SCHADS Q&A: June 2026

This transcript of Effective HR’s “SCHADS Q&A: June 2026” 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: Good afternoon, everybody! Z. Lots of people jumping on right now. Laura, I'm not sure if you know, we've had several hundred people attend or register for this webinar, so…

Laura Cowling: Amazing.

Effective HR: We are busy ones, so we'll let everyone Come through the proverbial door, get your seat, get your cup of tea, poison of choice. Mine's peppermint tea. Those wondering what's in the cup? We'll get started in just another minute or two. Now, it's, it's been a pretty busy week this week, Laura. Obviously, we've been preparing for the webinar, as people come through and take their seats. We've also had some pretty big changes to the Shads Aboard. The sleepover and overtime changes, they took effect Monday. It's a big one, and of course, we will be going through that today. Lots of the questions about that one. We also had another award decision that was actually handed down on Monday. very busy day, that's essentially looking to overhaul how the Shads Award classifies workers. So that was a huge one as well. Let's not forget the minimum wage increase, looking forward to a pay rise come end of year. For some people, not all, that's another talking point, isn't it?

Laura Cowling: So…

Effective HR: So, it's… it's.

Laura Cowling: Yeah.

Effective HR: B.

Laura Cowling: Lots happening for people in this industry.

Effective HR: I think, another big one as well is because we are quickly approaching that end of financial year, I'm finding a lot of people, oh, hang on, we've got some leftover budget, should we do some training with that? Get ready for the new financial year.

Laura Cowling: Mmm…

Effective HR: Always a really interesting time. Okay, we have got a lot of people on, we'll just give it another minute. And we're gonna jump into the content. You look beautiful. Okay, we might get started, everybody. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for jumping on, and joining us today. My name's Corinne West, I'm a lead consultant at Effective HR, and I'm being joined by my fabulous colleague, Laura. Today is going to be a really exciting webinar. So, we have branded it Shad's Q&A, because that is literally what it is. It's a long time coming. We are going to spend the next hour literally answering all of your questions. We did get inundated with questions prior to today, from, as I mentioned, several hundred, registrants, which is amazing. A lot of overlapping questions, as you can imagine. So, rest assured, the question you've asked, you're probably not the only one in that vote today. So we're going to do our best to get through as many questions in the time today that we have over the next hour. But of course, we always like to leave room at the end for any additional live questions that might come up during the webinar. So, while you may have had your initial question answered, it might have sparked a new one for you. So, you're able to put those questions in the chat box at any time, and we'll be able to jump back to that before we wrap up today's webinar. So… Before we get started, I do want to do a quick acknowledgement of country. I pay my respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people participating in today's webinar. I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the various lands on which we work today. And I pay my respects to Elders past, present, and emerging. Myself, Corinne, I'm joining you from a Watwickle land near Newcastle in New South Wales. My colleague Laura is joining us on Dark and Jung Country, on the central coast of New South Wales. So, a little bit of an intro as to who we are and why you're listening to us today. Laura and I, we work for a company called Effective HR. We're essentially a boutique consulting firm. We're offering comprehensive advice in HR, work health and safety. Payroll auditing, systems implementation support, and essentially, we're offering these tailored services to meet each unique needs of any business that would like our help. We don't have any lock-in contracts, so it's definitely the flexibility when needed is really important, when we're offering good service. So that's essentially who we are and why we're presenting today. As I mentioned, you'll be hearing from both myself and my colleague Laura. We've both been working at Effective HR for over 3 years now. My background itself, I actually come from a background with degree qualifications in law and business, majoring in HR and employment law, as well as my work health and safety certificate, and I've been doing this professionally for about 14 years. My colleague Laura has her postgraduate qualifications in HR, a very strong background in commercial operations, systems, and most importantly, team leadership for over 17 years. So, Laura's previously worked as an operations manager in businesses just like yours, and specialises in process improvement, systems utilization. So having her on your team, I can say from experience, is the most valuable resource to any organization. A little bit of a fun fact as well about Laura and I, we've now worked together for about 13 years across 3 different jobs, so we're a bit of a package deal at this point. So you may hear a few laughs and a few inside jokes as we, as we nerd out in the Shads Award together. So, what are we covering today? The key topics that we've had questions on that we'll be answering today. We're looking, as we said, deep dive into the SHADS Award, ordinary versus evening rates. overtime, entitlements, excursions, the big changes to the sleepovers clauses that come into place from Monday this week onwards. We're going to look at how IFAs intersect with those changes, some questions that we've received around minimum engagement and on-call shifts, and a lot of these questions are overlapping with sleepovers, so certainly a lot of content there to get through. I reckon we dive straight in. What do you reckon, Laura? You ready?

Laura Cowling: Sounds good, let's go!

Effective HR: Perfect, perfect. So, the first question we received is a hypothetical scenario, which I absolutely love. We have a disability support worker And they are rostered, to work from 2 till 4pm, supporting client A, And then they're rostered to work 4.15 till 10pm, and they're supporting client B. The questions we have on this particular scenario are, what's the rate of pay for this? And how does that align with the NDIS pricing guidelines? Can you give us some guidance on that, Laura?

