The Estimate Given at Hire

General orientation, not legal advice.

What someone is told at interview about hours and pattern becomes the yardstick for every rota they are given afterwards.

What it should contain

Expected hours per week, as a range rather than a single figure.

The days and times they can expect to be scheduled.

Whether the pattern is fixed, rotating or variable.

Whether on-call or short-notice work is part of the role.

Which sites they may be asked to work at.

One page, given to them, dated.

Why it matters even where not required

It is the reference point for the hours-allocation conversation a year later, when someone says they were promised thirty hours and is getting sixteen.

Without it, that conversation is two recollections.

With it, it is a comparison, which either supports them or does not — and either way it resolves.

Where it is a legal requirement

Several fair workweek ordinances require a good-faith estimate in writing at hire, and expect the actual schedule to resemble it.

A persistent, substantial divergence can itself be a violation, separately from any notice or premium issue.

Which means the estimate is not a recruitment document. It is a commitment with a compliance dimension.

Being honest in it

The temptation is to overstate hours to attract candidates.

Which produces someone who joins expecting thirty, receives sixteen, and leaves within three months — having cost a full recruitment cycle.

State the realistic range, including the quiet season.

Candidates who decline on that basis were going to leave anyway, later and more expensively.

Revising it

When the role genuinely changes — a promotion, a move to a different pattern, a new site — issue a new one.

With agreement, not by announcement, because it describes terms.

And keep the old ones, so the sequence is visible.

The check worth running

Take five people hired in the last year.

Compare their estimate against their actual average hours and pattern.

A systematic gap in one direction is a recruitment honesty problem with a compliance edge, and it is much better found by you than by someone else.

Check five hires against theirs

An hour that finds a recruitment honesty problem before someone else does.

Take five people hired in the last year.

Compare the estimate against their actual average hours and pattern.

A systematic gap in one direction is overstating hours to attract candidates, which produces someone who joins expecting thirty, receives sixteen, and leaves within three months having cost a full recruitment cycle.

Check the difficult case

Use view this scope example to frame one representative case. The useful evidence is what happens when an employee questions an entry and a manager must correct and export it.