Unpacking the SCHADS Award

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

Effective HR: Hello, everyone. Welcome to this afternoon's webinar.

Corinne West: Hello, Emma, technically morning for those joining us in Queensland. Yes, yes, Western Australia, yeah? Coming to you all across Australia. Give it a couple of minutes to get everyone through the door. I can see that number going up and up and up. I love it when it starts to hit 3 figures. Always great to have everyone on the call. as always, Emma, that Q&A I'm so excited for when I see the little chat box pop up with a number, I'm like, let's go.

Effective HR: Yes, yes, definitely. Now, today's session is being recorded. I know that's always one of the first questions that I get asked, so after today's webinar is completed, we will be sharing the recording, so you can pass that across to any of your team members that might not have been able to attend today. All right, what do you think, Corinne? Shall we get started? We've got lots to cover in today's webinar.

Corinne West: Absolutely.

Effective HR: Okay. Good morning for those who are based in Queensland and WA and some of our other states around the country. Thank you for joining us for today's Shaz Award webinar. As we know, the Shads Award can be one of the most complex modern awards, and navigating its nuances is often a challenge for many businesses, whether that's managing rosters, interpreting classifications, or staying updated with compliance changes. Keeping everything aligned can definitely feel overwhelming for a lot of businesses, and that's exactly why today's webinar is designed to bring clarity and confidence to the key areas of the award that may serve to impact your daily operations. So, Corinne and myself, we're here to help you break down these complexities and ensure that you have a solid understanding to support your business in managing compliance effectively. Today's session is being recorded, so you will be able to revisit the content or share it with your team after the webinar. Before we proceed, I would like to take a moment to pay my respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in this session. I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we work today. I pay my respects to elders, past, present, and emerging. Before we dive in, we would love to introduce ourselves. I'm Emma, I'm a HR consultant at Effective HR. And I'm joined by my brilliant colleague, Corinne, our lead HR consultant. Between us, we have extensive experience supporting organizations across the NDIS and community services sector. We work very closely with businesses every day on HR, work health and safety, and payroll compliance, and we have a particular focus on navigating the complexities of the Shards Award. For today's agenda, we will be focusing on key elements of the Chance Award that are most relevant to your day-to-day operations, including streams. Classifications and the pay points, along with engagement, broken shifts, breaks, sleepovers, remote work, and recent changes that we've seen to the first aid allowance application. At the end of this session, we will open up the floor for a Q&A, so please go ahead and type your questions in our chat throughout the webinar, and if you would like to take your question offline, we would be happy to organize a complimentary consultation meeting, which you can schedule via that QR code in the corner. I will now hand it over to Corinne, who will be taking us through today's content.