Laura Cowling: Thanks, Corinne, and thank you for the lovely introduction. So, this scenario on the screen is something very common we see in this industry. And it's going to come down to, I guess, the intention of the shift, and what that employee's doing for that 15 minutes is always good to know as well. So, there are potentially two ways that we could interpret this shift, and that is either a broken shift or a continuous shift. So we know that with continuous shifts, in accordance with Clause 27.1 of the awards, an employee must receive an unpaid break of 30 to 60 minutes after 5 hours of work, or they can have a break with a client as part of their normal work routine. So, in this… in this shift example, so if we were to look at it as a continuous shift. The… the 15 minutes unpaid does not meet the minimum brake requirement, so just something to keep in mind when we are rostering like this. Because the… the break clause states that you need to have that minimum 30 to 60. So, two ways we can interpret it as a continuous shift, being that this shift could potentially be paid from 2pm to 10pm, so just that one continuous shift. If that… that was the case, then the employee would be entitled to afternoon rates, because this shift does finish after 10pm and before midnight. If, we've got that unpaid break, there are 15 minutes, so another consideration is potentially seeing if we could have an unpaid break of at least 30 minutes, so we're in line with the award provisions, and we're not… we're not breaching the award. In that instance, again, the employee would still be entitled to afternoon… the afternoon shift rate for that entirety of the shift, so that 2 till 4, and potentially, say, 4.30 till 10pm. So, let's touch on broken shifts now, so that we know a broken shift consists of two periods of work, with that break in between, or potentially three periods of work with two breaks, by agreement with the employee. I guess the tricky one here is the award is not clear on the minimum or maximum amount of time that must occur between the two or three periods of work. So, generally speaking, we know an unpaid break can only be a maximum of 60 minutes, so… Therefore, an unpaid break exceeding 60 minutes would generally be considered a broken shift. That's not to say we can't interpret this as a broken shift, however, what employers need to understand, that if it is considered a broken shift, we have that broken shift allowance that applies. So it's currently, as of today, $20.82. It may increase come 1 July. So, yeah, even though they're only having that 15 minutes, they get an extra $20 as that broken shift allowance. When we look at payment, if it was interpreted as a broken shift. The best way to look at this is sort of treating those periods of work separately. So, that first period of work, 2 to 4pm, it's during the ordinary hours of 6am to 8pm, so the employee would be entitled to ordinary rates. Then, the second part of that broken shift, which is the 4.15 to 10pm, the employee would be entitled to afternoon shift rates, because that period of work finishes after 8pm. So that afternoon rate is that extra 12.5% on top of that.

Effective HR: Thank you, Laura. That's, that's really interesting that you… you flagged that, because, when we look at the idea of what a broken shift is, because we don't have this really nice definition under clause 25.6 of the awards, so we go, oh, reverse engineering it with other clauses of the award, you've given the example there, if we're calling that a broken shift, we're paying the $20 allowance, or whatever amount it is. Probably better to call it a continuous shift, because someone's rate of pay for 15 minutes is going to be less Then the 20 there. So, thinking about when someone's shift actually starts and ends. we can be strategic here, and that's also going to be compliant, and we potentially don't have this inefficient wage cost of breaking it up in that way. Is that what you're thinking?

Laura Cowling: Yeah, absolutely. I think sometimes… in this scenario specifically, it's one of those ones when you can do the calcs, you can do the math around this, and what is going to be, you know, I guess, beneficial For the employer. So, great, great point there, Corinne. When we come to that second question there, so how do I line up, you know, which rate of pay to pay in line with the NDIS price guidelines? So, it sort of ties into another question that we had come through, where someone asked, there's so much confusion about the NDIS ruling for sleepovers. Because we understand the NDIS says 2 hours are covered in the support costs, but then the award says you pay, you know, a minimum of an hour for wake up, so… so what's the answer there? So. This is one of the most common areas of confusion we see in this industry, and I guess the key point is that the NDIS pricing arrangements and the SHADS Award deal with two completely different things. So, the SHADS Award sets the minimum legal employment entitlements, so that is what the employer must pay the employee. The NDIS pricing arrangements, on the other hand, you know, whilst we're not, you know, specialists in that space, but they generally relate to what funding may be claimable. through the participant's plan, so they don't override workplace laws or award obligations. Under the SHADS Award, so a sleepover allowance is payable for sleepover shifts itself, and if the employee is required to perform work during that sleepover, they must be paid for that in accordance with the award provisions, so including the minimum payment provisions, as mentioned in that question, which is a minimum of 1 hour. So, again, this is where the confusion often arises, and the NDIS, may only allow a provider to claim, you know, maybe a certain amount or structured funding in a particular way. However, that doesn't remove the employer's obligation to comply with the SHADS award. So, I guess in practical terms. employers must ensure that employees are paid correctly under the award, regardless of funding arrangements, or what is referenced under NDIS. So, obviously, providers still need to assess operationally and commercially how this aligns with NDIS funding and service delivery models. So, a good rule of thumb is NDIS funding rules do not determine Minimum employment entitlements, the SHADS Award does.

