SCHADS Q&A: 2025

This transcript of Effective HR’s “SCHADS Q&A: 2025” 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: Hi everyone, welcome. Welcome to this afternoon's SHADS webinar.

Corinne West: Wow, look at everyone coming through the doors, the proverbial doors, Emma! Love that. I'm really excited. We'll give it a couple of minutes before we dive into our content, Emma, but it doesn't matter how many of these we run, there's always new questions, new answers, which is incredible. I think you said you got over 100 questions for this webinar of what to answer. Unfortunately, it's only an hour, but we will speed through as much as we can, right?

Effective HR: Absolutely, over 120 questions, and it just shows… how complex the Shads Award really is, and there are so many nuances to it, and we… we had questions in all different areas of the award come through, you know, everything from, you know, excursions to overtime to classifications. scenario-based questions, and, you know, even just people expressing interest in specific areas of the awards. So, very.

Corinne West: And I saw… Oh, sorry, I saw as well some, some interesting ones around, like, right to disconnect and contractors. Will those questions come through, which is something that, yeah. big in this, NDIS and social and caring space, but, equally applies across a lot of different industries as well. So, I'm thinking we need to jump on here more often.

Effective HR: Absolutely, absolutely. The first thing that came to my mind is we need to run more of these question and answer webinars, because there is a lot of questions, to get through and to provide clarity… clarity on.

Corinne West: Put me in the hot seat. I love it, I love it. How's everyone coming through the doors? We're looking good.

Effective HR: Hope everyone's got their tea, coffee, webinar essentials.

Corinne West: Peppermint tea for me? Fabulous, fabulous.

Effective HR: All right, well, we might get kick-started, as we do have a lot of content to cover today. Today's webinar is being recorded, so we do have some latecomers, or if anyone wasn't able to attend today's webinar, we will be sharing the recording straight after. So, good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to today's SHADS Award webinar. We're absolutely delighted to have you join us as we explore the practical compliance challenges faced by employers in the social and community services sector. The Shads Award, as you would know, is definitely one of the most complex modern awards, and it's not uncommon for organisations to face difficulties with rostering, classification, leave management, payroll compliance. Today, we'll focus on real questions that are submitted by businesses such as yourself, and provide that practical guidance that you can apply immediately. Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today. I pay my respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people participating in the webinar, and to Elders past, present, and emerging for their ongoing contributions to our communities. Now, if you're new to our webinars, just a quick introduction. I'm Emma, a HR consultant at Effective HR, and I'm joined by my fantastic colleague, Corinne, our lead HR consultant. Between us, we have years of experience supporting NDIS and community service providers in HR, work health and safety, payroll, and of course, SHADS Award compliance. Our aim today is to provide practical, actionable advice for real challenges that you face in your day-to-day operations. As I mentioned a little bit earlier, we've received over 120 questions ahead of today's webinar. The agenda has been tailored based on the most popular questions and topics submitted by employers attending the session today. As such, we'll be covering streams, classifications, pay points, looking at a very specific nuance around award coverage for nurses, minimum engagement periods, overtime and toil, meal breaks and broken shifts. Sleepovers with a focus on the recent JATS joint case, rostered days off, managing complex rosters and employee availability, and lastly, strategies for HR and payroll compliance. Throughout the session, we encourage you to type any further questions in the chat, and we will address as many as possible during our Q&A, which will be at the very end of the session. And lastly, if we were unable to address your specific question, or if you would like more tailored advice. You can scan the QR code, which will be on each slide, to book in a complimentary one-on-one consultation with one of our HR consultants. I will now hand it over to my colleague, Corinne, who will be guiding us through the presentation. Corinne, over to you.

