SCHADS Award Complexity: Managing the Advanced Provisions with Confidence

This transcript of Effective HR’s “SCHADS Award Complexity: Managing the Advanced Provisions with Confidence” webinar is auto-generated and may contain errors. It is provided for general information only, does not constitute legal or industrial advice, and should not be relied on for any specific decision. For the full context, please watch the webinar above or contact Effective HR.

Effective HR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to this afternoon's Navigating the Complexity of SHADS Award Compliance webinar. We'll just wait a minute or so while everyone joins this afternoon's session.

Corinne West: You can see everyone rushing through the proverbial gates, Emma. Always really exciting. Get in and get your seats. Get comfy. I'm most excited, Emma, for the Q&A at the end. That's always my favourite part. So, please, questions coming through.

Effective HR: Yes, yes, we always get, particularly on the topics that we'll be covering in today's webinar, always triggers lots and lots of questions, so I think that's almost, almost a certainty when it comes to the Shards of war.

Corinne West: I always…

Effective HR: Any questions on its nuances?

Corinne West: If it was easy, Emma, we'd probably be out of a job, because it's about 90% of my client load assisting clients with this, so yeah, 100%, it's a tricky one for sure. Beautiful. What do you reckon, Emma? We've got a lot of content to get through.

Effective HR: We do, we do. So I think we'll get started. Welcome, everyone. That's a part two of our Shads Award webinar series. We are glad to have you, have you attend our session this afternoon, and this afternoon we will be exploring the complexities of this award, and how to manage those complexities confidently. A couple of weeks ago, we covered the foundational elements of the SHADS Award and the importance of proactive compliance. Today, we will be diving deeper into the more advanced And often misunderstood aspects of the award, especially those that can create those operational headaches if not managed properly. As always, our aim is to cut through this complexity, to give you practical guidance that Supports compliance, reduces risk, and just makes managing your workforce that little bit easier. Today's webinar is being recorded, and we will be sharing the recording with you after the session. So that you will be able to revisit the content, and of course, share that content with your team. Now, before we begin, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we all meet today. I pay my respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people joining us in this webinar, and to elders past, present, and emerging for their ongoing contributions to our communities. For those of you who are joining our webinar for the first time, welcome. I'm Emma Dawson, I'm a HR consultant at Effective HR, and I'm joined today by my brilliant colleague, Corinne West, who is our lead HR consultant. Together, we've spent numerous years supporting businesses across the NDIS and community services sector, with a focus and specialization in human resources, industrial relations. work health and safety and payroll compliance, and of course, our day-to-day, which is interpreting and applying the SUDS Award in real-world settings. In today's session, we will be focusing on the key areas where the chance of wall breaches most often occur, so we will begin By exploring award coverage, we will be looking at the differences between the SUDS Award and the Health Professionals Award, and how to avoid the common trap of misclassification. We will then take a closer look at pay structures, including salaries. flat rates and individual flexibility agreements, along with some of the risks that can be involved when we step outside of the standard award provisions. From there, we will move into employee benefits and allowances, so covering entitlements such as the quantum of leave provisions. Clothing and equipment, first aid, travel, how to properly manage broken shifts, client cancellations, 24-hour care shifts, and remote work structures. As always, we will finish with an interactive Q&A. Throughout the session, though, feel free to submit your questions through our chat or Q&A sectors of the Zoom platform. We will then look to answer as many questions as possible throughout and at the end of the session. If you would prefer to take your questions offline, please visit our website, and we would also be happy to organize a complimentary consultation session with you to discuss after. I'll now hand it over to Corinne, who's going to be taking us through today's technical content.