Effective HR: I think it's really interesting, Laura. I often have clients, when I'm trying to determine what their current state is and how they're currently paying shifts, I'll say, oh, you're paying that at afternoon or night rates, and they'll say, we're paying it at evening rates. Is it afternoon, or is it night? Because, again, we're speaking the Shads Award language, which doesn't use the word evening, it uses the words afternoon and night. pricing guideline has totally different language. Same with sleepovers and night disturbances. You know, what we see in the award is, are you required to perform work? That might be a different definition, different language to night disturbances. In accordance with the NDIS pricing guidelines, so it's certainly a tricky one, but I think we can also look at that on a case-by-case basis to get specific answers as we need to as well. Thank you for that, Laura. I'm gonna keep you on the hotspot for a little bit longer. Excursion rules. So, this is a really fun and wacky clause under the Chateau Ward. It's not used by a lot of providers, but it certainly adds complexity to those that do. This question was asked by one of our very dear, current clients. We've got about several hundred NDIS providers as our clients on the moment. And they want to know, when looking at an excursion, if we have a support worker that's on an excursion, they're away from home, they're working actively from 8am till 8pm, and then after that, that's perfectly fine. They're not required to work, they're not required to stay at a particular premises. Is that actually an excursion, or is it a sleepover? Are these new sleepover changes going to change that, and does it make a difference if we're covering the costs of that excursion? How does it all work?

Laura Cowling: I was going to say excursions are probably one of the trickiest, but I like your terminology, Corinne, as the wackiest, so I'm going to use that from now on, because excursions, I guess, are their own beast. There's a whole set of different provisions and rule sets that apply to excursions, and Not many employers are familiar with how excursions operate, so you need to be very specific about how you roster these. So… When we look at the definition of excursions, it's where an employee agrees to supervise clients in excursions involving overnight stays. So excursions are not the same as sleepovers or 24-hour care shifts, so this means that the sleepover and 24-hour care provisions under the award don't apply to excursions. As part of the excursion provisions, employee who works in excursion between Monday and Friday gets paid the sleepover allowance for each night they stay away from home. So, regardless of whether they're active or need to perform work during that period. they are still paid the sleepover allowance. So, I guess look at this as, like, not that the sleepover provisions apply, but it's more of a bit of an incentive for the employee to stay away from their own personal residence. Ordinary hours on weekends for excursions, differ as well, so during the week they are 8am to 6pm, instead of the standard 6am to 8pm, that we see in the award. And overtime applies outside these times, so something to be mindful of, with this shift on the screen here is that this employee is working 8am to 8pm, so essentially they'd be entitled to overtime after 6pm, so just something to be mindful of there. And shift workers are also entitled to overtime after ordinary hours. When we look at our questions we have there on the screen, so do we pay this as an excursion or sleepover? We know that the employee is required to stay away from their home, so we need to apply the excursion provisions, not the sleepover. However, they're still entitled to that sleepover allowance. And because it's an excursion, our second question there, the sleepover changes don't impact this, because the sleepover provisions don't apply to excursions. And what if we are paying for meals and accommodation? Amazing. You're doing the right thing. So keep, keep doing that. So meals, transport, accommodation should all be covered as part of these excursions.

