How to Prepare a Duty Roster Format That Holds Up
Most duty roster format templates give you a grid and stop. The grid is the easy half: the Code decides the hours, the handover and how often you may change it.
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A duty roster is the sheet that says who works which shift on which day. It is also a notice you have to put on the wall and keep correct.
The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020, which everyone calls the OSH Code, requires it of the establishments it covers. That duty is the part most templates leave out.
This page gives you the duty roster format itself, for a two-shift and for a three-shift operation. It also gives the four rules that decide what you may put in the grid.
Key Takeaways
- What a duty roster is: a dated grid of people against shifts, with each rest day marked on it.
- A roster is a notice, not a private sheet: working hours for each day have to be on display and kept accurate.
- The working day: eight hours is the daily ceiling on working time. Anything past it is overtime, at double pay and only if the worker agrees.
- The handover trap: two shift teams may not both be on one job at once unless you are exempted, and an overlap at changeover creates exactly that.
- Night shifts move the day: after-midnight hours belong to the shift before, and the rest day runs from when that shift ends.
- Changing the pattern: the inspector hears first, and without their sanction a second change waits a week.
What Must a Duty Roster Format Show?
Every day’s working periods, for every worker, in a form anyone can read off the wall.
The requirement sits in section 31 of the OSH Code. It asks for a notice of periods of work to be displayed and correctly maintained, showing clearly for every day the periods during which workers may be required to work.
What Goes in Each Column
The form itself is prescribed by whichever government regulates your establishment. What follows is a working version that carries everything the notice needs.
| Column | Why it is there |
|---|---|
| Employee name and code | Identifies who the periods apply to |
| Department or line | The handover rule turns on the kind of work, so the line matters |
| Shift code and timings | The periods of work the notice has to show |
| Date columns for the period | Every day, not a general pattern |
| Week off marker | The rest day has to be visible, not implied |
| Total hours in the week | Your own check against the daily hours and the six-day week |
Keep one row per person and one column per date. A roster that groups people by shift reads well on the wall and badly when somebody asks what one worker did in a fortnight.
Use the same employee code your payroll record carries, the one set when you add the employee. A roster that invents its own numbering cannot be reconciled with the muster roll.
In Simple Words
A duty roster says who works when. Put it on the wall and keep it right. The law says you must show the work hours for each day.
The Four Rules Behind the Format
Four parts of the grid are already decided for you. The rest is yours.
So the format is the easy half. The working day, the handover, the night shift and any change to the pattern are what decide the rest.
Attendo (formerly Petpooja Payroll) is a complete workforce management system for every kind of business, running attendance, shifts, leaves, payroll and statutory filings in one place. It is built by Petpooja, serving Indian businesses since 2011, and used by 40,000+ businesses today.
The Two-Shift Duty Roster Format
Two eight-hour shifts cover sixteen hours, which suits a plant that runs long but not around the clock.
| Shift | Timing | Break | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| A (morning) | 6 am to 2 pm | 30 minutes | Production, despatch |
| B (afternoon) | 2 pm to 10 pm | 30 minutes | Production, packing |
| Week off | One day per person | Not applicable | Stagger it to keep both shifts covered |
Rotate A and B weekly if the work is identical, or keep people fixed if the skills differ.
A rotation already written into the roster you display is part of the system, not a change to it. What section 31 catches is a change made after the notice goes up, which the section on changing the roster covers.
Stagger the week offs rather than closing on the same day. Six people on a line and six different rest days keeps the line running without anyone crossing six days in a week. Our working days calculator tells you how many days the month holds before you place them.
A banquet hall in Kochi runs the same grid on its service staff. So does a supermarket in Jaipur on the tills, a diagnostic lab in Coimbatore across collection and reporting, and a coaching institute in Indore across its morning and evening batches.
The pattern travels between all of them. Only the timings move.
The Three-Shift Duty Roster Format
Three eight-hour shifts cover the full day, and bring one rule with them that the two-shift grid above never meets.
| Shift | Timing | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| A (morning) | 6 am to 2 pm | Nothing |
| B (afternoon) | 2 pm to 10 pm | Nothing |
| C (night) | 10 pm to 6 am | Crosses midnight, so the day and the day off move |
The C shift is where rosters go wrong. Hours worked after midnight count to the previous day, so a night worker’s Tuesday is not the calendar Tuesday, and the rest day that follows moves with it.