Corinne West: Amazing. Thank you so much, Emma. Lots to get through, and I'm so excited to nerd out with you all. The Shads Award is my bread and butter of what keeps me busy every day of the week, so very excited to dig in with you. Now, to get started, we want to look at the foundations of understanding the how the SHADS Award is applied to your organization. So, as I mentioned, we spend most of our days here at Effective HR working with NDIS providers, community services organisations that are covered by this award. And you're not alone in this confusion, or perhaps lack of confidence in understanding how the award is applied. So, the graphic you see on the screen right now is essentially what we need to determine and be confident in to ensure that we're paying each employee correctly and compliantly under the award. So, what you see at the top is we have our SHADS Award. And underneath that, we have nested, essentially, four different streams of the award, or sectors, if you will. So, two of those predominantly relate to our clients that are in this NDIS sector. So that being our home care sector, which has recently been separated into disability care and aged care sub-streams, if you will. This home care sort of work, particularly in the disability sector, is looking at covering those sorts of core supports and daily living, which are completed predominantly in a participant's private residence. Our SACS, standing for our social and community services sector, it's typically covering community-based capacity building, recreational activities with participants. It also covers things like support coordination and related activities there, as well as the provision of SIL, SDA, SDA housing. And so on. So… while it's not as straightforward as going, right, your home care, right, your SACS, you know, it's certainly something that is nuanced, and we want to discuss with clients on a case-by-case basis. You know, I have a situation where clients actually have home care in their name, but are covered by SACS, and vice versa as well. So it's really interesting to dig into that a little bit. What we look at to be able to correctly determine the stream You know, we're looking at things like how you're delivering your services, the people that you're supporting, and the kinds of care needs they have, and how you're supporting them. We're looking at how our employees work and are engaged, their level of qualifications, their experience, how many clients they may or may not be seeing in a particular shift, what their background is there, and coming up with all of that to provide a bit of a comprehensive determination. I regularly get asked if we can use both streams to cover the workforce. I never like to say no, but by default, I'm going to say no here. Not generally. It's very rare. When I think about the several hundred clients I've worked with in this space, I can count the number on one hand that I've said, yeah, look, it's going to be okay to apply both. So typically, you're going to fit into one or another, because it's looking at the industry at this point, not any particular employee, nor any particular client, it's really going to be faced as you as an organization. What often happens for our mid-level NDIS organisations is they quite often have an administration team, a clerical team. We have different roles that may not just be based out in the field with our clients, but this may be team leaders, payroll, rostering, services, managers, all those sorts of roles. Now, generally speaking. Administration roles can be covered if you are covered under the SACS stream of the award. Generally speaking, not in the home care. So that's where we might be looking at another award to apply to those particular employees, and again, looking at that on a case-by-case basis. I'm starting to sound really technical here, but the reason why this matters, that so what factor, is essentially getting that award coverage, so that stream correct, and the employee classifications contained within that stream that's linked to their employment. That forms the basis of employee entitlements. So you can see how, if we're getting that wrong, every other foundational element we're building of our organization is going to be non-compliant. We don't want to be building a house of cards. We want confidence there, right? So. that the consequence here, there's differing rates of pay between the streams. Sometimes that can get up to as much as $6 to $8 an hour difference, depending on what levels and what streams we're applying. So, that's a pretty big risk if we're not confident in how we're applying our stream coverage and our classifications. There are… there do become underpayment risks there. What I have then is looking at those individual classifications. So. This is something where not a lot of people are getting right, to be honest with you. I often find… how dare our clients live in the real world, and talk to a human being, and offering them a job, and coming up with a rate of pay that they're happy to accept, or leave their current employer for. feels like a really appropriate and common sense way to engage someone in employment. I get it. What we often find, though, is employers are then reverse engineering an award… an award classification. So they're saying, okay, great. I want to offer you 45 bucks an hour. What does that look like on the pay guide? Great, that's your level. This is incorrect. You know, we're putting the cart before the horse there. So, our classification schedules is our starting point. So, at the back of the award, we've got several different classification schedules based on the stream. that you're applying to your organization. And I like to read and compare the information in that against a position description for the role. And we're going, okay, what's our roles? What's our responsibilities? What's our qualifications? What's our experience? What are we doing in terms of supervision? What are we doing in terms of escalation points, in terms of decision making? You know, how hands-on is our personal care? what does that look like in order to be able to come up with, a specific level, the 1, 2, 3, 4, whatever that classification level might be. That's going to be our starting point, and then looking at the minimum rate of pay for that classification level. And then from that, of course, you can offer an employee or prospective employee anything above that level. But you must know what that level is as a starting point, otherwise you cannot confidently say that you're going to be compliant there. So that information should live in your payroll system. We should have, right, their SACS, their home care. Disability Care Classification Level 3.1, or whatever it might be, in order to get that sorted. Pardon me. I've also got a point on here around pay point progression. So, any of my fellow Shads nerds digging through the award clauses would see course 13.3, Specifically talks about how an employee can progress. through those pay points that are, like, exist within a classification level. So there's some pretty specific guidance on that. We've also had a 2021 case law precedent that tells us how we're interpreting the language in that clause. And we take that information and we go, right, commercially, how can we apply that to the business? Because… We can't necessarily, you know, may not be financially viable for you as operators to increase someone's wage every single time, you know, a casual that works one shift a fortnight picks over their 12-month anniversary. So, how are we structuring this in a way that we're not going to price ourselves out of a financially sustainable business model? So, in this instance, we want to look at things like having an anniversary checklist, and having a paypoint progression checklist, and actually corresponding with our employee to say, okay, it's your 12-month anniversary, you are progressing, or you are not progressing based on this rationale. Having that rationale in that clearly defined checklist means it's not personal. I'm