Corinne West: Thank you, Emma. I'm going to try and get through as much content as possible. This is super exciting to be able to answer all of these questions. What I see specifically, these questions around, with the Shads Award, around what stream or sector, as the language in the award, indicates, what classification levels, what pay points, this is by far the most common question we get asked, at least several times a week. So. It's no wonder we get these questions, because it is such a technical topic, essentially pulling apart the legislation and then trying to apply it to each individual employer's operations. And… not only is that a difficult technical exercise, but the stakes to get it right are so high, right? You know, the so what factor of what does it matter if we get it wrong? That wage compliance, that award compliance, we can't be getting that wrong. We're now looking at these astronomical fines and potentially criminal liability at play. So we know we've got to do it, and we want to understand further how we're going about determining the stream for our organization around determining our classification levels and our pay points for each individual employee. So specifically the questions, or some of the questions we were asked as part of this webinar, was around how to correctly identify a pay level or classification for staff. Understanding what might constitute a Level 2 support worker, if we're to speak in more general terms there. And then also understanding, well, if we're not sure if someone's between pay points, potentially between sectors, you know, if we've got a significant gap in wage rates across sectors or across points. Can we… can we cut it in the middle? Can we come up with some kind of commercial solution there? How's that going to work? So, they're the questions we're trying to address with the information here on the slide. Specifically that the SHADS Award is that overarching one award, one piece of legislation that has four sectors within it. So it's our home care disability, care stream that we'd be looking at for our NDIS providers, which do make up the bulk of our client base and this industry, and our SACS, our social and community services organisations. So, this technical exercise of award coverage I'd mentioned beforehand. Before we look at any particular client's care needs, before we look at any employee qualifications or experience, we need to start at the heart of what is your organization and what do we do? Why do we exist? What are the services that we're providing? Solely on an organisational level. Because this award, when we're looking at Clause 4 specifically and pulling apart that legislation, it's telling us that it applies on an industry level. So we're looking first at the industry and the business before we even start to look at particular individual classifications. So general guidance we've provided there on the screen. We see our home care streams often covering care in a participant's private residence, and is very heavy on that personal care and domestic assistance style of supports, whereas our social and community services, it might be more community access or participation. It includes support, coordination, advocacy in that space. It looks at different kind of housing options as well. So, if we come back to the particular questions to say what constitute a Level 2 employee. You're gonna hate my answer of, it depends. Again, it is going to be dependent in each business, because the way you service your clients, and the way you want your employees to act, and the responsibilities they have to act within the scope of their support worker role. a little bit different across every organization. I never like to assume we're the same. So, subject to that, generally speaking, for our SACS stream employees, a Level 2 is often going to be a support worker with what we call an appropriate qualification. There's a very interesting 2023 case, that actually speaks to the importance of addressing and identifying what is or is not an appropriate qualification for support workers in your particular organization. You know, in your particular organization, it might be important for someone to have a certificate in disability services, or community services, or social work. May not be as important somewhere else. maybe a mental health certificate is more important there. So, very much looking at it on a case-by-case basis, and what we see in that case law precedent is the importance of documenting what is going to be an appropriate qualification, and having that structure in our organization and how we engage employees. So making sure we've got some policies that's supported in PDs to spell out those qualifications is a big one I see. In terms of the home care stream, looking at a level 2 employee, our support workers on that side of the fence, we often see categorized as a Level 2 or a Level 3. Generally, the differentiating factor there is going to be that the care needs for the participants that each support worker is servicing. We do see Level 3 here covering high physical care needs, or complex physical care needs. That can also impact someone's classification level is. So, on the right-hand side of my screen here, I've got how we're going to identify an employee classification and what we need to take into account. If I come back to our… our attendees' question around, you know, can we figure out the rate of pay of one and another and split the difference? My advice in beautiful consulting land is you can Do whatever you want, it's your risk to take. my advice would be no. And my reason for that, if I was in your shoes as a business owner. I want to sleep at night. I want that confidence, you know, that's not hedging my bets and hoping for the best. You know, I want confidence that I have this right, that should I come to the attention of the regulator for whatever reason. we're good. We don't have anything to worry about, we're not going to have our day ruined. So for me, I would say having the confidence there and getting that professional determination is very important. The last piece to that classification puzzle is that pay point, which we see progression covered specifically under course 13.3 of the award. So if you're not across it, that is going to be where I direct you. Again, Course 13.3. And what we see here is, is, again. Making sure we've got internal and systematic processes of how we're applying that to our organization around how employees may be eligible to move between pay points is a great Commercial consideration to try and keep on top of wage costs and not have this automatic movement, because that can be really non-sustainable moving forward. Another great question we had come through as we were preparing for our webinar today is, what are we doing with nurses? Where do they fit, under the SHADS Award? So there are some organizations out there, for the care and the services they provide. We'll often engage one or many qualified nurses to offer additional health services to clients, which is great with that holistic care in mind. It does then go, right, how do we cover, how do we pay these nurses? Specifically, we've got an occupational award. Which is going to cover nurses doing nurses' duties. What we do find, potentially, to be a grey area here is around what happens if we are hiring a nurse to be a support worker. You know, a nurse wants to pick up a second job for a little bit of extra income. We don't need them to be a nurse, but