A casual employee, in a New Zealand context, is someone engaged to work on an as-needed, irregular basis — picking up individual shifts as they're offered — rather than working to a fixed, ongoing roster with guaranteed hours.

How it typically works

Casual arrangements commonly share a few features, though the detail varies by workplace and employment agreement:

• No guarantee of ongoing work — a casual employee isn't promised future shifts, and generally isn't obliged to accept every shift offered.
• Shift-by-shift engagement — each shift (or roster period) is effectively its own offer and acceptance, rather than a standing schedule.
• Pay reflects hours actually worked — casual pay structures in NZ often carry a component reflecting the lack of guaranteed hours and leave entitlements, compared to permanent roles.
• Some businesses formalise casual work through a written casual employment agreement, setting out how shifts are offered and confirmed.

Why it matters

Casual employment suits work with genuinely variable demand — event venues, hospitality, seasonal attractions — where a fixed roster of permanent staff wouldn't match how the work actually arrives. But the flexibility runs in both directions: employees can decline shifts, and businesses can offer varying amounts of work between periods. That two-way flexibility is exactly what a bid-based rostering model is built to support — publishing what's available and letting people choose, rather than assuming fixed availability.

This is a general description, not legal or employment advice. Definitions of casual employment, minimum entitlements, and related obligations are set out in NZ employment law and can change — check current guidance from Employment New Zealand before making employment decisions.

In Chronomancer

Chronomancer is built around exactly this kind of workforce: a pool of casual contacts who bid for the specific shifts they want each period, with no assumption of standing availability, and a reliability score that reflects their actual attendance history rather than a fixed schedule.