Zero-hours contracts explained

What the contract does

You offer work when you have it. The person can accept or, unless a different agreement says so, decline. You must not stop them working for someone else. An exclusivity clause in a zero-hours contract is unenforceable. They can look for other work, and they can take it.

The contract should say that hours are not guaranteed, how you will offer a shift, and how holiday is handled. A blank “as and when” line is not enough if, in practice, you punish someone for saying no. A pattern you always honour can become something a tribunal will look at, even if the paper says zero.

Holiday, rest and sick pay

Zero-hours workers build up holiday. For leave years that began on or after 1 April 2024, irregular hours can accrue at 12.07% of hours worked in the pay period. That is 5.6 weeks divided by 46.4. It is still capped, across the year, at 5.6 weeks. The holiday entitlement calculator shows the 12.07% figure as an estimate. It does not pay the holiday.

Rest breaks and the 48-hour average still apply on the hours they actually work. A week of three long closes is working time. Read the working time guide against those shifts, not against a contract that says the hours might be zero.

Statutory Sick Pay has its own rules. From 6 April 2026 it can be due from the first full day of sickness, at the lower of £123.25 a week and 80% of average weekly earnings. It is not refused only because earnings sit under the National Insurance lower earnings limit. The SSP calculator is the estimate. A fit note is still about evidence of the illness, which is on the fit note guide.

What is not in force yet

The Employment Rights Act 2025 contains a right to guaranteed hours, a right to reasonable notice of a shift, and a right to payment when a shift is cancelled, moved or cut short. Those rights are for zero-hours workers and some other workers whose hours are not set. GOV.UK’s implementation timeline says they are planned for 2027, and that the timing will be updated after consultation. The early commencement regulations switched on the power to consult and to write the detailed rules. They did not switch on the duties themselves.

Until those duties are in force, do not tell a team that the Act already requires a set amount of notice or a set cancellation payment. Publish the week in enough time for people to plan, because that is the decent practice and the one a later rule is aimed at. Do not invent a notice period the regulations have not set.

Using a rota without pretending the hours were guaranteed

Put offered shifts on the rota as drafts until the person has accepted and you are ready for the team to see them. Publish the ones that are agreed. An open shift is the right place for a gap that has no name yet. Do not leave a draft on someone’s phone as if it were a promise, because in Shiftbrook a draft is not shown to staff.

When the week changes, update the published rota. A message that contradicts the grid is how two people arrive, or nobody does. Approved hours still download as a CSV. The product does not turn a zero-hours week into a wage.