they are, and they're doing support worker duties. How do we pay them? Also, if we've got someone doing that nursing assistants work, what does that look like? These are all really important, questions to consider in how we pay them, because that nurse's award is a totally different set of rules. Totally different set of rules for wage compliance, and award compliance matters there. So, generally speaking, if we are hiring our nurses to do nursing duties, they are going to be covered under the nurse's award. We need to make sure that we're set up to be compliant there as well. If you are finding yourself in that situation where you may be hiring nurses or other professional, health individuals, to complete support worker duties. Again, it's going to be very important to make sure that you're spelling out across their employment contract, across the recruitment process, across the PDs and policies, that You're not engaging them to be a nurse. You don't want them to be a nurse. You don't need them to use their qualifications. We want to keep the lines black and white of you're a support worker. This is the scope of your role, we're not recognizing these qualifications, and here is why, and the rationales. So, really important to have that in place to make sure that we're not having to refer to separate awards or paying exorbitant rates when that wasn't what you were after when you were hiring a support person in… sorry, support worker in the first place. In terms of overtime, this is something that we get a lot of interest about, as well. So, we need some clarification, I understand, around permanent staff, and when is something agreed hours, and when is something overtime. So, we've got a little bit of an example on the screen here around a social and community services employee. that may work at a 12-hour shift from 9am till 9pm on a Wednesday. So, exactly how do we pay this? What does it look like? The key things to keep in mind here when it comes to ordinary hours. The Shads Award isn't a strict 7.6 per day. You know, we often know that figure through payroll, because if we go 38 hours a week divided by 5 days in a week, that brings us to 7.6. That doesn't necessarily have to be the case under the Shads Award, and our ordinary hours clause at… off the top of my head, I want to say clause 25, but Emma, please correct me if I'm wrong. will tell us how we can roster there. What's really interesting, though, is that the default shift maximum length is actually 8 hours. So what that means, we do have an option to increase that to be 10 hours, 10 ordinary hours a day, with this buy agreement. So, what that means by default, if we don't have anything in our employment contracts, or otherwise documented, agreed to, signed off in writing, that says, yes, I agree to do 10 ordinary hours. Systems in payroll should be calculating overtime after 8. So it's really important that our documents are reflecting this by agreement clause. give us a little bit more flexibility here with ShiftLink. I know when we're trying to work out certain service supports, when we're trying to work out a 24-hour roster, you know, having that flexibility with that extra 2 hours is really important. So, add that to your list to make sure that we've got that covered off one in our contracts. What I think is really interesting as well, around when is something over time for our part-time employees. So, interesting at Clause 10 of the SHADS Award. it actually allows part-timers to work above their set or agreed hours up to this 3876 level without… by default accruing OT. So those additional hours up until that point are not necessarily considered overtime straight away. So there's a bit of flexibility there, which is good when it comes to rostering staff. In terms of how we would pay a specific shift, being 9 till 9 in this example, it's also going to depend on if the employee completing the shift is what we call a day worker, or what they're called a shift worker. And so we need to be able to confidently say and have reflected in our payroll systems, employee X as a day worker, employee Y as a shift worker, and so on and so forth. The reason why this is important, if the employee doing this shift is a day work, essentially, all the hours worked after 8pm will be considered overtime. Whereas if they are a shift worker, after 8pm, finish time, we're going to actually be paying after noon shift loading for the entire shift. Not just for the hour, okay? So that is, before we look at the shift length, we need to understand, are they a shift worker, are they a day worker? Then also, if we flip that by agreement clause, we've hit hour 10, we start talking about hours 11 and 12, they will be, by default, over time as well. So it's really important that we're understanding how this applies, because we wouldn't want to see a regular base roster or template roster that has overtime on it. My understanding for a lot of providers out there is that you can't claim overtime rates from an MBIS billing perspective, the rate is the rate, so that becomes this additional wage cost that you inherit, So the importance of getting on top of that before the shift is work, and before that amount is stable. is super important. So, auditing your roster to check there's no default shifts that are going to kick into overtime, or looking at ways to… creative ways to fix that, get around that, you know, still within the realms of the award, but making sure that it's operationally sustainable is going to be a big priority. So, making sure we're reviewing that on our roster. What we also see when it comes to overtime is you've got a little bit of flexibility to apply what we call time off in lieu, or FOIL, as the acronym goes. So this is spelled out specifically at clause 28.2 of the award. I was having a sticky beak at this this morning, Emma, actually. To… to allow for some flexibility. So instead of paying our overtime rates, we can accrue TOIL. Sounds simple. What we do need to be across here, though, is that the award is very prescriptive around how that accrual is to happen. So, first things first, the employer and the employee must agree to it, so it must be mutually agreed, and it must be in writing. So we're already adding a little bit to our to-do list here, but again, if we can systemize this practice, it doesn't need to be a crippling admin process for your rostering team. On that toil, it is accrued on an hour-for-hour basis, okay? So 1 hour of overtime equals 1 hour of toil. Wow, seems pretty reasonable. What we do need to be aware of is these specific rules spelt out in the award. So that TOIL must be taken within 3 months from working the particular OT shift. It must be in writing, it must be agreed to. And if at any point, say 10 weeks later, the employee changes their mind and says, oh no, I actually want that to be paid overtime, well, you have to pay that out in the next cycle. So, when you look at what the award says you have to do. we can see the importance of record keeping, because how can we readily find that information in order to be able to meet, our compliance obligations here? And Emma, I think this is something that really interestingly came up with the latest case of Coles and Woolworths. That was, that was a big one there around the, the importance of record keeping, right? When we look at someone like Woolies, that even one of our biggest household names Didn't get it right. One of the biggest smacks on the wrist in the Ombudsman's there.