Effective HR: Thank you, Laura. I think it's really interesting, and tying back to why we called it weird and wacky. this idea of going, okay, cool, we've got excursions that aren't a sleepover, but you still pay the sleepover allowance, but only if it's Monday to Friday, and not if it's a full moon, like. absolutely outrageous, in my opinion. You've got shift workers that can work 7 and 8pm, but they're going to get overtime. It just absolutely turned it on its head. And I think it does… cause a lot of confusion and issues for clients, and so one of the things we do here, because it's a different way of working, right? It's not that I'm going to the usual workplace, being a still home, or a client's home. I'm away, you know? We might be two hours away from where I usually reside. It's a different way of doing things, and this is where looking at having a travel or excursion policy and an excursion agreement that crystal clear clarity outlines to the employees what are the expectations, you know, what does that look like? The big one as well is saying, you're right, Laura, in going, yes, you are meant to cover the cost of meals and accommodation, but, like. can I go to the Four Seasons and get, like, a $400 lobster? Like, are you covering that expense? You know, what is reasonable is always outlined by policy, and if it doesn't, well, we could have two very different definitions of what's reasonable here. So, really important to just be a bit conscious when we're rostering this, to think of all those weird and wonderful bits, but… Thank you very much for that one, Laura. Aha, we're here, we're at it. Sleepover. This is why everyone's dialed in, right? We are going to go through the sleepover saga, what has been happening. I don't want to jump straight to the one June changes, and the reason for that is for us to confidently understand what the changes are about. it's important to know where it's all come from, so bear with me while I go on a bit of a story time for you all out there. In the interest of time, I'm going to paraphrase, I'm going to summarize, but of course reach out if you want to discuss details further. Long story short, we've got a few players in this game. We've got our Fair Work Commission. We know, as our lawmakers, they are the ones who are writing the modern awards, our Shads Awards specifically. We have our Fair Work Ombudsman, who is a separate body. They are our regulator, whose job it is to inf… the award provisions that the Fair Work Commission wrote. Now, the Fair Work Ombudsman, I'm sure you've all perused their website, they have a great library where they've got resources and articles up there, and for the longest time, they have had an article around how to pay a sleepover. And what this said is that a sleepover is not considered a break in work, it is simply considered a bit of a pause. So it's a continuous shift, if you will. If you've listened to me speak at any other webinar, you would have heard me give that example of pressing pause. Now, that's how we've interpreted this clause for the longest of time, because quite frankly, the Fair Work Ombudsman told us to. Now, they have been infing the Shads Award, since its inception. What actually happened is we had a relevant case come into it. So, the Fair Work Ombudsman has issued a compliance notice to an NDIS provider, JATS Joint. You may have heard that term before. This actually went to court, and on the 8th of July 2025, The federal court hands down a decision, that essentially looks to potentially change or add an additional interpretation around sleepovers. This, of course, rattled the Fair Work Ombudsman, and an appeal was launched. That appeal, decision was handed down on the 20th of March, earlier this year. Where essentially the appeal was dismissed, and the original decision was upheld in the Jets joint case. Of course, as I said, this is a huge shift, and so, as a bit of a result, the Fair Work Commission, being a lawmaker, has pushed through, in 13th of April, a decision to make a determination on varying Lashad's award as a result of this case. So, what is this case? What is the crux of Jat's joint? Essentially. when we look at our break between shifts clause, we know that there needs to be a 10-hour break between shifts, or, by agreement, 8 hours contiguous with a sleepover. So, this has always been construed as the idea of, once you come off a sleepover. If you've got a buy agreement clause in place, you've got 8 hours on the clock before you can go back to work, and vice versa of that shift. However, what this case did is also construe another option as to how that 8-hour sleep period in the middle, say 10pm till 6am, could be construed. They're actually suggesting that it could be construed as a break. So this is an additional way of looking at that clause construction, and multiple other clauses impacting this. under the award. So, if you're applying that logic, that if we've got an 8-hour buy agreement in place. That sleepover could be considered a break between shifts, which then affects how we calculate penalties. So, the Fair Work Ombudsman has always said it's going to be night rate before, night rate after. Federal court is saying, well, it could also be afternoon shift before, and day rates after. So, it's a pretty big one here. While it wasn't expressly stated, the decision itself is based on the rostering pattern of that particular case, so there's certainly wiggle room there for interpretation and application. What we need to be aware of, though, is that… Essentially, this is only applicable up until last week, the 31st of May, because after that, we then saw the new award clauses come into place. So, the changes that we've then made, and what the award says now, one of our colleagues, Sophie, shout out if you're listening, had hilariously joked the award at the moment is completely chopped up with fonts, formatting, and text sizes, which is very upsetting to us that are in that every day. So you can see we've got those new clauses inserted in there. What we're looking at now is to say. where an employee is rostered to perform work immediately before and after a sleepover period, in accordance with Clause 25.7. The portion of work prior to and following the sleepover will be treated separately For the purposes of determining the loading to be paid, under Clause 29.3. They then go on to specifically give the example. If an employee performs work on a shift prior to a sleepover period from 9 till 11, being the first period of work, then the sleepover, then after the sleepover from 7am till 11am, being the second period of work. The afternoon shift allowance will only be payable on the first period of work. Okay, so it's confirming that this is how we're paying moving forward. This has resulted in some, quite frankly, cost savings for employers and for our clients, but there's a lot of things we need to do in order to actually pass this on and apply it, which we'll look at now as well. So that new clause we just looked at is actually held under Clause 29 of the award. Clause 25 of the award, our ordinary hours of work, has now been updated to say that by agreement, those keywords there, the employer and employee Can agree that ordinary hours can be worked up to 12 hours in circumstances where part of the shift is immediately performed before. And part of the shift afterwards, we can have a maximum of 8 hours on one side before or after a sleepover. So it's extending, essentially, that point of when overtime could kick in around a sleepover shift. However, it must be a fire agreement in writing. So, it's really interesting to see what's happened there in that space. I really like the analogy of, historically, the Fair Work Ombudsman has always treated sleepovers as breakfast. Jets Joint, the federal court construed sleepovers as being lunch. The Fair Work Commission has come together and gone, let's call it brunch, and now we have these provisions in place. So, it's certainly a frustrating evolution, but a necessary one, because we have a lot more clarity now. Around how this is going to be paid. We also saw, as part of the 1 June changes, implemented a cheeky change to overtime, that's been popped through as well. So this is, again, making the award more clear and clarifying what's happening here. So. In the old state, so up until last week, our overtime clauses read that overtime is payable for each day. where an employee exceeds their ordinary hours. This has now been updated to say overtime will be payable on each day, or shift, which an employee exceeds their ordinary hours. So. The so what factor here can, for a lot of people, be quite minimal, because if you have payroll systems implemented that have SHADS interpreters in… built into it. A lot of them are actually already interpreting it this way. It has been the conservative approach, but the language of the award has been updated to ensure that the compliance position there is very clear. So, if we come back to the questions on the screen around, you know, what does this mean? Does it mean the Fair Work Ombudsman was wrong? Don't put words in my mouth! Cheeky! No. What essentially the court case in Jatts Joint did was to provide an additional interpretation of the award that hadn't previously been construed or configured… considered even by the Fair Work Ombudsman. We did sit in a holding pattern for quite some time between the primary judgment being released and the appeal decision. So I understand that people are going to be worried that this could be overruled again, you know, is now actually the time we make changes, or is it going to change again? I don't see this changing anytime soon, because it's now in award terms. So, in order for it to change again, they would need to go through the process to vary the awards. So now's the time to make sure that we're implementing to stay compliant with this. I really enjoyed the question of, can I ask them to stop chaining it? I'll do my best. It's, it's certainly a, a frustrating area, as I said. And we've got a lot more questions on sleepovers coming up, so let's go through some specific scenarios and questions that we've had come through. Laura, I think it's time for me to put you on the spot. The… one of the questions with sleepovers that we've had is looking at these changes. Now we know what they are, where they've come from. Does this mean that a support worker can work an 8-hour afternoon shift? So let me think about this. Let's say 2 till 10pm. Have a sleepover period from 10 till 6am. And then work another 4 hours in the morning from 6 till 10am? Is that what this is saying?

