Rota

A rota is a schedule showing which team members are working which shifts, on which days, in which roles.

Rota is the standard term across UK workplaces — retail, hospitality, care homes, NHS trusts, and volunteer-run organisations like charity shops and community centres. A church coffee rota and a hospital ward rota are the same object at very different scales. For zero-hours and low-hours workers, rotas will carry extra weight from 2027, when reasonable notice of shifts is expected to become a legal duty; until then, notice remains a matter of contract, policy, and good practice, not a current statutory rule of that kind.

A useful rota is specific enough that a gap is visible, and published early enough that people can plan. The hard part is usually not drawing the grid. It is collecting availability, covering unpopular shifts, and recording who actually worked when someone drops out.

Also called: roster (Australia, Canada), schedule (US). Related: roster, overtime, call-out.