Effective HR: I think the thing that's so shocking as well is Woolwares and Coles are such large corporations, that would very much have internal HR departments, and I would imagine deep pockets for investing in, you know, systems that should… allow for, you know, the general retail award rule sets to be built, and to ultimately avoid these issues altogether, and yet. You know, they… or their back pay was significant. as a result of, you know, two factors. Poor record keeping, not being able to demonstrate when overtime had occurred and when penalties were being applied, and as a result, as well, of incorrect offsetting. So, really, really important.

Corinne West: Absolutely, thanks, Emma. And it's also a very timely reminder. I was speaking with a client this week that was, you know, understandably trying to digest this advice, you know, the advice that you see here on the screen, it's really hard to go, how? How can I possibly achieve compliance? It feels like an uphill battle. Especially when you look around at other providers, maybe bigger providers, maybe household names in the space, and you go, but I know they're doing this. You know, their former employees have told me, how do they… how do they do it? Because they're clearly doing it right, they must be, because they're big providers. Well. if Woolblast can't get it right, what hope do the rest of us have? You know, it's one of our largest companies in Australia, so it's, it's a really interesting, time, I guess, in this space to see what the requirements are, and a good time to get it sorted in your own organization. Moving on to meal breaks, this is another one that we do have a lot of questions about here. So, an example that came through, in the question, so thank you so much to… to whoever provided it. had said, I was recently advised by a Shads worker, they did not receive a break. What they specifically said was, oh, we don't have lunch, we just stuck our face with a sandwich in the car between meetings. That's relatable. That is so relatable. I've heard that from so many providers, so many workers in the industry, you know, that's the norm. So, how can we reconcile that way of working with what the award is telling us? Again, this is something for me where the importance of auditing your roster and your breaks practices is so important, and we've had a few clients have a few nasty surprises come out of doing this, because if we're not paying breaks correctly, you know, you're potentially looking at back payments for that time worked through the break. potentially looking at overtime rates being applied retrospectively on that shift. And all of these things are potentially coming out after that relevant funding billing cycle, so if there's, you know, you actually needed to pay that break, but you didn't. And then we can't go back and claim that from a revenue perspective. Again, another sunken cost that we want to get on top on here. So, enforcing brakes practices that meet your operational requirements, your client care requirements and policy expectations, essential. So, when we're talking about breaks under the awards, we actually have a few different options here. We've got an unpaid meal break, so that is where someone is working more than 5 hours, they have an entitlement to an unpaid break of 30 to 60 minutes. Now, what is an unpaid break? the way I like to very simply look at this is, if I'm not being paid, that's my time. If in that 30 minutes, I want to duck down to the 7-Eleven to grab this Sanger that I'm stopping my face with in the car, I want to post my iconic returns and maybe check out the search. I'm on a wobbacle land near the coast, which is amazing, then I can, right? Because I'm paid. I'm not being paid, I can go up and do those things. If you need me to particularly stay at a certain premises, you need me to be on call, you need to direct me during that time as a worker. It's not going to meet this definition, right, of an unpaid meal break. We then have a paid meal break, so this is defined in the award where an employee is required to eat with a client or have a meal with a client as part of their normal work routine. We know it's quite common to have those, qualitative and social outings with our clients. And that's provided for under the award as well, which is just paid through as ordinary working time there. If we had an employee that was scheduled for a break that has to work through for whatever reason, this is when overtime rates are going to start to kick in. what we see, I guess, in practice a lot here with support workers is maybe that a break was put on the roster, this could even be for our admin team, you've got a default break on your roster, and I just didn't take it. I didn't feel like it, I was too busy, or I thought I was too busy. And it just… just didn't happen. That is a big red flag to just let it sit there. It's like this sleeping liability. We need to make sure that there's clear directions and expectations in writing. Around how breaks need to be taken, what's to happen if you think you can't take your break or don't want to take your break, to ensure that we're mitigating liability for any potential overtime or additional payments here, because employees are making that decision on what suits them. They often also walk around with blinkers on, not thinking about the bigger picture of, well, what actually suits the clients that you're servicing, and what actually suits the organization? Because it's a balancing act between the three. So making sure that we've got policies in place for that are super important. So breaks and rostering, for me, are non-negotiables to have clear information to set those expectations for employees. I missed a good segue here, Emma, in terms of, well, when's a meal break? When's a broken shift? Who bloody knows, quite frankly? When looking at broken shifts here on this screen, this is a really high-interest topic, that we get a lot of questions about. The first one being, what is a broken shift? And gosh, I wish I knew. I say that jokingly, but the reason why is the award doesn't specifically provide a definition for the term broken shift. Which sees us, I guess, a bit of… doing a bit of creative application, perhaps, is the best way to call it, and going, well. We do have a definition of a meal break. What's that? Let's work backwards from that, outside that parameter. Potentially, we're starting to categorize as a broken shift. So, these are the sorts of shift structures you see in your roster that might have one or two unpaid breaks from work. That aren't meal breaks. So as an example, we might be seeing one client from 9 till 11 in the morning. And we might be seeing another client from 3 till 5 in the afternoon. Something like that would be, I guess, a textbook categorization of a broken shift. We need to be aware of when and how we can use broken shifts. So, we can use it for home care employees, that's fine. We can use it for SACS employees when we're organising or providing disability services work. But for SACS employees that aren't, so if you're working in that other kind of community services space, we have different streams of funding that aren't linked to the NDIS. by default, you can't do broken shifts. You potentially can, we can look at commercial options, and I've certainly helped clients with that, potentially looking at our IFA to get some coverage there, but it's understanding that it's not a default setting for all organizations covered under this award. Now, those shifts should only span, for up to 12 hours. So what I mean is that if a shift is starting at 9am, then the latest finishing time shouldn't be past 9pm. Now. What happens, or the so what factor, if you go past the 12 hours? It's not necessarily a breach of the award, we're okay there, but we do then have a 200% penalty payment applied for any hours worked in excess of that span of hours. So, when you're starting to pay someone double the amount to do the shift, we can see, again, as a wage cost, that's potentially not the right fit for our roster. I use