Laura Cowling: The short answer is yes. However, based on these sleepover changes, we know that employees can agree to extend ordinary hours from 10 to 12 hours around the sleepover. So… That first scenario there, absolutely correct. That is how you can roster, as long as you have that buy agreement in place. And when we say by agreement, what that looks like, I did just see a question pop up, in the chat box as well, regarding this. But generally, a buy agreement can be done through a formal, agreement letter that you issue to the employee, and they sign and return. Another option is issuing an updated contract. to employees that outline these SHAD-specific clauses. So these buy agreement clauses. I know our contract is quite detailed, with these clauses, so they sort of extend beyond just this, this one agreement to increase 10 hours, increase the ordinary hours around a sleepover from 10 to 12. Sort of leads me in, I guess, onto the second question there, and we may have answered it to some extent, but it says, a total active hour limit's affected. So, can a worker do 8 hours before a sleepover, have the sleepover period, and then another 8 hours without attracting overtime? We know, as I just mentioned, that we can increase the ordinary hours from 10 to 12 by agreement, so what that means with the shift example, if the employee was To be rostered from 2pm to 10pm. That would be paid at afternoon shift rates. Then we have 8-hour sleepover periods. And let's say the employee then works 6am to 2pm, so another 8 hours after that sleepover period. What happens is, as soon as that employee hits 12 hours, so assuming they've agreed to 12 hours, 12 ordinary hours around a sleepover, essentially that employee is going to be entitled to overtime payments, from 10am, because that's when you hit that 12-hour mark. So just a… something to be mindful of, and again, I'm sure there's, you know, different ways that we can look at rostering in that scenario, so you're not paying overtime in those scenarios. We do have another… oh, sorry, yeah.

Effective HR: Sorry, Laura? I was just going to say, it's been really interesting as well to look at it from a systems perspective, because So we're saying it's by agreement, so that's on that real individual level.

Laura Cowling: Nope.

Effective HR: So, if you think about, say, the bulk of a support worker workforce, you're going to have some people that agree and some people don't, and that's actually processed differently in payroll, so making sure that those… is it… you're better with systems than me? Like, the work tags or something that's going to be set up to cover that off? Does that sound about right to you?

Laura Cowling: Yeah, in certain systems. So, we know that this, this approach to… to have tags on employees, is not functionally in all payroll systems.

Effective HR: Okay.

Laura Cowling: And that's where, I mean, when we look at, you know, Employment Hero or KeyPay, it's… it does have that… that option, and that functionality to add different tags to different employees, but other systems are quite limited, and it can become quite manual.

Effective HR: For sure. Hey, I've just been doing my times tables, and I've realized the top question certainly links in with the bottom question around 24-hour care shifts and sleepovers, because we've got, you know, 8 hours plus 8 hours plus 8 hours, 8 times 3 is 24. We've got a 24-hour care shift, don't we? How is this different?

Laura Cowling: Good, good leading, good segue, Corinne. And 24-hour care shifts, again, operate so differently. So, this is where an employee It is available for duty in a client's home for 24 hours. And the award specifically states that the employee is required to provide a total of no more than 8 hours of care during this period. So, Clause 25.8 of the award is very specific, in telling us that… how the work is structured. There is 155 penalty, 55% penalty payment for work, for that 8 hours work, and it's sort of, I guess, structured in a way that you may not be meeting the minimum employment period of that 2 hours, because there's sort of… You know, they may have another carer, or a parent, or a friend there, and you're sort of, you know, helping out during that 24-hour period, but for no more than 8 hours, and there's different overtime provisions that apply.

Effective HR: Oh my god. They're saying that, essentially, A 24-hour care shift is different to being rostered for a 24-hour shift. They're two different things, yeah?

Laura Cowling: Yeah, correct. And it's something we see a lot of people roster incorrectly. And it can be a great shift where we need support in the home, but not necessarily, you know, meeting the minimum engagement, as I mentioned. But if someone is working for majority of those waking hours. This shift may not be the most, efficient and cost-effective way to actually roster this… to roster someone.

Effective HR: And it can only be for home care employees. So, it's one of those weird… top three weird and wacky shads clauses that rostering someone for 24 hours is different to actually utilizing the award provisions for a 24-hour care shift. So maybe homework for our attendees, have a little sticky beak at Clause 25.8. Let us know what you think, because we're always here to nerd out. I think, I think it's really interesting to look at this particular question that's come through around sleepovers and one of my favorite things, IFAs. So the question is, are you able to agree to a break period between a sleepover and the attached shift if an IFA is in place? What… what are we thinking here?

Laura Cowling: So, on the screen there, you'll see on the right-hand side that this is actually a snippet of Clause 7 of the award, and it's very prescriptive as to what needs to happen, and what you can have an IFA in place for, what terms of the award you can vary. So. It could be as simple as, you know, wanting to incorporate annual leave loading over a year, or an annual cycle as opposed to pay cycle to pay cycle. It could be a uni student who only wants to work, you know, two hours at each side of a sleepover, so there's options there. And, you know, if employee wants to reduce the break between shifts, you know, there's only certain, terms that we can vary under Clause 7. So… Can I give an IFA to all support workers? So, we would be very hesitant, with this, so it's not the intention of the clause. Hence the name Individual. It's not designed to fix gaps in your roster. So, if applying company-wide. For whatever reason, you'd want to sort of, you know, have that documented, and have the reasoning why. So.