Corinne West: Thank you so much, Emma, and I'm so excited to jump in. I think it's important when we start to talk about award coverage, particularly, as we mentioned, the lines that may blur between the SHADS Award and the Health Professionals Award. It's good to do a quick recap. Obviously, you can access our previous recordings online around our SHADS basics, if you will, but What we learned in there, by way of recap, is understanding predominantly how the home care, disability care, and aged care substreves And the SACS, that's Social and Community Services stream, which are all nested under one award, the SHADS Award, are going to apply, predominantly to our NDIS provider clients. And essentially, the key takeouts there is that we're applying, our streams and reviewing that to the business as a whole, not any particular client, participant, or employee, or shift. We're looking at that on a industry level, what is our organization doing? We're looking at our classification schedules that exist at the back of the award, so you're looking at schedules A through F. Which is going to help us understand those individual classifications, and we're also going to look at pay points shortly as a bit of a recap as well. What's interesting on the screen now, I guess I've got my overview of, generally speaking, very much a generalization of… of how staff may… of how organisations, and thus staff, be classified as home care versus SAC. It's a very common issue that come up. We've got an interesting scenario here to include as well. So, if we take a support worker, Jamie, who's working with an elderly client in their home. They're providing companionship, assisting with personal care 3 days a week. But on that fourth day, they might be running a social outing for multiple clients, we might be doing community access sorts of work. So, this is something that comes up quite often. You know, we have support packages, and a lot of that work includes walking around the home that that person is living in. However, we're certainly assisting, everything from errands and groceries and medical appointments through to some more, you know, enriching activities that you might do. So maybe some lifestyle support, gentle exercise, going to the movies, going to the theater, something, something nice there as well. What's really interesting is this is where I see people get a little bit flipped up and go, okay, well, that day, they're in the community, so we're going to pay tax rate just for that day. No, we do not. An employee's classification is exactly that. It's linked to their employment, not a particular shift, not a particular client, not a particular duty that may be performed, on any given day. So it's really important that we are getting that right, because those wage rates can differ, you know, several dollars an hour difference. So we want to make sure that we're getting those correct classifications right to ensure that foundation of compliance. We had discussed as well, you know, as I said, we wanted to recap understanding the SHADS Award, but we quite often see, for a lot of providers, the Health Professionals Award potentially creeping into this space. Even for our service for one client that we see, they may have employees covered under two, three awards, if we're to throw the Nurses Award in there too, so it can be quite tricky, especially when there's a lot of similar duties, to say, well, Who's covered by what? So, I've got, I guess, some general overview there of what awards Zest applies, based on that industry and that organization, but what's really interesting is that both The SHADS Award and the Health Professionals Award have coverage for health professionals, such as a shore worker. So this might be where we're operating in more of that social and community services space. So, as an example, if we take someone like our employee Lisa, who's a qualified social worker, working in a disability support organization, she's providing those social work services, but also helping out with program, case management, you know, maybe some admin in the office. How do we know where to classify her? So this is something that we have actually, at Effective HR, worked directly with the Fair Work Ombudsman to get some… some position determination on, right? Because it is great, right? These… these areas are complex. And essentially, what we're really looking at is the definition of those industries, and then the classifications that fall within it. So, if we treat this organization as the services they're providing being covered under that SACS sector. We then have a look at Schedule B as a starting point to go Is there room to cover Lisa under this industry award, if that is the industry we're working in? In the situation where that social worker might be working for a medical practice, or health practice, or a similar environment in that more clinical space. then they may very well fall under the Health Professionals Award. But if we're looking at this community organization, you know, designed to support participants with lifestyle access, support coordination, social work as an example. Then potentially there is coverage under the SHADS Award, because when we look at Schedule B, we've got coverage not only for someone completing, say, a Level 3 or Level 4, certificate, but also degree qualifications as well can cover employees under the SHADS Awards. So, it's really important to understand that there is some… some blurred lines there. to answer the question of whether or not we can be covered by both, it's a straight-up no. And again, I'm going to drum that into you, that an employee's classification is linked to their employment, so it's going to be one classification, one award set of rules in that instance. Another situation that you might find relatable that pops up here is when we're looking at the Shads Award versus the Clark's Award, which people may have heard of for that office-based administration Or management employees, and a lot of people wonder which one applies. It certainly depends on a case-by-case basis, but the key take-outs to that is that we're, as a technical discipline, always starting with our industry award first. So we're looking at the Shads Award, we're looking at what stream applies, and then we're looking at our classification schedules to see, does the role fit here? So, I mean, generally speaking. For our SACS employees, SACS organization, it's likely that the administration and management roles will be covered by the SHUDS Award. However, if we're falling into the home care stream, generally speaking, our admin and management roles may sit separately. It's something that should be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, because it's quite nuanced, but it's really worth understanding that there are multiple awards, or 122 in total, that could come into play that we want to be across. What I think is interesting is, you know, I can ramble here till the cows come home around board coverage and classifications, but a big part of it is to go, well, so what? Why does this even matter? You know, I'm paying someone $6 above minimum wage anyway, there's no real issue. what we see happen is that the wrong award can result in wage compliance risks, obviously in award breach risks as well, so where we have civil penalty provisions and fines for technical award breaches. That classification forms the foundation of compliance. So. You know, each different level has a different rate of pay. Each award has different sets of rules, you know, as an example, the Shads Award contains weird and wonderful causes around sleepovers, around excursions, but we're not going to find that in the Health Professionals Award. So understanding how to correctly pay and roster different types of shifts, you know, will… the award itself has a significant impact on how we do that, how we do that correctly. So… We really want to make sure we're getting this right to avoid any wage compliance issues, and award compliance issues there as well. Turning now to pay point progression, this is something that, I look at all the time with our clients. And specifically, we're talking about Course 13.3 of the SHADS Award. I think what's really interesting here, there's, I guess, been an evolution in how we view this clause since its inception, and a lot of that has to do with a very specific, 2021 case law precedent that came out. So, in Thomas… Thompson, sorry, versus Arb… Bias? Limited? I always get a bit confused with that name there. So, in this specific court case, the judge looked specifically at Clause 13.3 of the Shads Award to go, how are we interpreting this? And what was really interesting is they pointed out that this clause is not designed to operate, have employees become automatically entitled. to progression through pay points, when they've demonstrated competency, in their role or acquired new skills. But rather, they simply become eligible. for progression to the next pay point. But whether or not they would move up is actually entirely at the discretion of the employer. So a little bit of good news there. What I like to look at, though, with this is making sure, you know, we're operating in with this idea of no surprises and not causing any, kind of issues for ourselves, in that Across the industry, a lot of providers do do automatic progression. So if you're hiring a support worker that's maybe worked somewhere else with a different set of expectations around automatic progression, you know, this could then lead to potential issues or questions or complaints come anniversary time of, well, why haven't I gone up? So, being proactive, looking at, a pay point progression checklist, so we can go, is someone eligible, is someone not, based on the criteria you determine appropriate, as aligned with the award, and actually communicating with our staff members as well. So looking at it more holistically to go, how do we avoid Problems before they become one. So there's a few really simple ways that you, as providers, as leaders, can systemize that approach to make sure that you're not automatically progressing people year on year and pricing yourself out of a job, but you are handling it in a way that is fair and transparent for our employees as well, as they go through those multiple years of service, hopefully. So… A