the word with caution there that that is a 200% penalty payment. Not a just default double time. The way it's calculated is slightly different, especially for our casual employees. And that should go through our payroll as what we call OTE, Ordinary Time Earnings, as opposed to OT, as overtime. So, in a lot of these situations, I know Emma, specifically our colleague Renee, as our systems and audit lead, when she's doing audits and back payments and going through people's payrolls. what you'll see is, in that situation, our, payroll or our bookkeeper would just pull up the payment code of, you know, two times, right? But that's actually set up in the background as overtime. Now, this is an issue because overtime does not attract superannuation or leave accruals for our permanent employees. OTE and penalty payments do. So little things like that can actually, again, affect compliance. Making sure they are set up correctly, in the system there is really important. We do have our 10-hour breaks between shifts required for outside of that broken shift. Employees will receive a broken shift allowance. So, there is a different allowance rate, depending on whether it's broken into two portions of work, or three, which can be done by mutual agreement. So, it's a slightly higher payment for that. the allowance itself, that broken shift allowance, is paid once. So it's either paid once on the 2, or the higher rate once on the 3. I've seen someone accidentally overpaying that fourth, each portion. We don't need to be doing that. I think that's probably all we wanted to go through with broken shits. We've spoken about our 12 hours. Looking back at my questions we've been asked on this. Three periods of work. Pardon me. You absolutely can do it by mutual agreement. The easiest way to ascertain that mutual agreement, hopefully you've got a fostering system in place that can offer shifts that someone's accepting, and recording that offer and acceptance is going to be the simplest way to systemise that as well. What we see come into play as well with broken shifts is this travel time and time worked. So, when is it considered, travel time? When is it considered time worked? We've had very clear answers for you, and it really depends on what that shift looks like in its totality. Generally speaking, if we look at that example of 9 till 11 and 3 till 5, we are not paying travel to get from wherever we're going after 11 o'clock to wherever we need to be at 3 o'clock. If it was a continuous shift, we certainly would need to be paying, travel time, and kilometres reimbursement as well. We want to be on top of there. While we've got the ball rolling with travel, it is a hot topic, in the industry. I understand we do a fair bit of it, everything from, you know, servicing multiple clients in one particular ship. We might see 3 or 4 people in one day. Or we might also be transporting our clients wherever they might need to go. It might be for a social outing together. It might be to their school, to their work, Now, sometimes SHIs can be as short as 10 minutes, so all we need to do is pick up Sally and take her to school. what does that look like? How… how do I… how do I turn that into a shift? That was the question we had here that made us want to provide some information on minimum engagement and transport shifts. Unfortunately, the SHADS Award doesn't differentiate, or provide specific rules around what might be a transport shift versus a normal shift. A shift is a shift is a shift is a shift. And so what that means is we need to be applying this, this minimum shift engagement. So on the right-hand side of the screen there, we can see for our social and community services employees that are not living disability services, we've got a 3-hour minimum. For all other employees, so home care and disability services, it is 2 hours per share. So even if we're only dropping them for 10 minutes, even if we can only bill that small nominal amount to the relevant funding body, we still have an obligation, engaging the employee under the SHADS award to give them a minimum shift of 2 hours, and pay that minimum engagement of 2 hours. So, if we're unable to to increase that for whatever reason, then maybe we can look at what else they can be doing during that time. Can they go and service another client? Can they provide support maybe in the office, or run errands? Something that might be a reasonable directive, because by paying for them for 2 hours, I'd like to get 2 hours of resourcing out of it, right? I think that's pretty fair and reasonable. In that situation, but I guess another example why looking at our roster and doing that roster audit before shifts are worked to make sure that we don't have any unnecessary costs like that, because that just breaks my heart, seeing things like that where you're up for that payment, and there's nothing you can do about it. It's a really tricky one. Okay. I feel like, Emma, this is probably why everyone's on the call. They've lasted this long. Sleepover shifts, okay? This is a big one. Anyone paying attention to the news that's getting their EDM blasts from lots of different providers in the industry. We will have heard of JATS Joint. So this is a very recent, case law decision. that's come through around the interpretation of sleepover shifts under the Shads Award. So, how they are interpreted and how they are paid, specifically under the cause of the award. So. Why is this a big deal? Essentially that the long-standing position, as long as the clause has been there, the Fair Work Ombudsman's position on this, which they had published articles on this on their website, which has now got a nice little review heading on the top, we're awaiting further information there. Has been that we are considering, sleepovers as part of an employee shift. And so, essentially, if we look at a sleepover example of, say. 6pm till 10pm of active supports, 10pm till 6am is our 8-hour sleepover period, and then 6am till 8am in the morning. that morning component has always been paid, or should have always been paid, at this night shift rate, because the shift itself is… it's finishing after midnight, being 8am the next day. So, my advice, as you may have seen on previous webinars, is that we've always treated a sleepover as as pressing pause on the ship. It doesn't break continuity, but that 8-hour period doesn't count as time worked. Well, the court's just thrown all that out. And they've essentially provided a determination on how this should be interpreted. Okay, so this isn't, you know, new as of October 25, this is how you interpret it. It is, okay, this is how it should have always been looked at, which is a bit scary from a retrospective compliance perspective. So… Federal court decision ruled that sleepovers are actually separate and distinct periods of time. And not forming part of a continuous shift. So this is in complete dispute of how the Fair Work Ombudsman has looked at this. So that's a big one. The so what factor here, is that potentially there are changes to come, depending on what your current state is, what that looks like in terms of compliance, and what we need to do. The biggest thing, I guess, we're advising and saying to people at the moment is to actually just press pause for right now, because even though this decision has come out, it is already subject to appeal, okay? So the Fair Work Ombudsman has filed a notice of appeal against this decision. And are looking to have that overturned, okay? So, if we're making changes now, and the appeal, you know, process has that ruling overturned, we're then left trying to unwind everything, which can be quite tricky. what we have with the Fair Work Ombudsman's long-standing position. If this is what we're doing, and this is what we should have been doing. that is actually more generous to employees than what the JATS joint decision is suggesting, yeah? Because they're getting these inflated night rates, as opposed to, the morning or ordinary hours that may apply there, okay? So, what I would say is that We shouldn't necessarily