not selecting Joe over Jane, because I like the color of their socks better, or anything like that. We've got that systemised. business approach. So making sure you're feeling comfortable with the pay points as part of that subclassification are going to be really important there as well. The final piece to the classification puzzle. We want to be understanding if someone is going to be defined as a shift worker or a day worker. I was actually speaking to one of my new colleagues, earlier this week, and pointing out that that's not always an easy thing to do, because the award actually has two different definitions of a shift worker. So, super helpful. Thanks, Judge Award. In accordance with the award, though, when we're looking at shift work for the purposes of applying penalties and for the purposes of that side of their employment, we're essentially defining someone in that if they're regularly working outside those day hours, which is 6am till 8pm, and we've advised them in writing that they are a shift worker. So, pretty simple box to tick there. We then have two sorts of shift work. We have our afternoon shift, which is going to be a shift that finishes after 8 o'clock, or, before 12 midnight. And then our night shift, which takes us through between that midnight to 6am, scenario there. So, if I have a look at the scenario on the screen, we have Sarah, who's a part-time day worker. So she's scheduled to work Tuesday 9 to 5. We've had someone call in sick, and we need to cover an afternoon shift, and we've asked to adjust her work from 3.30 till 11.30 that day. Sarah's happy to do it. She's happy to jump in the property and get that support covered. Great. We love Sarah. But how is this going to affect how we're paying Sarah for the day? So, ordinarily, she'd be paid from 9am till 5pm as a day worker, ordinary hours. We then see her mutually agree to move that shift. from 3.30 till 11.30. Now there's a lot of confusion around how we're essentially paying that shift, and it's going to come down to if Sarah is that day worker or shift worker. Because she's a day worker. So the hours that are worked outside that 8pm span are going to be considered overtime hours for the portion of that shift. However, if Sarah was considered a shift worker, the entire shift would be paid at that afternoon shift work loading, okay? Not just the time after 8pm. So, depending on how They are classified as a day worker or a shift worker, you can see it has significant impacts on how we pay that employee their entitlement. So we must make sure that's set up correctly, and we're really confident with how people are being defined, in this space. Pardon me. Maximum and minimum hours of engagement is something else that is dictated, by the SHADS Award that we need to be meeting here. So, when we think about our maximum ordinary hours we're going to roster in a shift, the default under the award is 8 hours. So, anything over 8 hours, we're going to be looking at overtime for. However, the award does allow for that to change to increase to 10 hours by agreement. So when we start to think about our HR foundational documents that we have, we want to make sure that things like those by agreement clauses are encompassed in our documentation so that we're not, every single shift, trying to get this mutual agreement, and then trying to file that and record that somewhere, in the instance that we might be audited. So making sure we've got that covered will be really important there. In terms of our minimum shift, this is where, mostly for our support workers in the industry, it's generally speaking 2 hours. There's a few exceptions to that rule. But 2 hours is what we're going with there. So, I've got a scenario on the screen, which I'm sure will be familiar to a lot of you here. We have John, who's a part-time disability support worker. He's scheduled to work from 10am to 1pm on a Monday, so a nice 3-hour shift there. At 11 o'clock, however, he gets an urgent personal call from a neighbor informing him that he had this flooding! Yikes! Concerned about the situation, John obviously asks to leave the shift early, and does get approval for that one hour after commencing his shift. And then 6 days later, you're sitting there going, cracky, how do I pay this? What are we doing here? It is a scenario we often find ourselves under the pump on payroll day to work out and make sure you're confident with the answer here. What I would say is that in this situation, I am comfortable that John has been given the minimum engagement required under the award, because he was rostered for that 3-hour shift. Making sure our rostering system reflects that will be really important from a record-keeping perspective. What you then want to do, though, we don't just want to pay 1 hour in payroll, we want to make sure that we're making up those extra 2 hours. So whether those extra 2 hours, if we're coming up with an agreement for that to be, personal leave, whether it's being unpaid leave or leave without pay, making sure that those hours in the roster Translate to the hours on a payslip. is also really important to confirm entitlements and not have any gaps there when it comes to a record-keeping process. We've had employers caught out there before and left, left to pay those hours not worked, because this just was not recorded correctly. So, really important we've got systems in place here. In terms of broken shifts and meal breaks, this is certainly a fun one. What you'll see at Clause 27 of the award, our default entitlement here is that employees working over 5 hours are going to be entitled to a meal… unpaid meal break, sorry. That is defined of between 30 and 60 minutes in length. That's going to be really important. If they're required to work during the scheduled break and beyond, we're starting to look at overtime rates that kick in, so we want to be really clear with how we're rostering our breaks. One thing I really like in the award is actually this sub-clause here that tells us that if an employee is required to have a meal with their clients as part of their ordinary work routine. which is very common. Essentially, the meal period is going to be paid, we don't need to roster that particular break, it's going to count as time worked. So, I think that's a pretty practical cause, maybe not the only one, in the award that we can use for service delivery here. How do we determine, then, if we're using that clause, if that break should be paid or unpaid? As an example, what if the client's sleeping, you know, during the time that the employee chooses to eat their meal, or whatever it might be there? As a default rule, and happy to discuss on a case-by-case basis, but I like to look at it is, if I'm that support worker. Is that 30 minutes mine? Can I duck off-site and go to Macca's drive-thru and post my ASOS return, check out the surf, maybe, or do I still have to stay on the client… stay on site with the client, be around, in case anything's happening there? You know, that's kind of indicating to me whether it should be a paid or unpaid freight. So that's really important to look at as well, to make sure those entitlements are being paid correctly. What the root cause, I think, of the issues that I see here is that There tends to be… Not clear expectations set with the employees, in terms of Are they to take a break? What is the directive around taking a break? What happens if they don't think they can take a break? And making sure that we are being clear in our policies, our foundational documents to say what the expectation is here. So, we're not left liable for back paying a meal break that we thought was an unpaid break, because the employee has taken upon themselves to do XYZ, or just work through. So, really important that the award is telling us one thing, we can take that further in our policies for it to suit your organization. We often see, as well, a bit of a complication between when is something a meal break and when is something a broken shift. So if we look at the example on the