As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly balance working hours between staff.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open your current rota, staff availability, leave record and demand or coverage plan for the relevant period.
   2. Create one table for required shifts with the date, start time, end time, location, role and number of people needed.
   3. Create a second table for each staff member showing role, skills, available times, leave, contracted or target hours, maximum hours and any fixed commitments.
   4. Add the fairness information that matters, including previous weekend or late shifts, undesirable shift definitions and preferences, while using staff IDs instead of unnecessary personal details.
   5. Paste both tables and the workplace rules into the prompt, then ask the chatbot to produce the rota, hour totals, conflicts, assumptions and fairness rule.
   6. Compare every proposed assignment with the original availability, skills, leave, coverage and hours tables, and check the totals using a spreadsheet.
   7. Ask a manager or colleague who knows the workplace to check rest, safety, equality, contractual and operational consequences before publishing the rota.
   8. Send the approved rota through your normal staff scheduling channel and record any manual changes and the reason for each change.

   Prompt

   Create a balanced staff rota from the data below. Treat the stated shift requirements, staff skills, availability, leave, contracted hours, maximum hours, minimum rest rules, fixed commitments and stated preferences as constraints. Do not invent availability, qualifications, demand or employment rules. Aim to distribute total hours and less desirable shifts fairly, but show the exact fairness rule you used. Produce: (1) a rota grouped by date, shift and staff member, (2) each person's total hours and shift count, (3) a comparison of each person's assigned hours with their contracted or target hours, (4) a list of uncovered shifts, conflicts and constraint breaches, and (5) any assumptions or information still needed. Do not silently resolve conflicts. If the data cannot support a fair rota, say why and give the smallest changes needed. Use only the information supplied here.
   
   Dates and planning period: [insert dates]
   Required coverage by date and shift: [paste table]
   Staff names or IDs, roles and skills: [paste table]
   Availability and unavailable times: [paste table]
   Leave and fixed commitments: [paste table]
   Contracted or target hours: [paste table]
   Maximum hours and rest requirements supplied by the employer: [paste rules]
   Shift lengths and undesirable-shift definitions: [paste details]
   Preferences and previous undesirable shifts: [paste details]
   Other workplace rules: [paste rules]

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.