change it straight away. Because if it does get appealed, then we need to actually rewind that in our systems, which would require back payments, whereas at the moment, with it being more generous, you know, it's not a bad position as to have been paying more than you needed to. I know that's really frustrating to say watch his face, but bear with us on this, and we will come up with updates, as they come. I think what's another interesting point that often gets missed as part of this is the idea that just because the case comes out doesn't mean we can update our payroll system. You know, we're not looking at that case law precedent in a vacuum, we still have other obligations under the award. So, specifically, consultation obligations at Clause 8 and Clause 8A. If you're changing the way someone gets paid. You know, we're potentially going to meet these consultation requirements, which spell out, if we're going to make these changes unilaterally, what does that look like? Also, if you've actually spelt out in detail how these sorts of shifts are going to be paid in someone's employment contract. then it's a lot harder to unwant, and we're doing that by mutual agreement only. So, it's very important to look at this more holistically and strategically as an organization, to go, I know this decision has come out. But what does that mean for us in the short, medium, and long term? And building a bit of a plan and check-in points for that, so that we're not Digging in this really reactive space, and potentially getting it wrong there. Oh, that was a big one. In terms of rostered days off, this one for me is quite an interesting tidbit around the interpretation of a full day off. So the question we received here is, is, you know, under clause 25.3, what constitutes a full day off? Great question. We need to know it when we're, when we're rostering and scheduling our support workers to make sure that we're compliant. So, on the left-hand side there, you can see specifically what that clause says, talking about our permanent employees. They need to be free from duty for 2 days a week, or 4 days and a fortnight, and ideally, those days are consecutive. What's really tricky, though, is the definition of a full day off is a complete day. Okay, so we're not talking about a 24-hour period. If I finished a shift at 8am one day, then my day then is from 8am the next day. That would be too straightforward, wouldn't it, Emma? It's actually a full day of the week. So, in that example, you know, if I'm finishing a shift on the screen at 2am on a Monday. still worked for 2 hours on a Monday, so my two full days off, argument's sake, may be Tuesday and Wednesday, all midnight to midnight, and then I can go back to work on Thursday. Okay, so it's really important, again, looking at this roster audit, do we have that correct, so that we don't have an ongoing roster that shows award breaches? I am completely, not oblivious to the fact that that can be impractical for employees. I've seen the most brilliant roster from a client that breaches this provision. Their support workers had to work 3 days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, sleepover shifts. They were getting all their hours, they were getting plenty of time with their family, they were getting to the beach every day, they were stoked. Amazing! technically in breach of this provision. So what we had to look at there is… is some commercial, options around drafting an IFA. So whenever we are not applying certain causes of the award, and we're looking to vary the way we apply them to the business, legally, we need to have an individual flexibility agreement in place and governed by clause 7 of the award. to demonstrate compliance there. So there's options that we need to understand, to be able to apply to our organization and stay compliant there. In terms of worker availability and rostering, lots of questions again. I'll try to get through them as quick as possible. You know, how do we manage worker availability that changes from week to week? How do we legally contract part-time employees with minimum hours? What do we do when she can't casual cancel shifts? There's a lot of situations here that become really tricky. So first up, our casual employees. They have no guaranteed hours. They should have no guaranteed hours. They shouldn't be having shifts copied week to week, as to what they look like. It should be regular and variable. I know it's not. I know the industry is built on casual employees. But for the legislation's sake, this is what it should be. Our part-time employees, that's a lot more set. So when I look specifically at course 10 of the award, it tells me every part-time employee engaged under the Shads Award, we need to agree in writing to the day's starting and finishing times. So that's not just to say 25 hours a week, that is to say Monday, 9 till 4. Wednesday, 10 till 3, Thursday, 9-2, whatever it might be. We need to make sure that's in writing. Any variations to that require, mutual agreement, written consent, and we've got our minimum engagement rules as well for casual and part-time employees. We have rostering obligations under the award that we must post two weeks in advance. Once that roster is posted, we don't want to keep making changes to it, right? That's a nightmare. That's a… that's a full-time person's job, depending on the size of your organization. So we want to have clear rostering expectations that get your availability in. When the roster's done, it's done. How many people can be off at any given time? How do we apply for leave? Don't tell me the morning old. I know as a casual, you technically can, but don't. You know, we have clients to service, we need to make sure that they're taken care of, so how can we set those obligations and expectations, on employees to make it work for you practically? What we see here from a client's… from a best practice and compliance perspective is making sure we're documenting these changes. So, a lot of rostering systems can do that for you, but you need to be making sure we're utilizing them correctly. So, auditing our systems is a really good idea, something Renee is much more up on than myself. Looking at our availability policies, our rostering policies, and making sure that we have coverage there. Okay, the last thing I'll speak on, Emma, before I'll throw over to you for, some more information and Q&A part two, is looking at our part-time employees, how we may change. Now, a really important question came through around how to handle part-time staff contracts if a client ceases services. This happens all the time. This is so relatable, and it's why your industry remains casualized, because of that nature of choice and control, you know, being able to move on from service and support so freely is important, but it also makes it really hard as a business owner to plan, right, and be able to commit to permanent employment. It's not impossible to unilaterally change hours, and specifically, we would be looking at Clause 8A, which talks about changes to rosters or hours of work for anyone other than a sporadic employee. It's not as scary as it looks, there's just a process that needs to be covered and ticked off to ensure that we don't risk certain claims. So, those strategies there, we want to be making sure that we're reviewing our contract to understand what hours we're committed to, what we may be changing. having this open consultation with employees, so I recommend, you know, drafting some correspondence, which we can assist with, and telling them what the proposed change is, gathering their feedback. Ultimately, when we need to make that decision, what we can is we need to, again, following the awards, but definitely seeking advice, because someone can make an unfair dismissal claim while they still work for you. We've also got that bigger risk of general protections claims, so making sure that as you run that process, you don't accidentally expose yourself to that risk, which unfortunately we see time and time again. Okay, over to you, Emma.

