fewest | Gap | Eight-week payroll | Open hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 (off) | 37 | 34 | 3 | $28,200 | 0 |
| 10 | 37 | 35 | 2 | $28,200 | 0 |
| 30 | 37 | 35 | 2 | $28,200 | 0 |
With the setting off, one person closed or worked weekends 37 times in eight weeks and another 34: three extra tough shifts. A small setting of 10 narrowed that to two, with no extra payroll and no shift left open, because here everyone costs the same and can work any time. Turning it up to 30 did not help further; the first step does the work. (An earlier version of this page showed a gap of 8 with the setting off; that plan let some people work more than six days in a row, which the engine now refuses, and the gap shrank with it.) Real teams are lumpier: if only two people can close, no setting can rotate to a third. In the builder's own example cafe, availability alone decides who closes and the setting changes nothing, which is itself worth knowing before you argue about fairness. These are invented numbers, not a benchmark.
Check the spread on your own team
Per person, count weekend shifts, closes and early opens worked in the last month. One column in a spreadsheet is enough.
Assign the closes and weekends before the easy middle shifts, and give each to the person with the lowest tally who is free.
A fresh start each Monday resets the count and favours whoever is easiest to schedule. In the roster builder, "Carry over last week" fills each person's tally from the roster CSV you posted, fading older weeks, and "Plan several weeks" shows the totals per person.
Count each person's closing, opening and weekend shifts over several weeks, then give the next tough shift to whoever has the fewest. In the roster builder, raise the spread setting and the search does that for you without leaving any shift open.
Not when staff have the same wage and availability: in the example on this page the eight-week payroll was identical with and without the rotation setting. When wages differ, the setting can shift hours toward costlier people, so check the payroll line.