really important one to make sure that you've got that across. Another really common thing that we see come up in the SHADS award space is around paying salaries. So this is, I guess, particularly relevant when you might have, say, management roles, or people that you wish to pay above the award rate. So, it's good to understand how we can offer a competitive salary, retain our staff, but also be compliant. Right? I regularly get asked what's the difference between a salary and a flat rate? Generally speaking, salaries are depicted as an annual figure, as a per annum figure, while a flat rate is usually stated in an hourly rate. They both achieve the same thing for the most part. They're designed to encompass an employee's total pay. Which may have some inclusions and exclusions, could include ordinary hours. allowances, penalties, loadings, overtime that might be applicable under the award. So, what you find is, you know, we're retaining a staff member by giving them a great salary, we're potentially reducing some burden when it comes to pays, not processing 12 line items of of these payments. However, it can create a risk of accidental underpayment. Because if we're not checking those numbers regularly as something changes, it can… it can bite us in the bar, realistically. So, what we like to call this is a boot calculation, which stands for Better Off Overall Test. As an acronym. And that's what the Fair Work Ombudsman use and talk about in their language to make sure that if we're paying a salary. that it's going to be compliant. So, you certainly can pay a salary or a flat rate under the award. It's an option. We want to make sure that we're doing the boot calc. We're reviewing it annually. I like to review it specifically have a quick check, A, at an employee's anniversary, especially if they're progressing pay points, B, when we have our Fair Work Commission minimum wage determination, so if our wages are going to go up in the new financial year, doing it there. Also, if there's any particular change in someone's roster. If you've calculated their… their boot or their salary off Monday to Friday 9 to 5, and then they move to Wednesday to Sunday. you can see how that number can look very different when you start to think about the penalty rates that are needing to be incorporated into that calculation. So, always good to test whenever any changes there, as well as those two milestones. If we are paying someone above award, I would like to hope you've got really specific wording in our employment contract pointing that out, and allowing what we call a bit of an setting clause. So, this is the example where we've intended for our salary to cover all payments. And we happen to note later on there's some weird and wonderful entitlement that we haven't paid. We want to be able to use that contract clause to offset against any entitlement that might be payable. There's a lot of case law in that space that tells us how things can and can't be worded. Most recently, gosh, it was the end of last year, start of this year, a case involving Woolworths, and a massive back payment as a result of this. Probably one of the biggest we've seen in the history. So. Even the big guys are getting this wrong, right? So really important that we're having our contract clauses reviewed to make sure they are as watertight as possible, especially when we think about such recent case law decision, what we learn from there. Dating and applying in new employment contracts is certainly something for your to-do list as a people manager. What I like to say as well is that if we are looking to vary the way any award clauses apply, an IFA might be appropriate. So we will touch on that, later on in more detail, but I think when we talk about salaries, the most common thing that pops up here is the inclusion of annual leave loading. So you'll know that the award provides specifically for an annual leave loading payment, which may vary depending on if you're a day worker or a shift worker. And a lot of times, people go, okay, my employee's salaried, I'm going to pay them the same amount of money if they were on holidays as what they were if they were working here in the office. If that is the case, we need not only an offset clause in our contract, but we actually need an IFA to vary how that's applied, if that loading amount is not enough to be offset within a particular payroll period. So again, this is where the calculations and the documentations become really important to ensure compliance, and making sure we're across everything there. Okay, what's another, I guess. peripheral point I want to make around the SHADS Award. You may have heard a term of annualized salary arrangements. This is the model clause that exists in there, about 85-ish, I want to say, of the 122 modern awards. It does not exist in the Shads Award, though, so it is a separate concept and a separate idea, and it's really important from a language perspective that we understand those ramifications are not applying in this particular scenario. It will still be really important when it comes to salary that we are tracking our actual hours worked, and what would have been, an entitlement for the employee. A, for that regular reconciliation and boot calculations. B, that if we are, for whatever reason, faced with an underpayment claim, a complaint around wages, we need to really easily be able to pull up and go, well, I know exactly what they worked, I know what they're entitled to, I know what they got paid, and I know how we're allowed to do so, because our documentation says. If we can't regularly and easily access that information, we're potentially getting ourselves in a bit of a hot spot, especially when we look at the Fair Work Act's requirements for record keeping around wages, timesheets, and records in that sense. So we really want to make sure that even if we're entering into a salary arrangement, we're still tracking hours worked. You know, this can be simple and systemized. It doesn't need to be… Paper timesheets for our senior managers every week. There's certainly other ways to go about that, making sure that a system exists for you to regularly be able to find that information. Testing your knowledge now, we've got a little bit of a scenario on screen. We have Alex, who is a team leader on a salary of $90,000. Sounds pretty good. His contract states that this is intended to offset penalties, overtime, and allowances, and his regular roster does include weekend work, long shifts, 12-hour shifts maybe, and some broken shifts. Okay, with travel time involved. So, to ask the question of, is his salary compliant? What could go wrong if he challenges his pay? Is this salary compliant? I don't know. And the reason why I say that is because I would like to get the data and do a specific group calculation. So, working out exactly what those, you know, Saturday, Sunday starting, finishing times are, your exact roster, to be able to go, well, what should you have been paid? Is that higher or lower than the salary payment you have received in that particular pay period? Do we have offsetting qualities available? Do we have an IFA that's varying how we're applying these award entitlements? All of that's going to be necessary to answer that question with confidence. around Alex's salary. So, it doesn't need to be impossible, it just needs to be confident and understanding and having the resources and expertise at your fingertips to be able to action that. The so what factor here, I mean, it's a pretty big one, right? Underpayments can accumulate quite quickly. Back payments, there's a civil statute of limitations of 6 years, okay? So, we don't want to be back paying something for 6 years. If we don't have an offset clause in the contract. the salary means nothing, someone is still going to be entitled to all of the award entitlements. So we really, really want to check our contracts. If we don't have IFAs in place where we are varying causes of the contract, this too is an issue. And we want to make sure that we're essentially able to prove that employees are better off overall, demonstrated that we've attempted And we're trying our best at being compliant, because wage theft is now a criminal sanctioned, liability there. So we're not just talking about fines anymore, we are talking about potential jail time and criminal sanctions. So we really want to make sure that we're getting this right. Ifas, this is one of my favourite topics. For anyone with very good eyesight, have a look at the right-hand side of the screen. What that is, is a direct excerpt of Clause 7 of the Shads Award. The reason why this is one of my favourites, IFA Individual Flexibility Agreements. It's because it's so prescriptive. I like to use this clause as a bit of a checklist. I find it super helpful there. So, in terms of when I can use an IFA, Clause 7.1 tells me that. It tells me that I can use it on an individual basis between an employer and an employee to agree. To vary terms that are in relation to arrangements for when work are performed. overtime rates, penalty rates, allowances, and that annual leave loading we were talking about earlier. So that one there, again, really clear on what we can and can't vary in order to match what we need it to. So, some examples I've worked with clients on to be able to draft IFAs to work for them. You'll hopefully know, for sleepover shifts, we need a minimum 4-hour engagement on at least one side of the shift. We had a situation where a support worker was a uni student who was at uni till 7, wanted to do 8 till 10 on one side, and a shorter shift on the other. So, there was certainly a reason and a wish for both parties to enter this. It suited the employer to have that shift. It suited the employee, certainly, to be able to have that earning capacity. But it doesn't technically align with the clause of the award. It says minimum 4 hours. So using an IFA to vary that particular clause and subclause It was really important to be able to demonstrate compliance and achieve what, practically and operationally, that organization needed to. We've also seen the same when it comes to SACS providers that may want to use broken shifts. That's something that, you know, there's currently limited jurisdiction when it comes to, say, our home care