Effective HR: That's a really interesting point, Laura, because… when we read the wording of the question, it's around, like, can I roster this? And it's going, well, an individual flexibility agreement is exactly that, right? Individual. So, having that situation where you're giving it to everyone, because that the way the shift is structured on your base roster, that to me is indicative that an IFA is not going to actually solve problem you have. Which you and I, we were talking about this one before, it kind of feels like a… doomed both ways. We're either looking at it as a broken shift, and we're attracting penalties, potentially over time, when we look at specific shift examples with that one. So.

Laura Cowling: Mmm.

Effective HR: It's, it's certainly a tricky one, but I mean, we've seen IFAs go well, haven't we?

Laura Cowling: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We draft IFAs, you know, regularly in our everyday job. But it's something that we would want to, you know, discuss further and directly, and understand the individual circumstances for the business and for the employee, and look at the best path moving forward. So, when we, I guess, ask ourselves, is an IFA bulletproof for compliance? It's… We cannot guarantee until it's tested by the regulator themselves, but it does go a very long way to demonstrate the intention of compliance and agreement to mitigate risk. And you'd want to be doing things like, you know, boot tests, you know, better off overall tests, or calculations to ensure, because the idea of an IFA is that the employee is better off overall, so you need to, I guess, justify how the employee is better off. When we… regarding this question, so we sort of interpret it two ways. So, the question could potentially be, is the intention that this employer wants to treat that 8-hour sleepover period as a break between shifts? I mean, you can… you can do anything you want, but it depends if it's enforceable. So, we recently had Clarity post the Jat's joint decision that a sleepover is not a break between shifts. Therefore, putting that IFA in place may not be upheld. If we were to look at this at an example where an employee is rostered, say, 6pm to 10pm before a sleepover, then they have that 8-hour sleepover period, then they essentially finish work and may come back 2 hours later, so you're not meeting that 8-hour sleepover period. There is potentially options there, but again, we'd want to come back to, you know, meeting individually with that employer and just looking at, you know, their roster and different options available, and understanding how we can make this work better.

Effective HR: Yeah, that's a… that's a really good point. I think it… it brings us to, I guess, the so what, we always like to look at when it comes to our advice we give, and practically what does that mean for organizations dialing in today, and I think, you know, it's one thing for us to tell you what you're doing right and wrong, it's another thing to actually help you fix it and get it right, and that's what we do. what we've been working on with our clients since that their work commission determination came out on the 13th of April is to apply and implement these changes throughout their companies, which realistically is resulting for a lot of people in a reduction of the payroll Great. So, essentially, what's the kind of to-do list to be able to apply this? We like to look at exactly what you're changing. So, with the clients we've worked with, that current state of how they're currently paying sleepover shifts, so it was not one unanimous way. Everyone was doing something a little bit different, right? So looking at the current state to understand what you're doing, and then how that aligns to the future state, to go, what changes, if any, need to be made? And then looking at… those changes, if they are going to meet our criteria and our threshold around invoking consultation requirements, doing this under the award. So that's kind of a first step in understanding our current state, our future state. What are the changes and how we get there? Taking the opportunity to look at the documents to see, well, do we have these buy agreement clauses in place? We need to add our new buy agreement clause in place. How are we going to do that? Are we updating contracts? Are we issuing one-page agreements? What does this particularly look like? Even if you're not making any changes, I think it's really important to at least communicate with the team. And my reasoning for that is, you know, a lot of support workers, no support workers in other organisations, or, you know, our friends out there in the community, and the community is talking about what's happening. So if their scenario doesn't necessarily align with another provider, they're going to start asking questions, and we want to get on top of that so that we're not creating any kind of negative cultural sentiment in our workplace as well. It's going to be good as well to audit that payroll system configuration. As we said, we may end up having buckets of employees where some people have agreed to work up to 12 ordinary hours around a sleepover shift, others haven't. So they need different rules set up in the system to ensure compliance there. We want to be making sure our offset clauses are covered. It's another good time to be looking at that, especially come end financial year. And as I mentioned, memo to all staff, making sure that they know what's happening, why it's happening, and what it means for them. Oh my gosh, Laura, we've gone through so many questions, we've got a couple more, before we jump into our live Q&A as well. Unsurprisingly, still on sleepovers. I think this is a really interesting question that's kind of come through about the sleepover, that is, if we've got a minimum shift engagement, we know from another section of the award of 2 hours. well, can I then roster four hours on one side and, like, one or one and a half on the other side? What is… what does that mean for minimum engagement and the sleepover changes?

Laura Cowling: So, with the Shads of Wall changes, we know that the sleepover period does not break the shift, so that's something that we have got confirmation on. But it does form part of the same shift. So, you can, I guess, somewhat treat it as a continuous shift, so to speak. So, we know that we need to meet the minimum 4 hours on one side of the sleepover. Regarding the other side, so with the shift example on the screen, we can see that the 1.5 hours of work is performed after the sleepover period. And it's part of that same shift. So that shift, essentially starts at 6pm, so being that 4 hours, hypothetically 4 hours before the sleepover, sleepover period's 10pm till 6am, then we've got an hour and a half. So, forms part of the same shift. You've already met your 2-hour minimum obligation by rostering the employee for 4 hours. before the sleepover. So there's… there's essentially no minimum engagement required for work performed immediately after the sleepover period, because it forms part of that same shift.

