Systems and methods are provided for facilitating equitable assignment of rotating shifts to agents in a contact center. In one embodiment, points are allocated to agents indicating their frequency of receiving undesirable shift assignments. Based on the previously allocated points, future undesirable shifts are assigned to agents. The point allocation scheme accommodates various exceptions scheduling periodic rotating shifts, such as skipping assignment of an agent from an upcoming undesirable shift, agents leaving, swapping a shift, and agents being added. In another embodiments, agents are assigned to rotating shifts using constructs of a cycle and a rotation template, which facilitates assigning agents to a work schedule with a calendar in a repetitious manner, and where certain shifts are non-rotational in nature and other shifts are rotational in nature.