1. Log in to Employment Hero. 
2. Open your work site's settings page. The Operating Hours section sits below the work site's name and address.
3. Click the + Add Operating Hours button, which appears when no operating hours are configured yet. A form expands showing all seven days of the week, Monday through Sunday.
4. Tick the checkbox for each day staff work at your site. Days you leave unticked show a Closed label in place of the input fields.
5. Review the pre-filled values for each ticked day. When you first tick a day, the fields pre-fill with a 9:00 am start time, a 5:00 pm finish time, an 8 hrs shift duration and a 30 min break. You can change any of these.
6. Set the Operating hours for each day. The start time and finish time are both required, and you can set different times per day, for example 8am on Monday and 7am on Tuesday.
7. Set the Default shift for each day. The shift duration (in hours) and break duration (in minutes) are both optional and sit on the same row as the day's operating hours.
8. Click Save. Your updated configuration is visible immediately, and you can return to this section at any time to update or remove your operating hours.

The platform checks your entries before you save. You will see a clear error message if a finish time is equal to or earlier than a start time, or if a shift duration is greater than the gap between the start and finish time, for example "Shift duration cannot exceed the operating hours window (8h 0m)".

When you copy a work site, you can bring its operating hours across, so you can set up a new site without reconfiguring the schedule from scratch.

1. Copy your work site as you normally would.
2. In the copy modal, review the Copy operating hours checkbox. It appears alongside the existing options, such as copy positions, employees and public holidays, and it is ticked by default.
3. Leave the checkbox ticked to give the new work site the same configuration as the source, including the operating hours and default shift for each day. Untick it to start the new work site with operating hours unconfigured.

You can edit the duplicated work site's configuration independently at any time without affecting the original.

Once you save your operating hours, every new shift you create for that work site pre-fills with the details you configured for that day:

• The shift start time pre-fills with the day's configured start time.
• The shift end time pre-fills as the start time plus the default shift duration, for example 9:00 am plus 8 hrs equals 5:00 pm. If no shift duration is configured for that day, the end time pre-fills from the day's finish time instead.
• The shift duration field pre-fills with the day's default shift duration.
• The break field pre-fills with the day's default break duration. If no break is configured, the field stays blank.

Every pre-filled value is a suggestion, not a restriction, so you can change any of them freely. If you add a shift on a day you marked as non-working, a notice tells you that no shifts are typically scheduled on that day. If a shift's end time runs past the site's finish time for that day, a warning appears on the shift card, for example "Shift runs past site operating hours (5:00pm)".

For days without operating hours configured, shifts behave as they always have: the start time defaults to the clicked hour in daily view and to 9am in weekly or fortnightly view.

You can set your labour rules to run only within your operating hours, so your staffing requirements reflect the times your work site operates.

1. Log in to Employment Hero. 
2. Go to the labour model for your work site.
3. Choose to run the labour rule within operating hours. You can also edit your operating hours from here and add buffers if you need to.
4. Apply the setting to all the labour rules at your work site if you want every rule to follow your operating hours.

Back in Roster Management, your staffing requirements now display within the operating hours you set for each day. For example, a work site can run from 8am to 5pm on Monday and from 7am to 5pm on Tuesday.

If your work site already had default shift details configured with a start time and end time, your operating hours are set up automatically when the feature launches, so you do not have to re-enter information you have already provided. Each day from Monday to Sunday pre-fills with those times, the shift duration comes from your existing configuration or is worked out from your start and finish times, for example 9am to 5pm becomes 8 hrs, and the break comes from your existing break duration or defaults to 0 minutes if none was configured. You do not need to take any action, and you can review and adjust any pre-filled day afterwards: tick or untick days, change times, change the duration or change the break. Work sites with no existing default shift details are not affected and start with operating hours unconfigured.

Operating hours represent the standard hours staff work at your work site, not your customer-facing trading hours.

Operating hours give the forecasting engine the information it needs to understand when your work site operates. This provides the foundation for forecasting, so the platform can plan staffing more intelligently and start generating smarter staffing recommendations.