screen there, we're not fitting nicely into that 30 to 60 minute definition of an unpaid break, right? That's what we saw before. We're falling outside that definition. So… so what do we do? We're… we're potentially looking like a… a bit of a meal break scenario here. Sorry, a bit of a broken shift scenario here. So, when it comes to broken shifts, we can roster these in a certain fashion. Keep in mind, this is for our frontline disability support workers, field-based workers, delivering those services. It's not necessarily able to be applied for our office-based employees, unless we potentially look at an IFA. Which is an individual flexibility agreement to vary the application of this clause to those individual employees that it may apply. So… when an employee has these broken periods of work when they're servicing their clients and supporting their clients, we need to look at how we're going to pay them. So, we want to be making sure, and in accordance with cause… I don't have it in front of me, and I don't have it in my notes, but I want to say 25.6, Emma. Please correct me if I'm wrong. We're looking specifically at making sure we're paying a broken shift allowance, which is actually covered under Clause 20 of the award. We're making sure that we're not rostering shifts that span over 12 hours. So, as an example, rostering someone from 6am till 8, 9am, and then 6pm till 9pm, because the entire length of that shift has gone over 12 hours. Second shift component is actually a 200% penalty payment, after that 12 hours, which is going to be a big, inefficient wage cost there. We also need to make sure that the minimum shift for each engagement is covered. So, on the previous screen's example, where we saw that 1 hour shift. Nope, it might just be a quick one-hour client transport shift. We need to pay the minimum engagement of two. So, structuring our roster in a way that's going to remove those inefficient wage costs is so important. So. Look, I love a routine roster audit, I can't lie. I think it's a really good way to make sure that you're on top of costs before they occur. So something to consider if these, these sorts of shift structures sound familiar to yourself. In a broken shift, by default, it can be essentially broken up by one… one break, two shift components. It's going to be broken into three separate components of work. With two breaks, it must be done by mutual agreement. So making sure we have a system to record that agreement is going to be key for compliance here. Generally speaking. I really don't like sleepovers on broken shifts. It's not provided for under the award. The award is not clear here, but what I do see when I look at how this shift is to be paid is a whole bunch of penalty rates and potentially overtime that kicks in, which is not going to be a financially viable shift structure for your organization. So, certainly good to look at alternate ways. To structure those shifts, to be minimizing the award wage liability in that case. Understanding sleepovers. Golly gosh, Emma, this has kept us busy over those last 6 months with a huge case law decision, in this space as well. So, if we go back to basics for our providers on the call that are rostering sleepover shifts. Sleepover under the award is defined as when an employee is required to sleep overnight at the premises where a client is located, and it is not a 24-hour care shift, and it's not an excursion. So there's got to be a few exclusions there. We want to be rostering employees before or after that 8-hour sleep period. What we need to keep in mind, that minimum 2 hours that I was talking about before, throw that in the bin for sleepover shifts. For this particular clause, it actually needs to be a minimum of 4 hours work on at least one side of that sleepover shift. So, as an example, if I have a sleepover period from, say, 10pm till 6am. And I'm rostering someone from 7 till 10pm, and then maybe 6 till 7 in the morning. No. Even though that's 4 hours total, I need 4 hours on one side. Otherwise, we're going to have a back payment liability there for that additional hour. Must be 4 hours. Again, could be varied by an IFA, but that's a very deliberate and intentional process that requires documentation and calculations. In terms of how we're paying employees for a sleepover, they're going to receive that sleepover allowance that's in the award, and then we also have, overtime for any, work that's required to be performed during that designated sleepover period. In terms of how we're determining how an employee should be paid for work performed on either side of a sleepover, from the perspective of shift penalties, this is where our key case law decision update has come into things. So, the Fair Work Ombudsman has forever held the opinion that a sleepover and any work performed on either side of it is considered as one continuous shift. So you would hear me in earlier webinars, if you've listened in, saying it's like pressing pause on a shift. It is continuous. Now, pardon me, towards the latter end of last year, we've had a case that's posed to change this. So, as a… in this case, essentially, the federal court made a decision that found under the Shads Award, sleepovers are separate and distinct periods of time that do not form part of a shift. So, on this basis. the courts have expressed a view that's contrary to the Fair Work Ombudsman. So saying, as an example, work performed on a Monday to Friday, immediately prior to a sleepover period, will get the afternoon rate. And then work performed, afterwards in the morning would be a day rate. Now, the Fair Work Ombudsman approach to this is that the entirety of that shift should be… should be night rates, so quite a contradiction there for a really long-standing position. Now, the Fair Work Ombudsman has appealed that decision, and that appeal is still in progress. So, it's our advice that essentially this matter is not finalized. We have two sides fighting on what our interpretation should be here. As a result of this appeal, the Fairwick Commission has proposed variations to the Shads Award, which would essentially provide a lot more clarity around how those shifts should be paid. Those variations haven't been confirmed just yet, okay? So this… I hate to say it, it is a bit of a wait-and-see scenario. What we're advising clients in this case, we're looking at it on a case-by-case basis to see what changes, if any, we recommend to how you pay sleep over, based on what this case decision is. So we're looking at historical contents context for yourself as a business. We're looking at applying this case decision, then looking at options as, okay, if we do option A and pay this way, what could be the consequence from the outcome of this appeal? option B, looking at the garden paths so that you're able to actually make a really informed choice of how to apply this update to your organization there. So that's definitely something, Emma, I dare say you might be having a few more calls this week about sleepovers, because it's certainly a tricky area. How am I going for time? We're looking good, we're looking good. Our next slide here is around, rest breaks between shifts. So, when we're rostering our support workers, this is another really important consideration. So, by default, our ward says that we need to have a 10-hour break between shifts, okay? That can be reduced to 8 hours. If it's either side of a sleepover shift, and it's been done by mutual agreement. So again, adding this to a checklist of what our foundational documentation should include, this by agreement clause. So there's several in the award, this is the second one we've looked at today that we're going to want covered in our documentation. Now, so what? So what if we're not rostering that break? It's not viable, we've got a 7-hour break. What's really interesting in the award is that in many cases, there's no… financial penalty, you know, someone's not earning double time until they get that break, unless they've had overtime on the shift prior, and they're