Effective HR: You know what's interesting with that, though, Laura, is that if you were, prior to 31st of May. applying the Jets joint way of afternoons in the beforehand, and days in the afterhand, then in that situation, you should be paying the minimum engagement. And there's potentially an underpayment liability for that time that's less than 2 hours that should be audited, so it's… When you look at that, I guess, current and new state moving forward, it's, it's not going to be an issue from June 1, because we have that clarity, but retrospectively, there's also some potential compliance cleanup there. Okay, last question, sorry, Laura. What about on-call shifts? What do we need to know about here when it comes to time tracking?

Laura Cowling: Yeah, this is… this is a really good one, and it's, another one of Corinne and I's favourite clauses, because it's so prescriptive. It tells you, or tells us exactly what remote work and on-call work is, and how it needs to be paid. And the assigned penalty rate, depending on when that work is performed. So, the SHADS Award doesn't prescribe, I guess, a specific method for recording or tracking on-call shifts. However, if an employee is required to actively perform work while on call. Employer… employers should assure the actual hours worked are separately recorded. as this attracts additional award entitlements. So, as I mentioned, Clause 25.10 of the award is very prescriptive with how employees need to be paid for work performed whilst on call. The biggest issue we see with employees on call is that Employers only pay that on-call allowance and think that that's enough, and they can, you know, answer 50 calls, you know, between 5pm and 9am the following morning, you know, outside those business hours. But that's not the intention. When we look at that on-call allowance, sort of think of that as an inconvenience allowance that you have to stay by your phone, and you know, you can't go out for dinner with your friends. It's the inconvenience of that. However, if an employee is required to perform work, as I mentioned, there's certain payments they're entitled to. From a practical and compliance perspective, organisations should have a consistent process in place for recording things like when the employee is rostered or directed to be on call, the on-call periods and duration. Any calls received or work performed during the on-call period, any time spent, performing actual work, so they may not be on the phone, but they may, you know, be on the computer and doing a bit of follow-up work based on that call. Any travel undertaken, if they do need to go back to work for any reason or support a client. And then payments made in relation to on-call allowances, recorder work, overtime, you know, minimum engagement provisions, things like that. So, very specific. If you do, have employees who are on call, we're more than happy to have a conversation, I guess, outside of this session, and just understand, you know, your business and the requirements around that on-call work.

Effective HR: Brilliant, thank you, Laura. This one, the on-call work, we weren't being sarcastic when we said it's our favourite, it is, along with IFAs, but it's something that we see a lot of clients stuck on, even if they go. Oh, but we're paying them a flat allowance of $200, and sometimes they never pick up the phone. sometimes there's 9 calls, surely that's an R. And in a practical, real, common sense way, it should be. That doesn't align to the wording of the award, though. So, the steps that need to be taken to make sure that you're not going to be liable for back pain in those situations. There's certainly solutions that we can come up with. But you cannot just rely on the default award wording. If you're applying any kind of loaded allowance, there has to be documentation in place covering exactly that, and I think that's what we kind of filter through every day as well at work for us. Speaking of, we're going to dive into the live questions. I can see there's quite a lot there, that have been asked during today's webinar shortly. Before we do so, though, I wanted to give you a little bit more information around our service offerings at Effective HR. So you understand, how we're best placed to support your organization. So, in terms of what we do, as I mentioned before, we're a really cost-effective alternative for in-house HR, even working with internal HR to deliver that more industrial relations expertise. And looking at tailored solutions to meet each organization's goals and priorities. So, you can see on screen, the most popular services we provide, and so this is what Laura and I spend most of our days doing, looking at award coverage, advice, interpretation, assessments. We also do payroll audits and remediations for anything that has been paid non-compliant. We can assist with that. A lot of redundancies and restructure work, making sure that we are going through a compliant consultation process is a big one for us. Any sort of icky, sticky, tricky employee management situations, be it underperformance, misconduct, disciplinary procedures, investigation, that's what we're doing. Implementing systems, being HRIF and payroll, a lot of recruitment, a lot of recruitment activities at the moment. We love working in spreadsheets, busting out rosters, excursions, completing boot calculations that are required under Core 7.5 IFAs. So definitely a lot keeps us busy in the day, and we'd be more than happy to help you. In terms of how we deliver our services, that's entirely up to you. It's fully customizable. We essentially have two models, one called our HR on Demand, which is where you'll find Laura and myself, and that's where you pick and choose the support you need when you need it. So, available on a standalone basis for just one advice question, or one project you have. There's no lock-in fees, no minimum spend. If you don't contact us, we don't invoice you, quite frankly. We also have our HR partner model, which has become very popular, and so this is that ongoing support model That can get you compliant and keep you compliant, year-round support, being really proactive there. So this is treated more as a, 12-month subscription service to be able to deliver HR support. So, it's completely up to you which way you like to go. Hr Partner obviously including all of the documentation you're going to need to be compliant and succeed there. Okay, that's enough, Laura. I want to jump into some more questions, get back to what we love. Let's jump in. What else have you got for me?

