Split Shifts: Pros, Cons and How to Roster Them Properly
30 October 2026 · The Rosterly team · 4 min read
A split shift is a working day broken into two or more periods with a long unpaid gap between them, such as 10am to 2pm and 5pm to 9pm. On a split shift roster, they cover two peaks without paying for the quiet afternoon, but they make for a long day and many awards regulate them: in Australia, the Hospitality Award caps the spread of hours on split shifts at 12, and the Restaurant Award has a split shift allowance.
Restaurants with lunch and dinner services, cleaners with early-morning and evening contracts, and care workers with morning and evening visits all use split shifts. Done well, they're efficient. Done badly, they're the least popular shift on the roster.
When split shifts make sense
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Two distinct peaks. A restaurant busy from 12 to 2 and 6 to 9, quiet in between.
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Work that can only happen at certain times. Office cleaning before staff arrive and after they leave.
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Staff who want them. Students between classes, parents around school hours, people who live close by.
They make less sense if the gap is short (just keep people on), if staff live far away, or if the business could reshape demand instead.
What staff think of them
The honest picture:
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Pros for staff: more hours in a day, a long break in the middle, and sometimes an allowance.
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Cons for staff: a 10- to 12-hour spread from first start to last finish, two commutes, and an afternoon that isn't really free.
Ask, don't assume. Some people like them; for others they're a reason to leave.
The rules to check
Australia.
Split shift rules are set by the award:
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The Hospitality Industry (General) Award sets a maximum spread of 12 hours from the start of the first period to the end of the last on a split shift, and includes a split shift allowance in some circumstances.
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The Restaurant Industry Award has a split shift allowance, explained in Fair Work Ombudsman guidance, and treats a broken shift spanning more than 12 hours as overtime.
Allowance amounts change each year, so check the current pay guide.
United Kingdom.
GOV.UK lists split shifts among the situations where workers may get compensatory rest instead of the usual rest break and daily rest rules. Adult workers are otherwise entitled to 11 hours' rest between working days and a 20-minute break when working more than six hours.
United States.
Federal law doesn't set split shift rules, but some state laws add their own. Check your state's labor department.
How to roster split shifts well
1.
Keep the spread reasonable. Stay within the award maximum; under 12 hours is a good rule even where none applies.
2.
Make the gap genuinely free. Don't ask people to "pop in" during it.
3.
Make each part worth the trip. Respect minimum engagements and avoid one-hour fragments.
4.
Offer, then rotate. Give split shifts to people who want them first, and share the rest.
5.
Avoid split shifts before an early start. A split ending at 10pm followed by a 7am open is a clopening in disguise.
6.
Pay allowances correctly. Make sure your payroll knows which shifts were splits.
An example split shift day
A restaurant cook works 10:30am to 2:30pm for lunch and 5:30pm to 9:30pm for dinner. That's 8 paid hours with an 11-hour spread, inside a 12-hour maximum. If dinner ran to 11pm, the spread would reach 12.5 hours and break that limit, so the second part would need to start or finish earlier.
Alternatives to split shifts
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Two shorter staff. One person for lunch, another for dinner.
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A longer single shift with prep, cleaning or training in the quiet hours.
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Rebalancing demand, such as moving deliveries or prep into the afternoon so the gap is useful work.
Each part of a split shift should be its own rostered shift and its own clock-in and clock-out, so paid hours are exact and the gap isn't paid by accident. Your payroll provider then applies any split shift allowance or overtime the award requires.
How Rosterly handles split shifts
In Rosterly, each part of a split shift is a separate rostered shift on the same day, so lunch and dinner each have their own skills, assignment and clock-in. Paid time is counted from each clock-in to clock-out, with unpaid breaks removed, so the gap between them isn't counted as paid time.
Rosterly doesn't detect split shifts as a category or calculate allowances or spread-of-hours rules; your payroll provider applies those. See restaurant scheduling and scheduling for commercial cleaning crews, two industries that use split shifts often.