Unpacking the SCHADS Award with CheckUP Australia

Unpacking the SCHADS Award – Rostering & Penalties (with CheckUP) Recorded 24 June 2025

This webinar unpacks the essential components of the SCHADS Award relating to rostering, penalties, and common compliance risks.

Delivered in partnership with CheckUP, the session focuses on the practical issues employers need to understand when managing rosters and pay obligations across the health, disability, and community services sectors.

The discussion covers how rostering decisions interact with penalty rates, where employers commonly go wrong, and what to watch for to reduce payroll and compliance risk under the SCHADS Award.

Webinar Transcript

Automated Transcription:

Thanks for joining us today for this session unpacking SCHADS. I’m glad it’s not me having to provide the content, so as you ladies. I’m as interested as everyone else for the session.

For those of you who might not know me, my name is Kylie Hogan. I’m part of the Industry and Workforce Development team at CheckUP.

If you’re not aware of who CheckUP is, we’re a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing of people and communities who need it the most. We do that through a range of initiatives across the health and community services sector.

The two most relevant programs for the group of people here today are our Industry Workforce Advisor Program, funded through the Department of Trade, Employment and Training, which supports businesses with workforce planning, and NDIS Business Connect, funded through the Queensland Government Disability Peak Funding Program. That’s a capacity and capability building project for new and existing sole traders and small businesses providing supports in Queensland for people with disability.

There’s lots of information on our website and we’ll be able to send some of that information out when we send the resources for the program.

I’m not keen to take up any more time because you’re all here to hear from the lovely ladies from Effective HR around unpacking SCHADS. I’m going to hand back over to you and thanks very much.

Amazing. Thank you, Kylie.

Good afternoon everyone, and thank you for joining us for today’s webinar in collaboration with CheckUP. As we know, the SCHADS Award can be one of the most complex modern awards and navigating its nuances is often a challenge for many businesses. Whether it’s managing rosters, interpreting classifications, or staying updated with compliance changes, keeping everything aligned can feel overwhelming. That’s exactly why today’s webinar is designed to bring clarity and confidence to the key areas of the Award that impact your daily operations. We’re here to help you break down the 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’ll be able to revisit the content or share it with your team after the webinar.

Before we proceed, I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we all work today. I pay my respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples participating in this webinar. I also acknowledge Elders past, present, and emerging for their ongoing contributions to our communities.

Before we dive in, we’d also love to introduce ourselves. I’m Emma, a HR Consultant at Effective HR, and I’m joined today by my colleague Karen, our Lead HR Consultant. Between us, we’ve spent many years supporting businesses just like yours, particularly in the NDIS and community services space, navigating everything from HR to safety to payroll compliance, and the confusing world of the SCHADS Award.

In today’s session, we’ll be focusing on the key elements of the SCHADS Award that are most relevant to your day-to-day operations, including streams, classifications and pay points, along with engagement, broken shifts, breaks, sleepovers, remote work, and work health and safety obligations. At the end of the session, we will open the floor for a Q&A. Please feel free to type your questions in the chat throughout the webinar and we will address as many as possible during our discussion.

I’ll hand it over now to Karen who will take us through the technical content.

Amazing. Thank you so much Emma, and thank you everyone for joining us.

We’re going to dive straight in and look at an overview of the SCHADS Award because it can get confusing even from the start.

What’s really important to understand is that the SCHADS Award actually contains four sectors within it. For our NDIS providers, you’re most likely going to be looking at the Social and Community Services sector or the Home Care sector, which now has two substreams being Disability Care and Aged Care. We also have the Family Day Care Scheme sector and our Crisis Assistance and Supported Housing sector.

I spend most of my days working with clients covered by this Award and there is a lot of confusion out there. Understanding that the Home Care sector is not something separate, it’s still contained within the SCHADS Award. Same as the Social and Community Services sector. It is all contained within the SCHADS Award. However, that stream or sector differentiation can have a big impact on determining entitlements for team members, so it is really important that we get it right.

The graphic you’re seeing on the screen is what needs to be determined to be confident that you are paying each employee correctly. That top line of determining what sector applies to an organisation as a whole is not about any particular employee or client or shift. As a business, as an organisation, what is our primary purpose and what are our core service deliveries. That is how we determine our sectors.

Once we have determined that and applied it to the organisation as a whole, we can then start looking at classifications, which are contained at the back of the Award in the schedules. Schedule V for our SACS stream, and E and F for our Home Care streams. We read those classifications to determine which is most appropriate for any particular employee.

You may have a general range of classifications you use to cover the bulk of your team members, for example a support worker role. However, there’s more that goes into it than just saying support worker level one or level two. Exactly what does that look like to get those right rates of pay.

If we go back to basics and ask who should be covered by Home Care, who should be covered by SACS, and what’s the difference, this is something I see a lot of people get wrong. If you’re listening and feeling worried, it’s okay. You’re not the only one and we can work it out together.

Generally speaking, and provided for under the definition section at clause three of the Award, our Home Care sector is designed to cover more of that core supports and daily assistance completed in a client’s private residence. This is focused on domestic assistance, home maintenance, and personal care duties.

