You have a Guard or Reserve employee on your team. They do their job well. Then they hand you a piece of paper with drill dates on it. One weekend a month. Two weeks in the summer. Maybe a sudden set of orders for a school or an exercise.

Most managers want to do the right thing here. The problem is they are not sure what the law actually requires. So they guess. Some of those guesses are illegal and they do not know it. Asking the employee to swap shifts. Telling them to burn their vacation days. Counting drill against their attendance score. Each of those can land a company in front of the Department of Labor.

This guide walks through the practical do's and don'ts of scheduling around drill weekends and annual training. It is written for a manager or HR lead at a midsize company. Not a Fortune 500 with a full legal team on call. The rules come from the federal law called USERRA and its regulations at 20 CFR Part 1002. Get the basics right and a Guard or Reserve hire becomes one of the most reliable people on your roster. Get them wrong and it gets expensive fast.

What Does USERRA Require When an Employee Has Drill?

USERRA is the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act. It protects people who serve in the Guard and Reserve while holding a civilian job. The Department of Labor enforces it.

The core idea is simple. You must let the employee go serve. Then you must bring them back. Drill weekends, annual training, and most other military duty are protected leave. The employee does not need your permission. They need to give you notice and then go.

This applies no matter how small your company is. USERRA has no minimum employee count. A 12-person shop and a 12,000-person company follow the same rules. The law also covers part-time and probationary workers, not just full-time staff.

The total cap on protected service across one job is five years. But routine drill and annual training do not count against that five-year limit. So a Reservist can drill for a full career and never use up their protection. We cover the cap in detail in our guide to the USERRA escalator principle and the 5-year rule.

Can You Make the Employee Find Someone to Cover Their Shift?

No. This is the one that trips up the most managers. You cannot require a Guard or Reserve employee to find a replacement worker for the shifts they miss for drill.

It feels reasonable on the surface. If anyone else wants a Friday off, they trade shifts. Why is the Reservist different? Because their absence is protected by federal law. The duty to keep your operation running during that absence is yours, not theirs. Making the leave conditional on finding coverage would put a barrier in front of a right the law gives them outright.

You can still ask for volunteers. You can offer the open shift to the rest of the team. What you cannot do is tell the Reservist, "You can go to drill, but only if you get someone to cover you." That crosses the line.

The fix is on your side of the desk. You plan for the absence the same way you plan for any known gap. Which leads to the next point.

How Much Notice Does the Employee Have to Give?

The employee must give you notice before they leave for service. That part is required. But the notice rules are looser than most managers expect.

Under 20 CFR 1002.85, the notice can be verbal or written. It does not have to follow any set format. A text message counts. An email counts. Telling you in the hallway counts. The Department of Defense recommends 30 days when it is possible, but USERRA does not set a hard deadline.

The employee should give notice as far in advance as is reasonable. For monthly drill, that is easy. Drill schedules come out far ahead of time, often for the whole fiscal year. A good Reservist will hand you that calendar early. Use it.

There is also an exception. Under 20 CFR 1002.86, the employee is excused from giving advance notice when it is prevented by military necessity, or when notice is otherwise impossible or unreasonable. Short-notice orders happen. A no-notice recall is rare but real. You cannot punish an employee for an absence the military gave them no time to warn you about.

Can You Force the Employee to Use Vacation or PTO for Drill?

No. You cannot require a Guard or Reserve employee to use their accrued vacation or paid time off for military service.

This is spelled out in 20 CFR 1002.153. The employee gets to choose. They may elect to use vacation, annual, or similar paid leave during drill so they keep getting a civilian paycheck. That is their call. You cannot make the choice for them.

So what does the time off look like if they do not use PTO? It is leave without pay from your company. The military pays them for drill. You are not on the hook for their wages during that weekend. You just hold the job and bring them back.

Here is the practical version. The Reservist tells you they have drill on the 14th and 15th. You do not deduct it from their vacation balance unless they ask you to. You do not pay them for those two days unless your own policy says you do. You schedule around the gap and move on.

When Does the Employee Have to Report Back After Drill?