employees using it. If we want that to translate over, we're going to need an IFA to cover that. So… That's essentially how someone might use it. In terms of when we give this to an employee, it's very specific that you'll see at Clause 7.3. It's only after commencement, okay? So that could be after day one. But we should never be issuing these, you know, with a letter of offer prior to commencement. This has actually been tested. There was a massive CommBank claim. They tried to do IFAs on their, EBA. They were issuing it to everyone prior to commencement. They were found to be unenforceable, which resulted in a $5.9 million back payment for CommBank. So, again, pretty simple, it's there, but we want to be getting it right. In terms of giving it to all support workers, as an example, I'd like to defer back to the name of the document. It's an individual flexibility agreement. There's no intention for this to be a blanket coverage because a certain shift structure works for your roster. You know, it needs to be aligned to the award, it needs to be, as we see in 7.5, Resulting in the employee being better off overall. So financially, from a wellbeing perspective, all of this is taken into consideration to see whether or not this document is enforceable, should it be tested. We then see the letter clauses of this section pointing out, you know, what should be in this IFA. Again, that's what I love using as a bit of a checklist to make sure that the document is going to be as watertight as we can possibly get it. So that if you're ever faced with having it tested, we've got you covered there as well. It's something where we should be reviewing our IFAs regularly, because as we said, rosters change, circumstances change, they may no longer be relevant, or they may require updating, because we now want to incorporate all very different clauses to what the original document achieved. I like to say reviewing them every 3 to 6 months, and that doesn't have to be an arduous process. a quick check that that's going to match what it needs to match is good. What you'll see at Clause 7, 11 is that if we are trying to terminate this document unilaterally, there's 13 weeks notice on it to vary back. So again, if we're regularly checking, and we're looking to potentially update our structures, it's going to be important to get ahead of that, because that is a long notice period. Moving on now to the clothing, uniforms, laundry, equipment allowances that exist under the award. This here is a weird and wonderful section that's contained at Clause 20 of the award, our allowances that are going to apply for different scenarios. Arguably, my advice will vary on a case-by-case basis, but, you know, sometimes these allowances don't apply. You know, yourself as an organization, you decide whether or not you want to provide uniforms and require staff to wear uniforms. It's… Not super common in the industry, and there's obviously care and service considerations there as to whether or not we want our support workers clearly identified. And that's a case-by-case basis of what's right for your organization. Where we are requiring staff to wear uniform, however, we do have uniform and laundry allowances. We also have soiled clothing allowances that exist, as well as the requirement of repair or replacement. So, if a support worker happens to rip a hole tripping over in their $400 Gs. As they were chasing after a client, I would certainly want a policy that says I'm not liable for replacing those $400 jeans. So making sure when it comes to these sorts of entitlements, you know, there is wiggle room there to actually have a policy to say, well, what does this mean for us? Let's… interpret and apply the award. Let's also set some boundaries that, yes, we will do the repair and replacement, but, you know, let's not be taking valuables and significantly expensive equipment, jewelry, whatever it might be. Into… into our shifts and into that caring environment. So, very important to make sure we've… we've got that in place. So, specifically, if you wanted to nerd out with me in the legislation, please have a look at Clause 20.2, Clothing and Equipment. That's talking specifically around the numbers, so I think currently we're looking at about $1.23 per shift for a uniform allowance, which is then calculated on a weekly basis as well. And then we've got a laundry allowance as well to launder those uniforms. I've had a situation come up with a client recently where, they have been paying the laundry allowance. When we've looked at the specific clauses, 20.2 to 20.4, we can see that there's a solid case for not actually paying that allowance anymore. So that's going to result in, you know, an impact for someone's wage. They're going to get, you know, less in the hand than what they were if they're no longer receiving these allowances. It's going to result in several thousand dollars of cost savings per annum, in order to, you know, remove that. And that's certainly an option. This is where we also start looking at our change management, processes, because employees are gonna potentially think that's not a very, popular decision. We want to be strategic in how we roll that out and how we manage that. Again, ensuring compliance and being fair and transparent with our workers, around what's happening here. this is particularly relevant as well, Emma. It might be something we touch on later in the Q&A, but to go totally off tangent for a moment, Jat's Joint, Sleepover's Case. For anyone that's been nerding out and following along, we got the decision on Friday. last week, okay? So, another big update here. What we're doing at Effective HR this week is pulling that, I can't even remember how many pages that decision is, a lot. Pulling it apart with a fine-tooth comb, and putting together If you've worked with me enough, you know that the terminology is that so what factor. What does that actually mean for you as an organization? What do you need to do? How we can support? So stay tuned for that, and that's something our team is working on to make sure you've got some guidance around that. But as we were talking about it, I thought, very important to flag, Emma, and I'm sure we're going to have some questions come through on that one as well. The next point I've got in here is specifically around our first aid allowance. So this was something recently, so it was about late 2025, the Fair Work Ombudsman did actually clarify And explain the interpretation here, because it was so widely misunderstood, in the… in the industry. What's important to determine entitlements for this allowance is working out if you are going to be covered by Home Care or SACS. So again, why classification stream determination is so important. Long story short, holding a certificate doesn't actually automatically mean you get the allowance. You know, the certificate is a very common entry point for any support worker in the industry. What it's going to depend on is what our stream is, and then how we're applying it. So, for our organizations out there that are covered by the home care stream. If you have a home care employee that is required by you in any given week to be responsible for the provision of first aid to other employees. by the employer. then the first aid allowance is payable. So that's really important, because what you find with our home care support workers, they're quite often providing, personal care to our clients. They might be, administering medication, they might be changing or dressing wounds, these sorts of things that might come under the broad banner of first aid. And we're saying that for our home care employees, it's only if we're actually providing first aid to other employees. Which in the industry, you're quite often working remote. There are certainly, clients out there with two-to-one, even 3-to-1 supports, where you might commonly work with someone. But I think in that particular scenario, it would be quite rare for a home care employee to have the entitlement to that allowance. For our SACS employees, our Social and Community Services is looking a little bit different. We're talking about an employee that is required to have a first aid certificate, which is most people. And it's really important that we look at the language of the award, and that employee is required to perform first aid at their workplace, and the clarification we've got here is if that's sitting outside their normal duties. Okay, so what we've seen is it's really important for those support workers to have position descriptions, which are saying it's an inherent requirement of your role. You may perform first aid. You've got some specific wording around what that update should look like, which would then form a very strong case to say, well, the first aid entitlement is not applicable here to you. You may then have people in the office working as, say, a service manager, or a scheduler, onboarding team leader, whatever it might be, where they occasionally go out in the field to do supervisions, to meet with clients, Maybe to fill in, for the random, frontline shift that's required. For those people, it might not be an inherent climate of employment, and when they are in that situation, that allowance may be payable. We can see here how the importance to include that in some updated documentation for clarification is super important. And then also checking our position descriptions, checking our payroll if we are currently paying it or not. We might not notice it too much on that per-shift basis, but it certainly can add up over time, and we want to be strategic and compliant in how we're actioning these things. Travel allowances. Hopefully you're not too bored of hearing about allowances yet, because this one's my favorite, and it's really important. A lot of providers aren't across the award requirements when it comes to travel. What you have specifically on the screen there is Clause 20.7. So what you can see is that where an employee is required and authorized by an employer to use their motor vehicle. In the course of their duties. that employer is entitled to a reimbursement of 99 cents per kilometre. It may go up in the new financial year. What we also see is that, potentially for things like, excursions, if we've got any fares, meals, accommodation, all of that needs