Whereas our SACS stream, the Social and Community Services sector, is defined to cover more community-based capacity building, recreational activities, support coordination services, and provision of SIL and STA.

This area is very nuanced. We work closely with the Fair Work Ombudsman to get advice on a case-by-case basis to ensure compliance and understand how the Award is interpreted.

What’s interesting, and what I’ve seen with a recent client, is even though they were going into the client’s home and they didn’t leave the home all day, the nature of the support they were providing was not based on personal care. It was psychosocial support, which we found fell outside the definition of the Home Care sector. So even though they rarely left the home, they were actually covered by the Social and Community Services stream. That’s one example of why this is so important to get right.

I often get asked if we can use both streams to cover our workforce, if we’ve got some people doing Home Care duties and some doing SACS duties. My default answer is no. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but generally an organisation as a whole is going to fit into one of those categories. It would only be if we have a dual substantive character for that organisation that we might look at doing something like that.

For our clerical employees, there’s coverage under the Social and Community Services sector. Home Care is quite nuanced and we need to look at it on a case-by-case basis. Previously there was advice saying admin was not covered under Home Care, however that research article we often relied on has disappeared from the library website, so we need to look at the direct text and analyse who is covered by what.

In terms of why this matters, Award coverage and classification levels form the basis for employee entitlements. Classification tells us what level we’re on. Pay points tell us within that level what pay point we’re at, governed by clause 13.3 of the SCHADS Award. It also tells us how we may be eligible to progress from pay point to pay point. We also need the determination of whether an employee is a shift worker or a day worker to complete that piece of the puzzle.

If it’s wrong, we’re not compliant. That’s a big deal when we think about criminal liability for underpaying staff, and fines for non-compliance. We want to make sure this foundation is correct.

There’s a significant variance in rates of pay between the Home Care sector versus the SACS sector, and the way certain provisions are applied. For example, if we’re working in community services in SACS but not in disability services, we can’t use broken shifts. This is why it’s important to get stream and sector determination right so we are building from a strong foundation.

In terms of classification and pay point progression, I often get asked what comes first. Do I look at someone’s classification or do I agree on a rate of pay and then match it? What I see happen is we find a candidate, agree on a rate of pay, the deal is done, then we go back to the Award, find the closest rate, and that becomes their classification. A lot of people do that, and it’s back to front.

We need to start at the classification level first. I read those classification schedules almost as if they’re a position description. I look at the role, qualifications, experience, tenure, supervision structure, and where the role sits in the organisation. From there we determine a classification level. You can pay higher than the minimum for that level, but that classification tells us the minimum and what other entitlements are calculated off.

I also get asked if we have to progress through pay points every 12 months. Referring to clause 13.3, there has been a recent case law decision clarifying what clause 13.3 means. The key point is that every 12 months an employee is eligible. The word is eligible, not entitled. It then sets out criteria that may apply.

What does that mean in practice. Do I need to put someone’s rate of pay up every year. Rates of pay will go up at end of financial year, so you should have those updates in payroll systems. Pay point progressions happen on someone’s anniversary, so it is different per employee. The most conservative approach is to progress someone each year and they will stop at the ceiling of the highest pay point. They won’t move to the next level.

However, if there are grounds and a good reason to hold someone back, systemise that process. On their anniversary, do a pay point progression review, complete a checklist, and communicate with the employee transparently to say yes you’re going up, or no you’re staying the same and this is why. That simple system can mitigate a lot of risk and help ensure you have the right rate of pay for each employee.

The last piece of the puzzle for each employee’s rate of pay under the SCHADS Award is being confident whether they are a day worker or a shift worker. Under the Award, an employee is a shift worker if the employer advises them in writing that they are a shift worker.

We know that day workers span 6:00 am to 8:00 pm Monday to Sunday. Afternoon shifts generally finish after 8:00 pm and before midnight Monday to Friday. Night shifts finish after midnight and commence before 6:00 am Monday to Friday.

Here is a scenario to test your knowledge of how this matters.

Sarah is a part-time day worker scheduled to work Tuesday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. Her manager asks her to adjust her shift time on the day to 3:30 pm to 11:30 pm due to a staff shortage and Sarah agrees. She has a 60-minute break in there as well. How does this affect what Sarah gets paid for that day.

If we think about it as a day worker, because this shift goes after 8:00 pm, all hours worked after 8:00 pm are considered overtime. It’s not a night rate penalty because she is a day worker. Anything outside the span of 6:00 am to 8:00 pm will be paid at overtime rates. That could also impact guarantees of ordinary hours, because overtime hours are not ordinary hours.

If Sarah was a shift worker working this shift, the entire length of the shift would be paid at the afternoon shift rate, a 12% loading. Not just from 8:00 pm onwards, but from 3:30 pm for the whole shift. We can see how if we’ve incorrectly classified someone, we are incorrectly applying loadings and overtime to each person’s shift. We need to make sure that’s correct in our systems.