Effective HR: Hopefully this afternoon. Thank you so much, Corinne. So, we had lots and lots of questions around how do we maintain compliance under Bashard's Award? It is so, so complex. What we see is that many organizations, they operate under the assumption that once HR processes or payroll systems are implemented. everything is protected, and this is what we call the set and forget track. The danger of this mindset is that critical gaps can quietly develop over time. Processes that once worked perfectly may no longer align with changing legislation, award interpretations. or organizational structures. And we're seeing this with the Jack Strengths case at the moment, which could have potential major implications. So, common kind of examples that we generally come across can include misclassified staff, incorrect allowances, being applied, overtime miscalculation, or payroll system settings that just haven't been updated. We also then have issues with what we call discovery too late, so often these issues only come to light when an employee grievance arises, a fair work audit occurs, or there's a legal dispute that escalates, and by the time the problem is discovered. Fixing it becomes exponentially more expensive, both financially and reputationally. Now, let's talk about why businesses struggle to conduct regular payroll audits. It's such an important thing to do within your organization, and the reality is, is that payroll teams are usually quite stretched. When you think about managing day-to-day processing, rostering, leave, employee queries, audits, while important, they often get pushed to the bottom of the list. Simply because there never seems to be enough time. There's also the perception of cost. Many organizations view audits as an added expense rather than that strategic investment. And in fact, a small upfront effort can prevent much larger financial and reputational consequences down the track. Expertise, another hurdle, payroll under the shards of wood is highly, highly complex. And finally, the risk is often underestimated. Minor errors might seem trivial until they escalate under scrutiny, particularly with the recent wage gap laws and just increasing regulatory attention in this space. So, what's the most effective way? You know, managing the risk really is having that proactive oversight. Maintaining shards of war compliance isn't something you can just set and forget. It's very much an ongoing process. Firstly, we always recommend engaging with a shards specialist. If you're, you know, working in that HR space, you'd be aware that the Shads Award is by far, and Corinne and I would easily agree, the top two most complicated modern awards, in Australia. It definitely is a specialisation, and we always recommend getting that expertise advice. Every organization is different, and consulting and getting that advice that's specific to your organization and circumstances is really important. Next, conducting HR compliance assessments and payroll audits. These are very much a deep dive into your HR processes, documentation, payroll systems. The goal is ultimately to spot potential gaps early so that you can address them before they turn into those costly disputes or audit findings. targeted training to managers, and finally, just a commitment to annual reviews of your documents to reflect those legislative changes and… or board changes. We often see HR policy handbooks that are 5 years old, extremely outdated, not effective, and it can be a big liability for organizations. I think that key message is very much compliance is a continuous effort, expert advice, doing regular checks and audits, training, keeping documents up to date, all are going to be your best protections. Against risk. One of the smartest ways we, you know, we recommend to stay on top of shards of Ward compliance is leveraging technology and automation. So looking at your payroll systems, making sure they integrate with accounting, human resource systems, your CRMs. This streamlines your operations, reduces the risk of errors caused by disconnected systems. And many these days have those automated data transfers and employee self-service functionalities. And importantly, ensuring that your payroll software has compliance built in. So many modern payroll systems include award rules and automated updates, which just help prevent underpayments that can sometimes occur through that manual interpretation and human error. Now, before we wrap up and go into some final Q&A questions that have come through, I'd just like to take a quick moment to share how effective HR can continue to support you beyond today's session. For those who are new to us or would like a quick refresher, we're one of Australia's only Shards Award specialists. We provide tailored, support with HR consulting, compliance with the SHADS Award, we draft and develop, tailored documentation, we offer training, we provide support in HR and payroll technologies and payroll auditing and remediation, so covering all of our different facets of HR, within the SHAD space. We often hear from businesses that they're frustrated by traditional HR models. That includes, you know, needing to speak with multiple advisors who offer conflicting advice, being tied to insurance-style services that may only protect you if you actually just take the most conservative approach. Without taking into account commercial realities. Struggling with providers who maybe are more reactive rather than proactive in providing that support. So we have very purposely developed two flexible service models to support organization… organizations. Our first one is what we call HR on Demand. This is very much a flexible pay-as-you-go model. We operate on an hourly rate, no minimum cost. And it's perfect for organizations that might just need that… that advice around the Shards Award. You know, when those really complex questions pop up. And you're spending hours navigating the award, calling Fair Work, looking on the Fair Work Library, and still not getting that clear-cut answer. This is where HR on Demand is really, really great, because it is very ad hoc, just based on an hourly rate. Also perfect for those, kind of, annual projects, like payroll audits or HR compliance reviews. We also have HR Partner, which is more of our proactive, all-inclusive model. It covers everything from your HR compliance assessments, unlimited advice. tailoring up contracts and policies, and importantly, the ongoing maintenance of those documents to make sure that they stay current with legislative and case law changes. We also include options for HR and payroll system integration. Now, very happy to open up the floor to any last-minute questions, so please pop them in the Q&A if we haven't got around to them today. Alternatively, please scan the QR code. If you would like to take advantage of a free consultation meeting with a HR consultant, we would be happy to book that in and to provide some more specific advice around your organization. Alright, Corinne, are you ready for a couple of questions?