to be covered. There's different ways in which you can do that, so if we are regularly doing excursions or nights away from home. Certainly want to be looking at, an expenses or excursion policy there to make sure that someone's not getting the $400 bottle of champagne with dinner, when they're away for work. And what's really interesting, I guess, more commonly with our… our traveling, is this… this 99 cent supply is not just if I'm transporting a client. So not just if we're doing community access shifts. It also involves if I'm seeing multiple clients within a shift, so I'm driving from, from, client A to client B within a shift. I need to receive my cents per kilometre reimbursement, and depending on the way that shift is structured, that's also a regular shift time. I don't clock off and clock back on if this is going to be a continuous shift. So, it's really important. I see a lot of people miss that timed work. portion. Of payments here when it comes to travel. So making sure we're across that. In terms of broken shifts, it can be a little bit different here. So, what we want to be aware of is… is when that travel time starts, versus not. So, just to recap, when we're looking at broken shifts. I've got an example here on the screen. So we may be performing duties, say, from 6 till 10am, and we're visiting 4 clients in that time. We might then work later on from 6 till 9pm, and we're visiting 3 clients during that time. What you can see there with the key and the breakdown is to say that support worker is not entitled for the cents per kilometre reimbursement to get to commencing their shift at their first client, but as they're traveling between the client, they are entitled to that cents per kilometre reimbursement. Then what we see when they're clocking off the end of their broken shift, there is no entitlement there for payment to get from that one to the start of the next shift. But then we'll certainly be paying, as you're seeing, multiple clients in the second portion. What's really interesting here, bonus points for anyone that picked up with the example on the screen that we had just then is around the span of hours for broken shifts. So, if I look at that shift that's rusted, it's technically compliant, but it's going to cost me a lot more than it needs to. We have… our span of hours for broken shifts is up to 12 hours. So, that second portion of the shift that's starting at 6pm is all going to be paid at a 200% penalty payment. which is considered OTE, which is that ordinary time earnings. That's different from our double time overtime payment. It's really important that our systems for paying employees, for rostering, scheduling, and paying employees. Set up with that particular differentiation. The reason why that's important is when we think about things like superannuation. It is, it is payable on ordinary time earnings, but not on overtime. things like our annual leave, and how that accrues. That will accrue on ordinary time earning, not on overtime. So, if we're just having one line item, say, in zero, that just says, yep, double time. That might be configured in the back end incorrectly. That means that you're overpaying superannuation. Or potentially underpain. So, it's very important that we're checking that systems configuration as well. That's something, for me, I like to step back from, but my colleague Renee and her team, they live in systems configuration every day, so there is help available, should you need. I think what's also really important when we're talking about overtime is this kind of I guess… Understanding across the industry that you go, oh yeah, time and a half the first two hours, double time thereafter. Not necessarily, and the award is very specific. It actually differentiates how overtime is paid from full-time employees versus part-time and casual employees bucketed together. It differentiates if we're a home care or a SACS stream coverage to how that is particularly calculated. The way it's calculated for casuals with the casual loading, slightly different again. So, making sure that our systems actually have all of the different setups there correctly, and that that's feeding through from our roster to our payroll, and at the end of the day, the employee is getting what they should under the award. It's so important that you get it right to start with, or that we're at least fixing it and getting it right moving forward, because it just is a continual headache otherwise. Quantum of leave, this is a… this is another really big one that we see. There's actually two different definitions of shift workers when we're talking about staff, staff covered under the Shads Award. We have a shift worker for the purposes of receiving a fifth week of annual leave, and we have a shift worker for the purposes of how I'm receiving night shift penalties or overtime. It's really important that we understand the differences of the cause and how we apply them. For any of our permanent staff that may be defined as a shift worker for our quantum of leave at Course 31, It's going to be very important to, make sure that we have, doing some annual reconciliation to see if they're actually entitled to that fifth week that we can add on from their anniversary. I just realized, Emma, I've been having so much fun nerding out in this content. We are going to run out of time, but that's okay. I'm going to move quickly through this, and of course, happy to sit with, our attendees one-on-one to actually get some clear answers for them as well. A really key point here for rostered days off and sleepovers, so this is something that we've seen happen a lot. is what that means for our permanent staff. So we can see specifically Clause 25.3 tells us that our permanent staff need to be free from duty for a minimum 2 full days a week. what that looks like. Now, we've worked directly with the Fair Work Ombudsman around the interpretation here. For me, 2 full days means 48 hours. No. Two full days means Tuesday. Means Wednesday. So, in this particular example with a sleepover, we can see that I'm not actually finishing work till 8am on the one… on a Tuesday. So. it's not that I can't return till 8am on Thursday, it's that I shouldn't return until the Friday, because then I've had Wednesday fully free and Thursday fully free from duty. So, when we look at structuring a roster, it's really important that we are auditing it when we're updating shifts to make sure that it's actually compliant with not just the rostering clause, but our rostered days off clause, with our overtime clauses, that we're not kicking in penalty rates from broken shifts, as we've just seen as well. I also hope you flag that that sleepover shift is non-compliant. Little bit of an Easter egg in there for you. Hopefully no, and we discussed this before, we need a 4-hour minimum engagement on at least one side of that sleepover shift. Shift cancellation, for our permanent employees, this is something that is actually specifically covered under Clause 25.5F of the SHADS Award, and this is where a client is cancelling or rescheduling a service within 7 days. For our casuals, and I guess this relates to our scenario on screen here. My answer to it is going to depend on if they're permanent or casual. For our casuals, because we don't have, necessarily the same notice periods. If a casual has turned up to work, if they've, you know, started their journey towards work, I would say, look, apply that minimum engagement of what's most likely 2 hours for that shift. However, you know, we'd look at that on a case-by-case basis to see what are the circumstances of when the cancellation has occurred. So just be aware that when a client is cancelling, it's not just a simple removal from the roster. There are clauses that apply, both 25.5F, Clause 8A may be relevant as well, around changes to rostered hours of work. In terms of 24-hour care shifts, this is something I'm seeing come up a lot lately, 24-hour care shift is when someone is available for duty in a client's home. for 24 hours. It's only applicable for home care employees, so it's not something that is intended to apply on an excursion or STA work. The clause in the award, clause 25.8, specifically tells us, how that work may be structured. There is a 155% penalty payment for the work that should not exceed 8 hours in a 24-hour period, with an 8-hour period for sleeping. Any additional work that's being done is being paid at overtime, and the rates are specifically prescribed under that clause. This is something I'm seeing a lot of people roster incorrectly. It can be a great shift, where we need support in the home, but not necessarily meeting the minimum engagements. But if someone is working effectively for all waking hours there, this shift might not be the most efficient or cost-effective way to actually roster someone, so just be aware of that one there. We can't actually as well roster someone back-to-back on those shifts, because we do need a 10-hour break between shifts, unless we're potentially looking at an IFA to vary that particular requirement. Goodness me, last one, Emma, I am so sorry. Excursions, this is a big one as well. Quite interestingly, the award differs between excursions on a Monday to Friday and a weekend. The sleepover allowance is not applicable on a weekend. I think that is wild. So being very specific with how we're rostering and how we're paying this. Our ordinary hours of work for excursion? Lipped on its head. We're going from 8 till 6 instead of 6 till 8. And even if we're a shift worker, we're paying overtime outside the hours of 8 till 6. When it comes to excursions, I think it's really important in that planning phase to actually cost out a roster for the excursion to see if it's going to be financially and operationally viable. For your organization to do. Luckily, that's something that we can do for you, as well as looking at an excursion agreement, again, to be clear and transparent with our worker of what they can expect, because it's quite often a different way of working. I am so sorry, Emma. I got so carried away talking about this content. We could run a half-day webinar on this, although I might put some of our, our, attendees to sleep, but I'll let you, I guess, recap what that means for organisations, and we'll jump into our Q&A.

