Field notes › Rostering
When the client halves the crew with a week's notice
The call tends to come late in the week. The client's scope has shrunk, a stage of work has slipped, or a budget has been pulled, and the crew you built for next swing is now twice the size they want. You have about a week to decide who comes off, tell those people, and find somewhere for as many of them as you can. How you handle that week has a lot to do with whether those workers pick up the phone the next time you ring.
Get the new shape in writing before you touch the roster
Before anyone comes off anything, pin down exactly what the client now wants: which roles, on which shifts, from which date, and whether the cut is permanent or a pause. Halving the crew can mean fewer people on every shift or dropping night shift entirely, and those produce very different rosters. Ask for it in an email or a request you can point to later, because in a fortnight someone on the client side will remember the conversation differently.
Read the contract at the same time. Some agreements cover how much notice the client owes for a scope change and who carries the cost of people already mobilised. If flights and accommodation are booked for workers who are no longer needed, raise it now rather than when the invoice gets queried.
Deciding who comes off
This is the part people put off, and the workers are the ones who pay for the delay. Settle the criteria in the office first and apply them evenly. Start with what the smaller crew still has to cover, meaning the roles that remain, the tickets the site still needs and who already knows the site. After that it gets harder, so be honest with yourself about whether you're keeping someone because they're the right fit or because they complain the least.
Look at where each person could go before you decide. A worker whose tickets suit another client's site is easier to move than one whose paper only fits this job, so arranging the cut with that in mind can leave fewer people with no work at all. Obligations for casual and permanent staff are not the same, and the detail depends on the award, any agreement and the person's arrangement, so check with the Fair Work Ombudsman or your adviser before treating a permanent worker like a casual.
Tell people quickly, and give them the real reason
Once it's decided, ring the people coming off before they hear it on site. A text that just says they're no longer needed reads like they did something wrong. Most people take a scope cut far better than silence, as long as it's plainly the client's decision and not a verdict on their work. Tell them what you know about other work and when you expect to know more, and don't promise a site you haven't checked.
Then make sure the system says what you said on the phone. In Mustr, crew are told when they come off a shift and when a shift is cancelled, and the "let the people affected know" tick on the shift form is on by default. The client is told as well, with the previous shift details shown next to the new ones. The phone call still comes first. The notice is the written record that backs it up, so nobody is left holding travel details for a swing that is no longer theirs.
Redeploying without cutting corners
A week's notice creates pressure to get displaced workers onto other sites fast, and that is exactly when a ticket gets assumed instead of checked. Someone who was fine at one site may not hold the induction or competencies the next one requires. Check each move against the receiving site's requirements, not against what the worker was doing last week.
The Mustr shift editor helps with this. Its crew panel shows each person's role, verified competencies and the exact dates they're free, and anyone already locked into another site that week is greyed out with the clashing site and dates. The booking itself is checked on the server, so a worker without a required competency or a current induction for the new site can't be booked, and the reason is shown. That tells you to arrange the induction before the start rather than finding out at the gate.
Keep the records of the people set aside
Some workers who come off won't have anywhere to go straight away. Don't delete them, and don't leave them fully active to be chased about tickets for work they aren't doing. Marking them inactive in Mustr keeps every certificate, shift and note, takes them out of roster pickers and stops the reminders, and it reverses cleanly if the client's work comes back. There's more on why that matters in the worker who is on the books but off the tools.
You can see how the crew panel and change notices work on the rostering page, or try it with sample data and cut a crew in the sandbox before you ever have to do it for real.