Plan the rotation so nobody moves straight from C to A. Coming off a night shift at 6 am and starting the morning shift at 6 am the next day gives a worker one clear day and nothing more. Leave a wider gap where the rotation allows it.
Our time card calculator totals the hours once the grid is filled, which catches working time that quietly runs past eight hours in a day.
Which Rules Shape Any Duty Roster?
Four rules shape a duty roster, whichever pattern you pick. Three of them are below. The fourth, changing the pattern once it is up, has its own section.
The first is the working day. Section 25 says no worker may work more than eight hours in a day. Your government notifies the rest breaks and the total span, called the spread-over, within that. Section 26 caps the week at six days.
Eight hours is the working time, not the clock span. A shift window of 6 am to 2 pm with a half-hour break is seven and a half hours of work, which sits inside the ceiling.
Hours past what your government prescribes are overtime. Section 27 pays them at twice the rate of wages and lets the employer ask for them only with the worker’s consent. The labour ministry’s compliance handbook for employers says the same.
The OSH Code is one of four labour codes that took effect on 21 November 2025. Between them they replaced 29 older laws, including the Factories Act that many roster templates still cite.
The Handover Overlap Trap
The second is the handover, and it is the one nobody expects.
Section 29 says work may not be carried on by a system of shifts arranged so that more than one relay is engaged in work of the same kind at the same time. A relay is one shift’s team.
Say the outgoing shift stays fifteen paid minutes to brief the incoming one. If both teams are on the same work in those minutes, that is the arrangement section 29 describes. An exemption is possible by written order, but it is not automatic.
The way round it costs no extra time. The outgoing shift stops work a few minutes early, inside its own eight hours, and briefs. Nobody is then doing the same work at the same time.
Night Shifts and the Next Day
The third is the night shift, which moves the day itself. Where a shift extends beyond midnight, section 28 changes how the day is counted. The following day becomes the 24 hours beginning when the shift ends, and the weekly holiday means 24 consecutive hours from that same point.
A worker whose weekly holiday falls after a night shift ending at 6 am on Sunday is therefore off until 6 am on Monday. Rostering them for Sunday night cuts the rest short, even though the calendar says they had Sunday.
Your attendance register has to follow the same count. If the roster counts a night shift against Monday and the register counts it against Tuesday, the two will not reconcile, and the register is the one an inspector reads.
Where Attendo Fits
The Roster Spreadsheet lays employees down the rows and dates across the columns, with branch and date-range filters, which is the grid this page describes.
Each branch keeps its own roster and holiday calendar, so a plant on three shifts and an office on one can sit in the same account without sharing a pattern.
Shift Assignment applies a shift to a whole department or designation at once, with effective dates set ahead, so a rotation is planned rather than retyped each week.
Week Off is its own attendance status, so the rest day shows on the roster and on the muster roll rather than being inferred from a blank.
If you want rosters planned this way, you can take a look at Attendo, or read how it works end to end first.
Can You Change the Roster Later?
Yes, but not quietly, and not every week. This is the fourth rule.
Section 31 treats a change to the system of work as a change to the notice. The inspector has to be told before the change is made.
There is also a spacing rule. Without prior sanction, no such change may be made until a week has passed since the last one. A roster that flips pattern every few days does not meet that.
Day-to-day cover is different. Swapping one person onto another shift to cover an absence is not a change to the system of work. Changing the plant from two shifts to three is.
Keep the superseded roster. The statutory register formats show the muster roll the attendance has to reconcile with, and an old roster is what explains an unusual stretch of shifts.
Your Duty Roster Checklist
A duty roster is a planning grid that also happens to be a legal notice. Most of the trouble starts when it is treated as only a plan.
If I had to pick one line to check before the month starts, it would be the handover. It is the rule a well-run plant is most likely to break by being careful.
- Put one row per person and one column per date, with the week off marked, and display it where the shift starts.
- Keep working time inside eight hours a day, and check the week totals rather than trusting the pattern.
- Stagger week offs so nobody works more than six days in a week.
- Make the handover a briefing, not two relays on the same work.
- Count a night shift against the day it started, and start the rest day when it ends.
- Tell the inspector before you change the shift system, and leave a week between changes.
The holiday calendar generator gives you the closures to plan around before the month starts. The attendance to salary run shows where the finished roster ends up.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What should a duty roster format contain?
2. Is a duty roster legally required in India?
3. How many hours can one shift be?
4. Can two shifts overlap for handover?
5. How does a night shift change the roster?
6. How often can the shift pattern be changed?
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