Maximum and minimum hours of engagement is where we move to next. The default maximum hours is eight hours. The Award allows us to increase it to ten, but it needs to be by agreement. From a recordkeeping perspective, where does that agreement live, where is that written. We like incorporating every Award “by agreement” clause into a contract of employment so we can roster someone up to ten hours without creating a headache.

For minimum hours of engagement, generally we are looking at two hours. However, if you are a SACS employee and you’re not performing disability services work, we are looking at a three-hour minimum engagement. Even if we have a team member providing one hour of support to a client, the Award dictates they get paid for a minimum of two. We want to look at this when auditing rosters to ensure people are being paid entitlements and to reduce risk.

Here is a common scenario. John is a part-time disability support worker scheduled to work a three-hour shift from 10:00 to 1:00. At 11:00 he receives an urgent call from a neighbour saying there appears to be flooding at his house. John calls his team leader and receives approval to leave work early after just one hour of his shift.

How are we meant to pay this. As an employer, we have met the minimum engagement requirements because John was rostered for a three-hour shift. However, what that should look like as the roster flows through to payroll is making sure the last two hours are accounted for with a particular type of leave, depending on the circumstances. That could be approved personal carer’s leave, annual leave, unpaid leave, or if it is leave without pay or a casual employee, we still want to flag the original shift from a recordkeeping perspective. We don’t want to lose that as part of our trail.

Under Fair Work Act recordkeeping obligations, we must be able to produce timesheets, rosters, and payslips for seven years. Do we feel comfortable that we have something that shows John was rostered for the three hours originally. It’s important that’s accounted for in our systems.

Broken shifts and meal breaks. Generally we are across clause 27, which deals with meal breaks. Working in excess of five hours, we are entitled to an unpaid meal break of 30 to 60 minutes. If we need to work during that break and beyond, we may be looking at overtime. The clause does have some common sense where an employee is having a meal with the client as part of their normal work routine, and we can pay that at ordinary rate and count that as time worked. Systems often note this as “meal had with client”.

If that’s what a meal break is, what is a broken shift. It’s not defined in the Award, which makes it difficult.

When working out whether time is an unpaid meal break or paid with the client, I like to look at the period of time and ask, is that mine. Can I leave the site, do a quick run, whatever it might be. If that time is my own, I’m comfortable with that being unpaid. If I need to stay on site with the client, even if they are resting or having downtime, we should look at that as paid through the break period.

I recommend making expectations clear through a breaks policy, whether standalone or incorporated into a rostering policy framework, so team members are clear and we don’t create liability down the track.

When we move into broken shifts, we need to look at the clause that tells us who they can apply to. Broken shifts can only apply to SACS-based employees if they are undertaking disability services work, and they apply to Home Care employees. Outside of that, other people covered by the SCHADS Award cannot use the broken shifts provision.

When looking at a broken shift, we need to pay the broken shift allowance, set out in clause 20. That amount will go up with the new financial year. We need to make sure each part of the shift meets minimum shift requirements. In a broken shift, it is a minimum of two hours for each part. If we break it into three parts, that can only be done by mutual agreement with the employee and there is an increased broken shift allowance.

We need to consider the span of hours over a broken shift. A broken shift can only span 12 hours and after 12 hours we are paying double time, a 200% penalty payment. That is calculated as double time of a permanent rate. If casual, we add the 25% casual loading. This is considered ordinary time earnings for payroll, not overtime, so payment codes in payroll need to be separated.

For example, if a broken shift is 6:00 am to 9:00 am and then 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm, that last hour takes us into the 200% penalty payment because we started at 6:00 am. Anything after 6:00 pm attracts that rate. We need to be strategic with how we roster broken shifts.

Can we have a sleepover and a broken shift. The Award is silent on this. Generally speaking, they don’t mix. With the 12-hour span of hours, putting a broken shift before or after a sleepover will quickly push into hugely inflated wage cost, which isn’t sustainable. Maybe in dire scenarios, but we should never see a broken shift and a sleepover together on a template roster.

Sleepovers are a common shift structure. Under the SCHADS Award, a sleepover is when an employee is required to sleep overnight at the premises where the client is located and it is not a 24-hour care shift or an excursion.

There is a sleepover allowance, currently 57.99, which will go up next week. That covers being away overnight. It does not cover any work to be performed. We need to pay the sleepover allowance.

We need to roster a minimum of four hours either before or after a sleepover. To be clear, that is not two hours on one side and two on the other. It must be four hours together on one side or the other. This has been confirmed by the Fair Work Ombudsman as a matter of interpretation.

The other side does not need to abide by a minimum engagement rule. It could be no hours, one hour, two hours, or three hours. The other side does not have that minimum to abide by.

For example, you might have a sleepover that consists of active supports between 6:00 pm and 10:00 pm for an evening routine. Then you have a sleepover period for eight hours.

Important information

This webinar is provided for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal, industrial relations, or human resources advice. The information shared reflects the position and understanding at the time of recording.

Workplace laws, Fair Work decisions, awards, and compliance obligations can change frequently and may vary depending on your specific circumstances.

Before making any decisions that may affect your business or employees, you should seek independent, professional advice tailored to your situation. For further support, guidance, or tailored HR advice, contact our team.