The return rule depends on how long the service lasted. Drill weekends and most annual training fall under the shortest window. Service of 1 to 30 days has the tightest return rule, and it is generous to the employee on purpose.

Under 20 CFR 1002.115, after service of less than 31 days the employee must report back at the start of the first full regularly scheduled work period. That period starts on the first full calendar day after they finish service. But there are two things built in before that clock starts. First, safe travel time home. Second, an 8-hour rest period after they get home.

The regulation gives a clear example. Say drill ends and the employee gets home at 10 p.m. on Sunday. They are not required to report until the next work period that begins at least 8 hours later. So no earlier than 6 a.m. Monday. If they normally start at 5 a.m., you cannot count them late for missing that shift.

For a manager, the takeaway is to look at when they actually got home, not just when drill ended. A Reservist who drilled three hours away and rolled in at midnight gets their rest before the next shift. Build that into the schedule and you avoid an attendance dispute that you would lose.

Can You Count Drill Against Attendance or Discipline?

No. This is where good intentions still get companies in trouble. USERRA prohibits discrimination and retaliation against an employee because of their military service or obligations.

If you use an attendance points system, drill absences cannot earn points. A Reservist who misses two days a month for drill cannot rack up "occurrences". That is not how protected leave works. Treating protected leave like an unexcused absence is the exact kind of discrimination the law forbids.

It goes past attendance. You cannot pass a Reservist over for a promotion because their drill schedule is "inconvenient." You cannot give them the worst shifts as payback. You cannot cut their hours after they hand you orders. You cannot fire them for being gone on duty. If military service is a motivating factor in any decision, that is a USERRA violation.

This shows up in subtle ways. A manager who sighs every time drill comes up. A scheduler who quietly stops giving the Reservist good shifts. None of it is written down, but a pattern is still evidence. Train your front-line managers so the resentment never starts.

What About Longer Orders, Not Just Drill?

Drill weekends and two-week annual training are the routine cases. But Guard and Reserve members also pull longer orders. Schools that run a month or more. Mobilizations. Deployments that last most of a year.

The scheduling rules shift as the service gets longer. The return-to-work deadline stretches out. Service of 31 to 180 days gives the employee 14 days to apply for reemployment. Service over 180 days gives them 90 days. Health coverage rules and the escalator principle come into play for the long absences.

That is a different scheduling problem than the monthly drill cycle, and we cover it separately. If you have an employee heading out on a long set of orders, read our piece on the broader USERRA employer obligations for Guard and Reserve. For this article, keep the focus on the recurring drill and annual-training rhythm, which is the part most managers deal with month to month.

How Do You Build a Schedule That Works for Both Sides?

The law sets the floor. A smart manager builds above it. Here is how to make drill weekends a non-event instead of a monthly fire drill.

Get the calendar early and put it on the team schedule. When you know the second weekend of every month is out, staff for it like any planned gap. Cross-train at least one other person on the Reservist's core tasks so nothing stalls when they are gone. Build a small bench, not a single point of failure.

Write a clear military leave policy so every manager handles it the same way. A written policy stops one supervisor from improvising something illegal. We have a free military leave policy template for employers you can adapt. You can also lean on the free support offered through ESGR, the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve program, which exists to help companies handle exactly these situations.

Why Guard and Reserve Hires Are Worth the Scheduling

The scheduling looks like a cost when you only see the missing weekend. Look at the full picture and the math flips. Guard and Reserve members bring training, clearances, and leadership reps. The work ethic most employers spend years trying to build? They already have it. The one weekend a month is a small price for that.

And the supply is there. BMR adds over 1,000 new veteran and Guard and Reserve profiles every month, with more than 60,000 resumes built on the platform. The pipeline is fresh and growing. If you want to fill roles with people who operate at this level, it is there.

If you are ready to source Guard, Reserve, and veteran talent for your open roles, you can reach out to access BMR's veteran talent pool. We connect midsize employers with candidates who are ready to work and already know how to show up. For more on building a program around these hires, start with our employer guide to hiring National Guard and Reserve members.