Employee availability
Also called: availability, working preferences
Availability is the record of when each person can and cannot work — study days, second jobs, childcare, standing commitments. It is the constraint you build the rota inside, not a wish list.
Availability is not time off
Availability is a standing pattern: never Tuesday mornings, never after 20:00 on weekdays. Time off is a specific request for specific dates. Mixing the two in one list is how people end up scheduled on the one evening they said they could never work.
Hard and soft
Some constraints are absolute — a lecture, a second job. Others are preferences. Recording which is which saves the argument later, because a manager who breaks a hard constraint has made a mistake, while one who breaks a preference has made a trade-off.
Keeping it current
Availability decays. Term dates change, second jobs end. Collecting it once at hiring and never again produces a rota built on last year’s facts. A short check every few months costs less than one badly covered Saturday.