a permanent employee. And it's a full moon out, and the werewolves are out, and everything else. There's very specific circumstances here, right? So generally speaking, that penalty payment doesn't apply. However, so you could go, okay, cool, wage costs are down, that's great. It does form, then, a technical breach of the award. So, our so what factor there is, if we come to the attention of the regulator for whatever reason, that is going to be something that could have fines or penalties imposed on the business for rostering on a per… per breach, per rostering basis, which those fines start at tens of thousands of dollars and only go up from there. So, it's really something that, again, auditing our roster to make sure the breaks are structured correctly and our documentation reflects those buy agreement clauses is key for compliance under the Shads Award. It's another area where sometimes that IFA acronym can creep in, and certainly something that can be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, but we need that documentation in place to cover it and be compliant. Remote work. Okay, this is one of my favorites. I know I've got multiple favorites, this is one of my favourites. So, similar to the breaks provision of the award, and why I like it, it's based in that kind of practical reality of what life looks like for you as a provider. saying, great, we're going to have our breaks on shift with clients, let's accommodate for that. I feel like remote work, in my opinion, kind of does the same thing. It's a helpful cause to cover if we don't need a specific shift to someone, but we want you to jump on a team meeting, or we want you to jump into some, like, self… paced, online learning, or they might just be answering the out-of-office call line. So if you have, those sorts of overnight call supports for escalations, be it from team members or client queries, this is a great cause that you can apply here. So. It's important to know that this particular clause, it is very long, so I'm not going to run through it from top to bottom, but essentially, it defines remote work to cover those sorts of things, and then says how we can pay it. So again, we saw our minimum shifts, of 2 hours earlier. that in the bin for remote work. We've got varying minimum engagements here as well, depending on the way we're paying that. So, we can have a minimum payment of 15 minutes, 30 minutes, depending on the time of day we're taking this call. For 60 minutes, 1 hour, being for if an employee is not receiving an on-call allowance. It's covered under Clause 20 of the award. We also see penalty rate payments applied depending on when we're taking these calls. So, again, giving practical consideration to the, the, I guess, sociability of structuring work hours and things like that. I've seen it happen before, where we've had, clienthood employees working on an on-call line, where they've kind of been a little bit cheeky here, knowing what payments apply, and go, I've seen a call come through. And it's come through when the minimum payment is 15 minutes at ordinary hours, but I'm going to return the call 45 minutes later when our payment is 30 minutes at one and a half, or something like that. So, it really does depend and vary, and why, if we are performing any kind of on-call work, where we're relying on this cause of the award. Golly gosh, I really want to see in place a good on-call policy. This might be incorporated into our rostering policy, it might suit separately, depending on what suits your needs, we can certainly work with that one, or it might be on an individual basis. Again, it might be an administrative nightmare for you to look at the call records of every single call that is coming up, so we might need to look at some more commercially appropriate solutions, and here comes that lovely acronym again, IFA. May come up here as well. So… Considering my client example that I had pop up before, we can kind of see an example of that on the screen. So, under Clause 2510 of the Shads Award, if I'm taking a 5-minute call at 7.30pm, I'm going to receive 15 minutes at my ordinary rate, and the on-call allowance. Otherwise, I would be getting 1 hour's pay. If I take that same call at 10.30pm. We go from that 5-minute call actually being 30 minutes paid at time and a half, plus the on-call allowance. So, if that work's being performed, we again want to take that award cause. take it further in some policy expectations to ensure that we're not going to have these inefficient wage costs of how people may be returning the work… returning the calls, or answering then and there, you know, things that might be able to be delayed till the morning, and making the most of Efficiency during these payments, if they have to be made. Okay, lucky last technical slide, then we'll learn a little bit more about us and dial into some, some Q&A, which I'm so excited for. I hope questions have been coming through. Now, first aid allowance. Now, this is something that has recently been clarified, the interpretation of, with Fair Work directly. So, it's quite interesting because, again, depending on whether you are covered as an organization under home care or depends on how we apply this allowance. So. If I haven't banged on about enough already, getting this sector determination right is key, because we can see this trickle-on effect, even down to how we're paying these allowances. So, generally speaking, let's start with our home care employees. Home care employees, as an example, providing, disability care, to people in their private homes. Some home care employees must hold a first aid certificate. That might be a very common thing for you to ask for as part of their job. That doesn't automatically mean they get the first aid allowance. They're only going to get the first aid allowance, and again, these are home care employees. If they're required to hold that certificate And? Keyword, and, not, or? They are responsible in any given week for providing first aid to other employees working the organization. Not the clients that they're supporting, but other employees, as a bit of a first aid officer badge, if you will. Now, this varies, again, in interpretation when we apply it to our SACS employees, our social and community services employees. So. These employees, or any employees in this scenario that aren't home care employees, are going to receive the first aid allowance when they are required by their employer to hold the first aid certificate. And they're providing first aid in the workplace, wherever that may be, but outside their normal duties. Okay, so as an example, if you have a support worker employee whose main duties are providing personal care and support to, say, SIL clients, and that may involve administering first aid. Generally speaking, the default is they're not entitled to receive an allowance. The so what factor for me here, though, is the importance to make sure that expectation is set and communicated through your documentation, because the last thing you want is an employee being paid first aid allowance one week, and then you listen to a webinar and you stop paying them next week. That's going to cause a few issues, right? So we want to be making sure that we're communicating, we're updating our position descriptions to say, yes, providing first aid is It's part of our normal duties. We want to be making sure that that is a comprehensive document to cover us. when we're looking at applying or not applying this first aid allowance. So. what I would say is, if you're looking to make any changes in that area based on this clarification that's come out late 2025, please contact us, because there's also a bigger change management piece and a bigger strategy to talk through, like, say, the brain's trust with, right? So we've got a really confident understanding of that. Alright, Emma, we have smashed through a dozen calls of the award, which I'm so excited about, but again, let's actually bring it down practical, so what? What do our organizations need to know?