Effective HR: Amazing. Thank you, Corinne. As you can see, there is just so much to cover when it comes to the very complex and challenging SADS Award. I think when we look at this slide, it's very much bringing together the practical outcomes of what's been discussed today, and what this actually looks like in action for your business. Some of the corrected measures that we would recommend at effective HR is doing things like providing your rostering payroll and your HR teams with tailored and specific Shads Award training, which is really about building that internal capability, ensuring that everyone is on the same page when it comes to the interpretation of the award, particularly around some of those more complex and nuanced award provisions. When we look at training as well, it's not a, you know, one standard fits all. Training needs to be very tailored specifically to your workforce, to your specific rostering practices and the systems that you're utilizing as well. Classifications and pay point analysis. really critical when it comes to shards of Ward compliance. We do see misclassification as one of the most common, and as well, the highest risk issues that we see across businesses, as when we do have that misclassification, what's our risk? Potential underpayment of wages claims. As Corinne mentioned earlier, recommendation is to implement paypoint progression checklists, paypoint progression structures, to help systemize these processes for organisations. Documentation. Further recommended to review your contracts, your policies, your position descriptions at least every 6 to 12 months. With the legislation, awards, agreements, and case law constantly changing, businesses should be continuously updating these documents to maintain compliance and ensure that your business is protected in the event that there is an employee dispute or claim with the Commission. The lower couple of points, we start to then look at testing and validating how things are actually working in practice. So some of the recommendations for businesses would be doing things like roster audits to ensure, A, compliance with award conditions, such as your broken SIFs. sleepovers, minimum engagement, but also to assess if there's any inefficiencies in your rostering practices. Poorly structured rosters can trigger things like unnecessary overtime, penalty rates, or allowances, and that Can present a significant cost for a business, particularly where you're multiplying that across numerous employees. Leave audits can sometimes be overlooked, really critical to ensure correct accruals, correct usage, and avoiding excessive balances, because that can create quite a large liability for a business. Payroll audits, so we recommend to do these always on a proactive basis. We do see businesses do this quite reluctantly, where the employee has raised a question around certain allowances or overtime, then the business does an audit, but we would recommend to at least do it proactively every 12 months, so that if there is any issues that are identified, they can be addressed, earlier rather than later, so avoiding that kind of set and forget. Which can sometimes arise. Lastly, systems. Systems are all about making the day-to-day life of a friend of a business much more easier and efficient. We, you know, recommend having HR systems and payroll systems that are integrated, that are speaking to each other. Having payroll systems as well, where you can build in the SUDS award, is also going to support your compliance with the award obligations. Now, before we jump into the Q&A section, which we've got a few questions already popped through, I would just like to take a quick moment to share how Effective HR can continue to support your business post today's webinar. For those of you who are new to Effective HR, we specialize in human resources, industrial relations, work health and safety, and payroll clients, I'll… The unique point of difference is we have a specialization in the NDIS sector, and because of this, we very much understand the nuances and the challenges that many businesses experience in operating under the SHADS Award. In terms of how we provide the support, we have two different service models to cater towards different business needs. Our first one is what we call HR on Demand. which covers the full spectrum of HR support, so everything from recruitment to employee management to payroll auditing. We have, a direct consultant that is provided to a business so that there is consistency in advice. And it avoids sometimes the frustration of dealing with multiple different advisors or call center environments. Under our HR on Demand service, we just operate on an hourly rate, so it's really flexible for when You just have those nuanced subject board questions, and you need to get that specialist advice and support in that space, or you'd like to do those kind of one-off projects, like a payroll audit? We also have our other service model, which we call HR Partner. HR Partner is an all-inclusive model, so we do everything from providing unlimited advice regarding all of the different pillars of HR, to doing compliance assessments, to drafting and tailoring up your contracts and policies, but importantly, maintaining the documents so they don't become out of date as the law changes. And we also have options in there to include, conciliation representation, on-site supports, trainings, any kind of additional HR support that might be needed. Now, we'll go into our Q&A part of today's webinar. If you do have any questions, please pop them in the chat. If you would like to take your questions offline, please visit our website, and we can book in a consultation to discuss anything that might be unique to your organization and how we can provide support in that space. Alright, Corinne, are you ready?