Laura Cowling: Alright, Corinne, your turn to be in the firing line, and we have had an abundance of questions come through, so I will fire a few at you. We've got… How many? 8 minutes? But let's, let's try and knock over as many as we can. So, my question is, has anything changed with active overnights? Specifically with total hours allowed before? Overtime, so that 10 hours or 12 hours by agreement.

Effective HR: Sorry, did you say that was active overnight?

Laura Cowling: Active overnights, so has anything changed regarding those, those hours?

Effective HR: Very good question, and essentially, no, because the sleepover provision that's seen the bulk of the changes that we've gone through today, that is totally different to just working an active night shift, which we would be paying our shift loadings or penalty rates for accordingly, and then applying our maximum thresholds of 8 ordinary hours, or 10 by agreement. And making sure that's recorded somewhere as well.

Laura Cowling: Amazing. And, we have another question here. If an employee, hypothetically, was rostered to work, a sleepover shift, which was 6 to 10, that 8-hour sleepover period, then 6 till 7 the following morning. And then they're required to come back at 10am to cover a shift. How is that shift paid?

Effective HR: I don't love it, I'll be completely honest with you. I'll tell you why I don't love it. The 6 or 10, great. Post 1 June, we're paying afternoon rates, provided we haven't put anything weird and wacky in our contracts. Our sleepover, paying our sleepover allowance, paying our 1 hour day rates in the morning, great. Shift done. Then you've got this 3-hour period. And then the shift comes back at 10. We're not meeting our break between shift requirement of 10 hours, or reducing that to 8 by mutual agreement, contiguous with a sleepover. So 3 does not equal 8. That's the concern I have. The so what factor behind that is going to be one of two things. If the employee is casual, like most of the workforce is, straight up it's going to be a technical breach of the award. So that is that there is no monetary payment. I'm not paying the employee overtime to come back at 10am. That doesn't exist or is provided for in the award. But should I come to the attention of the regulator for whatever reason, there are potentially significant fines for noncompliance here, ranging from tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The only exception to that rule is when we look specifically at Clause 28.3. If I'm a permanent employee, I've been on overtime the shift before, and then I haven't had 10-hour break, then provision for a monetary payment to the employee. That would then mean you don't have a technical breach, but knowing that the industry has heavy casualisation, it's most likely just going to be a compliance.

Laura Cowling: fancy.

Effective HR: Other alternative would be to call it a broken shift, but we're going over our span of 12 hours if it started before the sleepover. We haven't received any real clarity around, can broken shifts go over a day, you know, in this sleepover example here, so my thoughts are it's a really expensive way to do it, and it's potentially not going to be compliant or enforceable anyway until we have further guidance on that one. So, sorry, I don't know if that was the best answer, but… That is what it is.

Laura Cowling: Amazing. I… I like this one. What if the 8-hour sleepover period is cut short by the participant going to bed later than expected, or getting up earlier?

Effective HR: Mmm, okay, really good question. I'm going to look at that. I'm gonna ask a follow-up question of, was it originally rostered to be an 8-hour period, or was it rostered to be less, because the person that we're participating only wanted a 6-hour sleepover? In the first instance, where a break has been rostered for the 8 hours, the break, I should say, the sleepover period has been rostered for 8 hours. any time then spent working because, you know, it's difficult to stick to the routine and get them to bed on time, you know, this is when we're starting to pay that work performed during the sleepover period. So, the sleepover period was meant to be 10 till 6. We haven't been able to get the client to bed till 10.30. It's when we're starting to actually trigger out over time during that period of time. If, in the second instance, we just didn't roster an 8-hour sleepover. that's not going to be compliant with the award. if it is an ongoing request, like that was the support request, or that part of the care plan, you'd certainly be looking to put frameworks in place, like an IFA, to vary the length of a sleepover, to try and reduce the risk there, around compliance. So… That's my thoughts on that. I reckon we can smash one more question, Laura, make it a good one.

Laura Cowling: Okay, last one. If an employee wakes during the night, and then does their 6am till 9am shift following that sleepover period, do they… Do they still get paid at ordinary rate, or overtime, because they've been awake during the night?

Effective HR: Mmm, that's a really good question. Long story short, it's going to be their ordinary rate. The time worked, you know, if they're required to jump up and work during that sleepover, it is covered with the overtime there. So the next shift should be fine, should be business as usual. My points, though, would just be to be regularly combing through those shift reports to see if this is a regular occurrence. It could actually be leading to… things like, fatigue and work health and safety that we might want to look at managing as well moving forward. So, looking at those particular issues more holistically will be super important there to… to ensure compliance. That was fun. Look, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone that's joined us today. You can see a QR code there on the screen. We are pleased to provide complimentary consultation session to any of our attendees here today to discuss any specific questions that you might have. So to schedule it, simply scan the QR code now, or you can also, follow up with the emails that we'll send you as well, to book some time in there. So, really looking forward to connecting with each of you, and assisting in addressing any other questions that you may have had that we didn't get a chance to answer during today's time. That brings us to the end. Thank you so much for all jumping on. Thank you, Laura, and thank you for our audience's wonderful and thought-provoking questions. We are always here to help, so please get in contact with the details on the screen if there's any more support you'd like. But in the meantime, have a wonderful afternoon. Bye.