Effective HR: Amazing, thank you so much, Corinne. We have had… Absolute influx of questions come through. I've answered a couple, I've got a couple as well that are set aside for our Q&A session at the end. If you do have questions, pop them in the Q&A section, and yeah, we'll get through as many as we can towards the end of the session. What it all kind of comes back to is what we call this so-what factor. I think this webinar has very much reiterated that compliance isn't just about meeting legal requirements, it's very much a core part of running a sustainable, well-managed business. So, for organizations that are operating under the Shads Award, keeping on top of payroll, rostering award compliance, it can be very much complex and challenging, and what we find is that even small areas can quickly snowball into quite significant issues and headaches. So, when we do see things go wrong, what those consequences can sometimes look like are back payments, penalties, regulatory scrutiny, reputational damage, all things that we want to avoid as a business. So, the strongest organizations to avoid these issues will very much take a proactive approach. Doing things like regular payroll and roster audits really can help identify issues early, and ensure that They don't become systematic or costly for an organization. When audits are supported by routine reviews of employment contracts, policies, position descriptions, businesses are far better placed to stay aligned with current award and the legislative requirements. Practical tools also play a key role, so having things like HR and work health and safety checklists for things like pay point progression. Casual conversion, onboarding, offboarding, doing annual compliance reviews to ensure that you are never in a situation that there's a set and forget, where we've missed an update and it hasn't been applied in our documentation and processes, opening up potential risk for an organization. And I think, finally, equipping people leaders with the right guidance and support is really, really essential. When managers understand their obligations and apply them consistently. Compliance becomes embedded across the organization, rather than something that's just dealt with when the problem arises. Now, before we wrap up and open up the floor to these questions, we would briefly like to share how effective HR can continue supporting you beyond today's session. For those of you who are new to us, Effective HR, we are a HR and IR consulting Specialists supporting organisations across Australia. We work extensively in the social and community services sector, with deep expertise in HR, IR, work health and safety, and payroll compliance. Our goal is to pretty much simplify compliance, give you that sleep at night factor, and ensure that you're provided with practical advice that really works in the day-to-day business operations. Now, the way in which we provide support is we have two fantastic service models to cater towards different business needs. Our first one is what we call HR on Demand, which offers the full spectrum of HR support, so from recruitment to employee management to payroll auditing. You have, direct access to a dedicated consultancy team, just like Corinne's. And this is important to ensure that you're getting consistency in advice. That often avoids the frustration that can come with dealing with multiple different advisors with different interpretations. With the service model, we work just on an hourly rate, so we don't have any locking contracts or minimum costs associated with our service support. We also have another service model, which we call HR Partner. This is fantastic for businesses that are looking more for that proactive, all-inclusive support, and we operate on this basis with a fixed monthly rate, and it includes everything. So, full HR compliance assessments. unlimited advice, so all of those nuanced, challenging SHADS award questions, can be put forward to our specialist team, and you can have that ongoing support. It includes developing things like contracts and policies, and most importantly. the maintenance of these documents. What we find is that the legislation and the awards, they're constantly changing. And if you're busy in your business, they might not be always updated when those changes apply. And that's where gaps and risk can start to arise, so we take that burden off you, and that's our job to maintain your documentation and ensure that they do stay up to date. We also are able to build in and provide support with things like payroll audits and implementing HR and payroll systems for organizations in the sector. Now, if we don't get a chance to answer your question now in the Q&A session, just a quick reminder that we're more than happy to take questions offline in a complimentary consultation session. Just simply clicking on the QR code, fill in the details, and we'll book that in at a time that's available to you. Particularly if it is quite a specific question, maybe a shift-based question, that's going to be best always to be taken offline. And then finally, we will be running another SHADS webinar on the 24th of March. We'll be covering… covering some other topics, including individual flexibility agreements. salaries and flat rate structures, rostered days off, client cancellations, and more. So, we will be sending out some further details on our next Shads webinar, if you would also like to join. Alright, Corinne, are you ready for some questions?