Corinne West: Always. Fire away, let's go.

Effective HR: Alright, so the first question that we've had is regarding travel, so one of your favourite topics. And the question being, if an employee is required to travel 20 kilometres to get to a participant in another town. Should the provider travel be paid to the support worker to get there?

Corinne West: This is a really good question, Emma, and it differs… I want to be clear, the language in that NDIS pricing guideline of the… what was the specific wording there? Client travel. actually differentiates from the language and the entitlement under the award, okay? So, you've kind of got two sets of rules that you're trying to comply with. In terms of whether or not that's payable to an employee, I would say, you know, is that where they're starting and ending their shift, or are they traveling 20 kilometres after they've already seen one person and are going to the next person? That would vary whether or not it's payable. Specifically, though, I think, you know, if someone's used to going, say, 5 kilometres from their house, do a shift at one regular location, and we're rostering them 20 kilometres away. there's an argument to say it's unreasonable, right? So, in terms of what is reasonable, there is actually flexibility for employers to define that themselves and take that control. But unfortunately, the state that we live in at the moment is like, look, if it's not written down, good luck enforcing it. So when we start to think about, like, a rostering and travel policy that's saying here's where you may be rostered, here's what we think is reasonable, here are the entitlements derived from that, I think are really important to set those crystal clear expectations moving forward. So, I know it's not necessarily a clear answer, because it will depend on where heading 20 kilometres is in the shift, but certainly worth consideration and talking about one-on-one for sure.