Corinne West: Yes, I was hoping some more had come through, because 120 was not enough.

Effective HR: No, so many questions today. We tried to cover as many topics as possible, but as you know, the award is very vast. So, that's why we wanted to just offer this opportunity that if we didn't get around, I'm more than happy to give that one-on-one session. So, questions! Going back to sleepovers, definitely one of our hottest topics that we had come through. And the example that we had is if we've got a shift from 5pm to 9am the next day.

Corinne West: when…

Effective HR: 10 to 6 is a sleepover. Do we pay the 5pm to 10pm in a night rate, as well as the 6am to 9am? Is that all at our night rates?

Corinne West: That's a very good question, and I guess it depends on how patient you are waiting for this appeal. So, essentially, previously, and what the status quo has been up until that's joint case decision. So, 5pm till 10pm? And then 6am till 9am, so that's… trying to do that off the top of my head. 8 hours? 8 hours? Yes, 8 hours at night rate, plus a sleepover allowance. And that's where we mean it's one shift, we're pressing pause, the shift is finishing after midnight, got a shift worker on it, it's going to be 9 shifts. JATS Joint is saying no. JATS Joint is saying, essentially, the 5 till 10 would be treated as an afternoon shift, because it's finishing between 8 and midnight, and the morning, because it's starting again from 6, would be treated as normal day rates. So it depends on which interpretation you want to go with. Our advice is keep it at the original, because as you can see, that's more advantageous just for the employee, and we expect, or not expect, the appeal is happening, we don't know what the result is going to be. But we know that if we are switching that over too quickly, we may be left to then pay that gap, which is really frustrating to try and unwind there.

Effective HR: Amazing, thank you. Alright, so we've had a question just come through. We have a support worker who has two shifts without a 10-hour gap. Do we need to pay 200% for the second shift? For example, the support worker goes from 6pm to 9am, so the sleepover is 10 to 6am, and comes back again for a shift from 3pm to 7pm. So we're talking about the rest break period, broken shifts, potentially.

Corinne West: Yeah, yep. There is no nice way to say this. I think this… this forms a lot of Renee's back payment, shifts, doesn't it? So, your issue here is particularly where the rosters… where the, award says that we've got a 10-hour break between shifts. What it does say is that that can be reduced to 8 hours break between shifts that is contiguous with a sleepover. So being that it's either side of sleepover, we can reduce that to 8 by agreement. So again, making sure that's in our employment contract. The gap you've provided there, we're still talking about, 6-hour gap. Now, how that is to be treated and whether or not that 200% payment is made is going to depend on several things, but I guess the key thing I look at here is the employee's, status. So, if they are permanent, if they are casual, if they, were accruing overtime on the prior shift, and this is because, So, quote me on this, I want to say specifically it was 28.3 BLC of the award, talks about, how any monetary payment is to be applied, but essentially. Long story short, the reason why you can't do it is because it's going to be what we call a technical breach under the award. So, for a casual doing that shift, there's no actual monetary payment applicable, but you will have breached the award, and you can be fined lots of thousands of dollars for doing so, so it's not a shift I would want to see every day. Potentially, you could treat it as a broken shift, however, there's going to be… 200% penalty payment payable after a 12-hour span, which would be pretty much that whole next day, which isn't a great calculation. So for that particular scenario, sorry, I feel like I've rambled on there, that's a great opportunity to scan the QR code, and let's actually break down that roster, that individual cost it out, and find a better way to do it, because that is not it.

Effective HR: Perfect, thank you, Corinne. We also had a good question. Can you recommend systems to configure the Shads Award? We love KeyPay. Keypay has lots of white labels out there. We provide a white label ourselves, so the Vective HR. Why do we love KeyPay? Corinne, do you want to talk into why it's so fantastic for organizations that are covered by the SHADS Award?

Corinne West: Yeah, absolutely. For starters, it's, one of the only ones that we're comfortable with the Shads Award interpretation in there. So, I see a lot of organizations in this space will be using, accounting applications, like MyOrban Payroll, to pay their employees that don't have that intuitive award built in, and also applying those updates, so trying to calculate CHAD-specific shifts, loading, penalty rates of overtime, it just doesn't happen, which means payroll's taking some poor person 5 hours a day to pay 40 people, and that's just horrendous. it can be so much simpler and have that sleep at night factor that it's compliant. So that's where, for me, I, you know, would specifically be looking at having a chat with Renee and going, what's going to work for you? Because manually calculating that from a risk perspective is just not on for an organization.

Effective HR: Yeah, perfect. All right, well, we might wrap it up there, as we've gone already slightly over. Thank you so much, everyone, for attending today's webinar. As I mentioned, the session has been recorded, and we will be sharing it after today's session. We will also be hosting another webinar on the 12th of November. This webinar will be covering some fantastic HR topics, including right to disconnect. contractor engagement, employee management, and having a look at some of those management processes, and some minimum compliance requirements under Fair Work. We will also send out those details after the webinar. But thank you, everyone, for joining. We hope you found this session really valuable, and thank you for sending through your questions.

Corinne West: Thanks, everyone. Bye for now.