Corinne West: Now that I am unmuted, yes, always. And I'm really excited, Emma, as well, around, the next session being IFAs, because I feel like I dropped that so many times. It's like, what? Obviously, that will be a great opportunity to dig into it in more depth, because I'd, oh, love it, love course 7 of the award. Yes, I am ready for the very interesting.

Effective HR: Alright, so first question we had come through by Carly, and it was around minimum engagement. So, with minimum engagement of 2 hours for a support worker, is that only applicable to support shifts? So, for example, if we want to do a quick Say, meeting with the team only takes 15 minutes, or, we want to do a training session, or a performance review meeting.

Corinne West: But that's less than 2 hours. Do we still.

Effective HR: Do we need to pay 2 hours, or are we paying just for the time that is spent in that training session or performance review meeting?

Corinne West: Yeah, for sure, and that's a great question from Carly. It will come down to the specific wording of the clause of if we can cover it doing other things. My brain was initially thinking, oh, if we're covering maybe an admin shift or a scheduling shift, and I'll address the other ones in a moment. If they're doing that, we want to go back and look specifically at that organization and look specifically cause. Off the top of my head, it's got wording around, like, involvement in the delivery of disability services, so it's kind of like, oh, okay, how can we apply that to, you know, see if that's other kind of roles in the organization. But when we talk specifically about those things, like those team meetings, those one-to-ones, performance reviews, supervisions, whatever it might be, that's where we go, oh, can we utilize and leverage that course 2510 of remote work to… to cover that, to not have to pay the 2 hours, because that's obviously an inefficient wage cost if you've got a 15- or 30-minute meeting. So, when we look at Clause 2510, it's going to define what we can put in remote work. So. again, I don't have the clause in front of me, but off the top of my head, it's going to be, look, it's not attached to a shift, it's not a particular shift, it is, not hours before or after a shift that was already rostered, and It doesn't have to be performed in any particular location. So, looking at whether or not these sorts of sessions are done remotely, or if I have to be directed to come into the op could actually be the difference between whether or not we can rely on one or the other there. When it is at participation in training and team meetings, it is specifically spelt out at Clause 2510 as well. That can have a minimum payment of 1 hour there. Again, we want to just be cross-referencing the specific scenario to make sure it fits into the definition that's included within that clause to go, yeah, great, we're happy with that, and then making sure that translates into our payroll. correctly as well, to make sure it's being flagged as a different sort of payment type, so that it doesn't get confused, in the system as well. So hopefully that's answered Carly's question.

Effective HR: Thanks, Corinne. And another question we had come through was regarding our rest breaks, our 10-minute breaks. Under Vashad's award, the worker has, or the employee has that entitlement to a 10-minute rest break. But if that employee is unable to leave the participant unsupported for that 10 minutes. How do we, I suppose, manage that compliance under the Chancell Board and the NDIS?

Corinne West: Yeah, really good question. Look, my understanding and my professional opinion interpreting that particular clause around paid rest breaks is there's not an intention for that to be someone leaving the site and having that as their own time. That's why it's paid. That 10-minute rest break, again, speaking from professional opinion, would be can make myself a cuppa, I can go to the loo, you know, I can maybe duck outside, check my phone for 5 minutes, or take a personal call. Like, it's those sorts of, you know, if you think about more of a traditional workplace environment, there's always an element of taking that, you know, standing in the kitchenette in the office and having a little yarn with our colleagues around the water cooler and making a cuppa, right? I think… That clause, the intention behind it is to replicate that in a field-based or a frontline service delivery environment. For me, it really comes down to, again, because the award isn't very prescriptive in that sense, is taking your professional opinion and your interpretation and applying that into a workplace policy. that kind of says to the employees, well, this is what the paid tea break includes, and this is your responsibilities to make sure you've taken it. So, 18 months of regular support shifts down the track, they're going, and fear, I've never had my paid tea break. that's not helpful. So really making sure that we're setting the expectations in our workplace policies to cover that. And, you know, if they're not having them for any reason, what are the reporting or the escalation requirements there? So it's really… Putting them in the driver's seat of having to report if there's an issue, as opposed to just being passive and trying to make a claim later on in relation to that, if that makes sense.

Effective HR: Great, excellent. Now, we had a question come through from Sarah, seeking some further clarification regarding what is deemed or defined under the award as a designated sleepover, and when is it a 24-hour shift?

Corinne West: So, two very.

Effective HR: quite complex areas of the Shads Award.

Corinne West: I love that, I love that question. Thank you so much, Sarah, for giving me the opportunity to nerd out. And, I'm kind of a bit jealous that I'm in this webinar and, I guess, restricted to what I can do with screen shares, because I'd otherwise love to pull up the award and what I do with my client sessions and go through the particular clauses. They're all nested under clause 25. Spoiler alert, they're all different subsections. So, we have the definition of a sleepover that, as we said. It's not an excursion, and it's not, a 24-hour care shift. So just to rule out excursions. I think the kind of common terminology in the industry is potentially like an STA, like a respite, kind of, we're taking someone to go visit their family, we're not returning home that day, we're taking a participant to go see their favorite, concert, you know, banding concert at the capital city that you're nearest to, you're staying overnight. That's what an excursion is, right? It's a completely different pay structure. You need to look at. Now, sleepovers to 24-hour care shifts. 24-hour care shifts are also defined in the award, and Emma, I'm just thinking, let's make note to make sure that's in our advanced topic for next month as well, to run through. The scope of the definition of that 24-hour care shift is quite narrow, okay? So, again, off the top of my head, we're talking about home care streams only. Not sacks? We're talking about someone that is required to be in a client's home for 24 hours. So not an excursion, not staying overnight somewhere else, in a client's home for 24 hours. The intention of this clause is that over that 24-hour period, yes, we have an 8-hour sleepover period, and the rest of that time In that… Me trying to do maths off the top of my head, 16 hours remaining. we're going to provide up to 8 hours of support. So it might be that I get my client, and I get them ready for the day, and that takes 90 minutes to 2 hours. And then I'm just hanging out at home, they're doing their own thing, they might be going out, with a community-based worker, or with family, or something like that. They might return home, we might prepare them some lunch, might do some light cleaning, we might have a game of, you know. So, kind of breaking up that 8 hours over that kind of 16-hour wake period, if you will, of when you're providing support. It is, attracting a particular shift rate. Off the top of my head, it's about 155% loading, and that's done as a penalty payment, not overtime, for this sort of shift. To cover the, I guess the environmental considerations of you being away for that period of time. So, the intention of that shift is really good if we're trying to, I guess. We need someone there and around, not necessarily meeting minimum shift engagements or, you know, being able to leave for an unpaid break. That's what those shifts are good for. They regularly see clients buying them incorrectly, either being in… Or actually needing to provide active supports, minus the sleepover component for that 16 hours straight, which is not viable, because anything over 8 hours, don't care about your prior agreement clause, doesn't actually cover this particular one. Anything over 8 hours is going to start being overtime payments. which is completely not financially viable when we cross-reference that to your NDIS pricing guides. And what you can claim on that shift. So, working out, and Emma, I think something that clients find helpful is, like, looking at a shift costing. To go, right, if I'm going to put this shift on my roster, what is that shift going to cost me? And then to be able to, you know, decide if that's a viable option operationally for an organization. So certainly something we can assist with, as well as the technical award compliance there. Hopefully that.