Effective HR: Fantastic. Thanks, Corinne. We've also had another question around overtime. So, specifically, when we look at the meal allowance provisions and overtime. how overtime is defined in that context. So. The award can refer to overtime in terms of, you know, if we work outside of 10 ordinary hours in a shift, if we go outside 76 hours in a fortnight. Or does it apply in situations where the support worker is specifically requested to stay back to assist a client? after their usual finishing times, even if the trip doesn't exceed 10 hours. So over time, there could be lots of different circumstances in which it applies. Do you want to kind of walk through that breakdown in a little bit.

Corinne West: more to the town. Oh my gosh, whoever asked that, I'm saying as a fellow HR nerd, to get that deep in the award. But they've raised a very good point in terms of how that applies and how that's defined. Now, I don't have that specific clause of the award in front of me right now, but what I can say off the top of my head is when it comes to when someone is working overtime and when we're applying a meal allowance, it will actually differentiate whether or not we're a shift worker or a day worker. And essentially, the circumstances for which that pops up. So, what I can say is, you know, as a takeout, making sure that people are correctly defined and notified if they are a shift worker, that we have that information visible and set up in payroll, so we know what's going to trigger the right entitlement, so we're not left overpaying or underpaying, is going to be really important. But again, let's actually talk about that employee, what's their definition. what's the particular shift? Are we applying recall to duty? Are we applying meal allowances? What are we possibly applying to actually get a solid answer there for sure?

Effective HR: Then there was a question around why is there no sleepover allowance on weekends?

Corinne West: She's not… Why is the sky blue? I don't know. This is specifically just for excursion, let's just be clear there so we're not confused. If you read the specific excursion clause of the award, it actually has to do with where the subclauses are nested. So, essentially, that the sleepover allowance is nested in the subclause under where it says Monday to Friday. but not under the generic clause as well. That information and that interpretation is actually confirmed in a Fair Work Ombudsman Library article as well, because it sounds like a silly oversight. But they have specified that it's the intention. What was going through the lawmaker's head when they wrote that? I'm not sure, but I feel confident to say they probably haven't worked in the front line of your industry. I'm very sorry to say I may be so cheeky.

Effective HR: We've also had a question around roster day. So what happens if a staff member is rostered 5 days per week, and they want to pick up an additional shift on an ad hoc basis on their day off? Do we need to say no, as they need to have 2 days off per week?

Corinne West: It's a really good question, and my answer to that question is going to take, it depends. You know, is that person casual? Is that person permanent? You know, are we applying Clause 25.3 that we saw there? It's going to depend on their classification. I'm also going to want to look at how many hours they've already completed in the week, whether it's less than 38 or more than 38, because if it's an overtime shift, this could, you know, potentially not be the most compliant… I'm sorry, compliant, but the most efficient way to roster that shift. I know that it can be difficult to put through overtime from an NDIS billing perspective, so it does potentially leave organisations out of pocket for covering those sorts of shifts. So there's certainly multiple circumstances that we would take into account, when it does come to if someone can pick up that shift. What I would often find is that it's potentially… there may be, argument's sake, a way to pay our way out of the shift, which is what those overtime provisions would do, but potentially, if we are in breach of Clause 25.3, and our rostering clause as well, it could cause some technical breach issues that are going to create that fine for noncompliance.

Effective HR: so many considerations, I think, when it comes to the SHADS Award, and a lot of the time we do need to really understand your business context and the individual employee context as well, looking at things like the contracts and the policies and the rosters to really give pinpoint specific advice, which we can absolutely do after today's session. We might finish off with just one more question, Corinne, which is a great question, once again, relating to travel. If we have an employee that works with Client A, and then they need to travel to Client B to start one hour. After finishing with client A, would we need to treat this like a broken shift, or do we pay travel and kilometres?

Corinne West: Oh gosh, Emma, I hate the answer of, it depends, but it does. It depends on if we're classifying it as a continuous shift, or if we're classifying it as a broken shift. Because we don't have a definition of a broken shift, to go, is it broken by 15 minutes or 5 hours? That definition doesn't exist. So what we're looking at is holistically their day. So you go, cool, there's a one-hour break in between. Did I spend 5 minutes or 40 minutes of that time traveling to the next shift? the residual answer to that question then tells me, would the remaining break fall into the definition of a meal break under Clause 27, which is saying between 30 and 60 minutes, where I haven't been spent traveling. It's from there that we can kind of work out, okay, are we calling this a continuous shift, and then therefore paying travel and time, or are we calling this a broken shift, because it's not actually meeting that requirement, and what that might be? Or are we paying the whole way through, depending on the time it's taken to travel there? So, it's really going to go, right, how far away is it? You know, are they having a break? What's the total shift length? If we can get those questions specifically, we'll certainly be able to get a more concrete answer of what that payslip should look like for that particular employee.

Effective HR: Fantastic. Thank you, Corinne, and thank you, everyone, for joining us for this afternoon's FADS Award webinar. As I mentioned, if you'd like to take your questions offline, happy to have that discussion during a consultation. Also, if you'd like to sign up to our professional network to keep up to date with any future events, you can do that through our website. We are always looking for feedback on specific HR topics or stats award topics that you would like us to cover for future sessions, so we would welcome any feedback to come through. Thank you, everyone, for attending today.

Corinne West: Thanks, team.