Rostered Days Off (RDOs) explained

A rostered day off, or RDO, is a paid day off that an employee earns by working slightly longer days across a roster cycle. Hours are set aside in earlier pay periods and used to fund the day off later. RDOs are comon in construction, manufacturing, mining and other industries where an award or agreement spreads ordinary hours across a cycle instead of a single week.

This guide covers how RDOs build up, what the rules look like in a real award, how they interact with leave, super and termination, and how rostering software keeps balances and rosters in step.

What is a rostered day off (RDO)?

The Fair Work Ombudsman describes an RDO as a day in a roster period that an employee does not have to work, and notes that whether it is paid depends on the award or registred agreement. In most arrangements it is paid, and the pay comes from hours the employee has already worked.

A simple way to picture it: an employee works 40 hours a week but is paid for 38, and the other 2 hours go into an RDO balance. After four weeks the balance holds 8 hours, which funds one paid day off. The balance then starts building again. That is a simplified illustration. The exact numbers come from the award or agreement that covers your staff, and a real example follows below.

Where do RDOs come from?

RDOs are not one of the National Employment Standards. They come from a modern award, an enterprise agreement or an employment contract, and the instrument sets how hours accrue, how the day is scheduled and what happens to unused balances. The Building and Construction General On-site Award and the Children's Services Award are two examples that include RDO rules, and they do not work the same way. The first step in any DO question is to read the document that covers the employee.

How RDOs build up?

The amount set aside each week depends on how often the day off is taken. These are three common arrangements for a 40 hours week.

RDO arrangements are examples only. Your award or agreement sets the actual accrual rate.

The four week pattern is the best known, because it matches the 20 day cycle used in the Building and Construction Award.

What is the difference between RDO banking and RDO accrual?

There are two common ways to calculate the hours. Banking sets aside a fixed number of hours each week, for example 2 hours, regardless of the exact days worked. Accrual builds up a small fraction of an hour for each day worked, and in some awards for each paid leave day too. Banking is simpler to administer because the amount is the same every week.

Accrual follows the hours actually worked, so balances move with the roster and need closer tracking. Which method applied depends on your award or agreement.

What do the rules look like in a real award?

The Building and Construction General On-site Award sets out its RDO rules in clause 16. Ordinary hours are 38 per week, averaged over a 20 day, four week cycle. Each 8 hours day worked is paid as 7.6 hours, with 0.4 of an hour accruing toward the RDO, so 7.6 hours accumulate for every 19 days worked. Accrual also continues for public holidays not worked and for paid leave days, but not on the day an RDO is actually taken.

The RDO can fall on one common day for everyone or on different days for different employees, set out in a written roster issued 7 days before the cycle starts. It cannot be rostered on a public holiday. By agreement, an employee can bank up to 5 accrued RDOs and take them alter. An employer can ask someone to work a rostered RDO by agreement, or on at least 48 hours' notice for unforseen project delays or emergencies. In that case the employee is paid Saturday penalty rates and keeps the accrued RDO.

Other awards and agreements work differently, so treat this as an example of the level of detail to look for, not as a rule that applies everywhere.

Can part time staff benefit from RDOs?

It depends on the instrument. Under the Building and Construction award, part time employees can be paid for their actual hours and not accrue RDOs at all, or they can agree to accrue RDOs pro rata. Pro rata meand the hours set aside match the hours worked. If a full timer on 30 hours sets aside 2 hours a week, a part timer working 20 hours would set aside about 1 hour.

What happens to RDOs when staff are on leave or a public holiday falls on one?

In the award above, accrual carries on during paid leave. If an employee takes 40 hours of annual leave, they still accrue the usual 2 hours, so 2 hours of that leave effectively convert into RDO time. This makes sure there are enough hours in the balance when the RDO comes around.

Public holidays and sick leave are less uniform. The Building and Construction award does not allow an RDO to be rostered on a public holiday. Under the Children's Service Award, the Fair Work Ombudsman says an employee who is sick on a paid RDO can choose to be paid sick leave and agree with the employer to take the RDO on another day. Always check the instrucment before deciding how a clash should be handled.

Are unused RDOs paid out when someone leaves?

It depends on the award or agreement. Under the Building and Construction award, the employer must pay out acrued RDOs that have not been taken, including banked RDOs, on termination. Other instruments may be silent or handle it differently, and a contract or policy cannot take away an entitlement the instrument gives.

Do RDOs count towards super?

Super follows what is actually paid. Since 1 July 2026, super under Payday Super is calculated on qualifying earnings, and ordinary time earnings are one part of that. The ATO treats RDOs taken and paid at ordinary rates as qualifying earnings, and so are RDOs cashed out during employment.

Unused Rdos paid out on termination are not. In practice that means super is payable on the ordinary pay in each pay period and again when the RDO is taken on paid.

Who benefits more from RDOs?

Both sides can. Employees get a regular paid off, and when it falls next to a weekend it creates the long weekends many people value. Employers get predicatbility, because the days off are known in advance and can be planned around. Where the arrangement allows it, an employer can also user an RDO to manage a disrupted day, such as bad weather on a site. The balance depends on the indsutry and on the conditions for when an RDO can be taken.

How can rostering software help manage RDOs?

A roster is where an RDO arrangement either works or falls over. The days off need to land on the right dates, cover has to be arranged for the days others are away, and what staff are paid has to match what they accrued.

Microkeeper's rostering software lets managers build rosters from a template or by copying the previous week, see availability and wage costs while they build, run one roster per site with a combined view across all sites, and publish to the employee app. On the Enterprise plan, Roster Cycles apply a repeating pattern across a group or individual for any date range.

Approved hours then flow from timesheet software into payroll software on the same system, so the person building the roster and the person running the pay run are working from the same record. One thing to be clear about: Microkeeper does not ship with a prebuilt award library, so your RDO rules are set up with our team during implementation and then applied to later pay runs.

If you want to talk through how your award's RDO rules would be set up, talk to our team or try 1 month free.