Effective HR: It was a great one. Roster audits are highly recommended for any businesses operating in this industry due to the complexity of the award and the complexity that we do see. With rosters. You want to ensure your rosters are A, of course, compliant with the award, that we're not At risk of technical accidental breaches or underpayment, but at the same time. Also identifying if there is any inefficiencies in our roster that might be maybe attracting unnecessary extra costs, because long-term, that can be, you know, quite expensive for an organization, and if we can save on money, that's always going to be a plus. We will definitely talk about more on 24-hour care shifts in our next webinar in March, so stay tuned, because it is definitely a very big topic in itself. Now, just a couple more questions, because we're coming to time already. It does go very, very fast in our webinars. We had a question come through around the rest breaks between shifts. So, when we're looking at the 8-hour difference by mutual agreement, is that allowed to continue for extended periods of time, say, 5 shifts in a row?

Corinne West: If the shifts are contiguous with a sleepover, is my short answer. That is the specific wording of the award. I'll be honest, I've never heard the word contiguous before reading that particular subclause, is essentially the wording it's got there. So, it can't just be in relation to other sorts of active shifts. So, as an example, if you're rostering someone to do, say, 7pm till 11pm. And then they're going home that night, and then, you know, the next day they're going to a different shift, that is, what time did I say it finished? 11pm. Starting at 6am. you know, that's… that's not meeting our 10 hours, and it's not contiguous with a sleepover, so that would be a technical breach of the board there. So, it's making sure that, like, yes, you could structure 5 sleepover shifts in a row with an 8-hour break, I'd also then question how many hours they're working in a week, because I think that would add up quite quickly. Love to cost that out. But yeah, essentially, making sure that we're meeting those requirements will be key, or if we're unable to, you know, obviously, I can sit here and bang on about roster audits all I want, and about award compliance that service and care of our participants comes first. So, if you require something that needs to vary those award terms to suit, then that, again, is where those IFAs are going to creep in. So, kind of, finding a healthy balance between practical care and service delivery and employee entitlements.

Effective HR: Fantastic. We might finish off with one more question that has been asked quite a few times, I can see in the chat, and it is very relevant because of the change in interpretation by Fair Work, and that's the fabulous first aid allowance that we saw under the SAC stream. So, where we had some… quite a few questions come through, Corinne, was around, I suppose, that application of the first aid allowance. So, for example. If an employer covered under the Sax is paying for the first aid certificate, they're paying for the training, Is the first aid allowance required to be paid for that employee if they're the designated, say, first aid officer? Does that need to be put in a position description to be identified as a normal duty, or is it implied? I think maybe a little bit more clarification on this topic, because it's such a relevant topic with the change in interpretation.

Corinne West: For sure, that's a really good point, Emma. And… I think it all comes down to, as you said, normal duties. That is the wording that we're using here. So, as an example, yeah, a support worker, they're hands-on caring for people, you know, they may regularly administer medication, change wound dressings, help someone if they're falling… falling over, or having maybe an episode, or something like that. That's part of their routine duties. We want to be selling that out. in our documentation, for me, it's best placed in a position description that they are required to provide those sorts of, first aid services, and… and I guess that, for me, then ticks that box of… of normal duties, so doing a bit of a position description review and update, great time, great catalyst to do that. If you then look at, say, someone who might be based in your office, as a SACS as a SACS employee, they might be a support coordinator, or they might be a youth engagement officer, or something like that, where every now and again, they might go out and do supervisions, or they might have meetings with the clients around service delivery, I think it, again, whether or not the position is defensible will be on the documentation to go, is it part of their normal duties that in that setting, they would provide first aid? So, for me, generally speaking, for those sorts of roles, I tend to say, no, it's not part of their normal duties, and would potentially look at paying that as required, but definitely it's the kind of thing that having a look at the role, having a look at the PD, and getting some some confirmed information there, because even though I say, you know, right, we're dealing with providers every single day, every client you service is different, every employee you roster is different, that we really need to understand the nuts and bolts of it.

Effective HR: We're at time, so we'll wrap up there. Thank you, everyone, for attending today's webinar. We hope you found the session valuable. We very much look forward to answering any outstanding questions in a one-on-one consultation, and also looking forward to seeing you all again in our next webinar in March. Have a great afternoon, thank you.

Corinne West: Thank you.