Cancelling a shift in NZ: notice, compensation and what a roster has to show

It is a quiet Tuesday and you text someone to say they are not needed this afternoon. Whether you owe them anything depends on what their employment agreement says, and the rules are stricter than most small employers expect. They are in sections 67C to 67H of the Employment Relations Act 2000, which have applied since 1 April 2016, and Employment New Zealand explains them on its Hours of work page.

This is general information, not legal advice. For specific situations, talk to an employment law specialist or your advisor.

The rule in one paragraph

An employer cannot cancel a shift worker's shift unless the employment agreement sets out two things: a reasonable period of notice that must be given before a shift is cancelled, and reasonable compensation that must be paid if a shift is cancelled without that notice (section 67G). If the agreement has no valid cancellation clause and you cancel anyway, the employee must be paid what they would have earned for the shift. The same applies if they are not told until the shift is due to start, or if the rest of a shift is cancelled after it has begun.

What counts as reasonable

The Act gives no number of hours or dollars. It asks whether the notice and the compensation are reasonable in the circumstances.

• Notice. All the relevant factors count, including the nature of the business (how far you can foresee or control the thing that causes a cancellation) and the nature of the employee's work (what a late cancellation does to them).
• Compensation. It has to take account of the notice period in the agreement and what the employee would have been paid for the shift.

A cafe that can see tomorrow's bookings is in a different position from a contractor whose site is closed by weather at 6am. The clause should be written for your business, not copied from someone else's.

Four situations

Can you require someone to be available?

That is a separate rule with the same shape. An availability provision, which requires an employee to be available for work beyond their guaranteed hours, can only be included if the agreement has guaranteed hours, the employer has genuine reasons based on reasonable grounds, and the employee is paid reasonable compensation for being available (sections 67D and 67E). Without a valid provision, extra shifts are offers, and an employee can turn them down.

How much notice does a roster need?

We found no fixed lead time for publishing a roster in the Act. Employment New Zealand's rostering guidance is to tell employees as far ahead as possible and to keep rosters as even and predictable as you can. An employment agreement can set its own roster notice, and if yours does, that is the rule you work to.

What a roster has to show

A roster is a record as well as a plan.

• Your wages and time record must show the hours worked each day. Where an employee's usual hours are agreed and they work them, a roster or a similar document can be enough to show that (section 130).
• Records are kept for six years, and Employment New Zealand says to provide them within 10 working days when asked (Record-keeping).
• When it is unclear whether a public holiday would otherwise have been a working day for someone, the employer's rosters are one of the things the Holidays Act 2003 says to look at (section 12).

So a roster that protects both sides shows:

1. Who was rostered, on which date, from when to when, with the unpaid break.
2. When the roster was published and how each person was told.
3. Every change made after publishing, and when it was made.
4. For a cancelled shift: when the decision was made, when the employee was told, how long that was before the start, the notice the agreement requires and the compensation paid.
5. The hours actually worked, kept separately from the hours rostered.

A cancellation checklist

1. Read the cancellation clause in that person's agreement. If there is none, assume the shift is paid.
2. Count the notice from the moment the employee is told, not from when you decided.
3. Tell them directly, in a channel that leaves a dated message.
4. Pay what the clause requires in the next pay run, and note why.
5. If the same shift keeps being cancelled, the roster is wrong, not the week. Compare rostered and actual hours and cut the shift from the pattern.

Where Clockie fits

The Clockie roster records when each week was published and tells staff by email or text message, with WhatsApp for staff who have opted in. If you change a published week and publish again, only the people whose shifts changed are told, and the change since publishing is counted on the page. The Rostered vs Actual report shows where the plan and the clock-ins keep parting ways, which is the best evidence for fixing a pattern instead of cancelling a shift every week.

Clockie does not read your employment agreements and does not work out cancellation compensation. It shows hours only; pay stays in your payroll system.

If you are still building the roster by hand, the free roster generator makes a Monday to Sunday week with breaks and public holidays marked, and the break calculator covers the break rules by shift length.

Related guides and free tools

• Rest and meal breaks in NZ by shift length: the other rule every roster has to respect.
• Free roster generator: publish a clear week, earlier.
• The Employment Leave Act 2026 and the notional roster: why kept rosters matter more from 2028.
• Rostering software NZ 2026: what it actually costs in NZD: 16 products priced for 10, 20 and 30 staff.

This is general information, not legal advice. For specific situations, talk to an employment law specialist or your advisor.

Try Clockie free and publish next week's roster with a record of who was told and when.

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Clockie is NZ-built time clock, roster and visitor sign-in software with PIN/face verification, offline sync, and direct Xero & Crystal Payroll integration. Built for New Zealand businesses that want accurate hours without the paperwork.