Field notes › Rostering
Planning Christmas and New Year cover before the leave requests land
The Christmas roster gets built in December, but it gets decided much earlier, whether anyone means to or not. By the time the office sits down to fill the break, the best casuals have told another firm they're free, the client has changed its mind twice about what runs, and the only two people holding the ticket the skeleton crew needs have both booked flights to see family. Nothing went wrong as such. Other people made the decisions while the roster waited.
Why December is too late
Holiday cover has a longer lead time than any other part of the year because everyone is planning the same fortnight at once. Workers lock in travel as soon as they know the school holiday dates, and a casual with a family trip booked is not going to cancel it for a shift you offer in mid-December. Meanwhile other firms are ringing the same pool with the same question.
So the useful work happens in September and October, and very little of it is putting names on shifts. It's gathering enough information that the break can be built from facts.
Ask clients what actually runs over the break
Ask a client in November what they need over Christmas and you'll often get "we'll let you know". Ask in September and ask specific questions. Which sites shut completely, and from when? Which keep running at reduced numbers? Is maintenance planned into the shutdown, which can mean more people for a short burst rather than fewer? Who on their side can approve a change while their own office is closed?
That last one saves real grief. A shift change between Christmas and New Year with nobody at the client able to say yes is a common holiday mess, so get a name and a mobile number now.
Then write the answers down as shifts, even rough ones. A draft can be checked against availability and tickets, and an email thread can't. In Mustr a draft notifies nobody, and it shows on the client's own roster as an unassigned dashed shift, so they can see the request has been taken seriously without any worker being promised anything. How far ahead to publish covers when drafts like that should become firm.
Collect crew preferences before they're booked elsewhere
The formal leave request is the last thing a worker does. Well before it, they've decided whether they want to work the break, and plenty who'd welcome the extra shifts never say so because nobody asked. The office hears only from people wanting time off.
Ask the whole crew early, and keep it simple: do you want to work over Christmas and New Year, and which days are off the table? Treat the answers as a first pass and tell people when you expect to confirm, so a maybe doesn't sit unanswered until they take a job elsewhere.
Then get the days they can't work into the same place the roster reads from. When a worker marks themselves unavailable in the Mustr worker portal, the booking check refuses a shift on those days, so the family trip on Boxing Day can't be forgotten by whoever builds the roster in December. Admins can also set how often people are reminded to keep their availability filled in, which beats finding a blank calendar the week before.
Work out who is ticketed for a skeleton crew
A skeleton crew is small, which means every person on it has to be the right person. At full strength there's usually someone on site who holds the less common ticket. With a handful of people on site over New Year, there may be nobody.
List the roles the reduced operation genuinely needs, then check who holds the competencies for each, current and verified, against who has said they're available. The gaps show up quickly. A common one is a ticket held by two people who both want the break off. Finding that in October leaves time to train someone else or talk to the client about whether the task can wait. Finding it in December leaves a phone call nobody enjoys.
Check expiries across the break as well. A certificate that lapses in the first week of January is hard to renew while many training providers are closed, so it needs sorting before they shut. The Mustr dashboard shows certificates expiring up to 60 days out, so from mid-November that window reaches past New Year, and an expired certificate stops new bookings that need it rather than slipping quietly onto a shift.
Build the break early and let it move
With client answers, crew preferences and ticket gaps in hand, build the break as a real roster by late October or early November, with the known gaps left as open shifts. Qualified people can put their hand up, and whoever applies is listed on the shift for the office to assign. It will still change, as clients bring shutdown dates forward and workers' plans fall through. What keeps that manageable is every change reaching the people it affects, which is when crew and client notices on changed or cancelled shifts earn their keep.
The rostering page shows how drafts, open shifts and the timeline fit together, and if you'd like to rehearse a holiday roster before building the real one, you can try it with sample data.