How to classify employees under awards

How to classify employees under awards

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How to classify employees under awards

confused employer

The problem

Most employees in Australia are covered by a Modern Award. These set out the rates of pay applying to different occupations or work covered by that award as well as lots of other conditions of employment like allowances, penalty rates and overtime. Not complying with modern awards is a breach of the Fair Work Act and can attract very significant penalties as well as embarrassment with staff and in the broader community.  It is therefore very important that employers understand which Award covers the work their employees perform and what their entitlements are under those Awards.

A common frustration for employers is classifying employees. All Modern Awards have a classification structure that applies to employees based on the work they perform, a qualification they use for their work or a certain level of competency in the industry and via that classification structure the employees’ pay and entitlements are determined.

Generally, the way that you determine how employees are classified would be by doing the following:

Find the correct Modern Award

All Modern Awards have a coverage clause that dictates the type of work or industry that the terms of the Award apply to. While it may seem easy to identify the Award that covers employees based on the work of the employer there can often be stipulations or exemptions that mean certain employees or work are not covered by that Award. There can also be multiple awards applying to one employer.

For example, a civil construction business has a workforce that includes plant operators and labourers, forepersons, managers, engineers, surveyors, estimators, clerical staff, mechanics and truck drivers. That means that the following Awards would apply to various staff:

  • The Building and Construction General On-site Award 2020 
  • The Professional Employees Award 2020
  • The Surveying Award 2020
  • The Manufacturing and Associated Industries and Occupations Award 2020
  • The Clerks – Private Sector Award 2020
  • The Road Transport and Distribution Award 2020 and
  • The forepersons would be award-free.

So what you need to do is look for awards that might cover your particular industry and then awards which might cover particular occupations or capacities that you employ people in.

Classifications

After determining which Award applies to your business you then need to match your employees against the classification structure.

Each Award defines ways that employees are classified against a pay scale. There is no universal classification structure and different Awards do it in different ways.

Some of the different classification structures include:

  • Competency based – Employees are assessed against a competency system and once they prove competent at certain tasks or jobs they would move up the classification structure. i.e. an employee that can perform three tasks competently is more valuable that one who can only perform two.
  • Work based – This system matches employees against the highest value work or task that they perform in the classification structure. For instance, an operator of an excavator would have a higher classification depending on the amount in tonnes that it can hold in its scoop.
  • Qualification based – Employees in fields where a certain level of education is required will be classified based on the highest level of qualification that they are required to use during the course of their work. This is common in fields like IT, accounting, and medical professions among others.

After you have determined which level an employee fits into you can then work out what their pay and entitlements are under the Award.

While we lay it out as simply we can here this can be a daunting task especially when some employers have little knowledge of Awards and how they work.

Need help?

Give us a call on 1300 108 488 or email enquiries@ridgelinehr.com.au to arrange your free first consultation to see how we can help with advice and support on this or any other HR matter

CONTACT US

Ridgeline Human Resources Pty Ltd
ABN : 24 091 644 094

enquiries@ridgelinehr.com.au

6 Ellesmere Ave, Croydon Victoria 3136

1300 108 488

PARTNER LINKS

Smilsafe

TELL US WHAT YOU NEED HELP WITH

Using PERMAH for your POSITIVE DUTY

Using PERMAH for your POSITIVE DUTY

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Using PERMAH for your POSITIVE DUTY

example flexible working arrangement

Above image is courtesy of The Wellbeing Lab/Michelle McQuaid Group.

 

Background

Under Workplace Health and Safety laws, a positive duty to eliminate or control psychosocial hazards has been imposed on all persons conducting a business or undertaking.

This means that the traditional compliance approach of issuing a policy and procedures, providing them to workers, requiring their compliance with them and acting on incidents or breaches when they are reported is not adequate any more.

It is necessary to conduct a thorough risk assessment to see whether any risks from each of the 14 psychosocial hazards in the Model code for managing psychosocial hazards published by Safe Work Australia and as set out in legislation enacted by each State or Territory.

There is also a duty to consult workers at each stage of the process and especially in relation to identifying risks and designing and implementing control plans and measures. 

One way to start addressing both the risk assessment and consultation obligations is to survey workers with an appropriate survey instrument. Our choice to do that is the PERMAH Workplace Wellbeing Survey.

Why have we chosen PERMAH?

The PERMAH workplace wellbeing framework is based on the ground-breaking wellbeing theory developed by Professor Martin Seligman as published in his celebrated work “Flourish”.

The PERMAH survey tool has been used by the Australian Human Resources Institute since 2018 as a national workplace wellbeing benchmarking tool and Small Business Victoria as the centrepiece of its small business wellbeing programs.

A unique feature of the PERMAH Survey is that every person who does the survey gets their own individual State of Wellbeing Report plus a template for developing a wellbeing plan plus access to a heap of wellbeing resources….all for free.

Organisations with 30 or more employees can acquire an annual licence and obtain organisational reports which show the aggregated findings on wellbeing in the organisation through the eyes and experiences of its people.

We have a team of people who have undertaken Certificates in Creating Wellbeing and in Leading Psychological Safety and Care and are accredited to debrief people on their PERMAH Survey results.

With the advent of the positive duty to eliminate or control psychosocial hazards, the survey has been augmented with a panel of additional questions specifically related to each of the 14 psychosocial hazards detailed in Safe Work Australia’s model code.

So we believe that the PERMAH Workplace Survey with the Psychosocial Hazard Panel Add-on ticks all of the boxes – it is science-based, it has credibility being used nationally by AHRI, it is affordable, it provides free and practical wellbeing advice and resources to everyone who does it and it addresses the psychosocial hazards in a practical and cost effective way.

How we can we help

Our “Using PERMAH for Positive Duties” service incorporates the following elements:

  • A 12 month licence for the PERMAH Workplace Wellbeing Survey including the add-on psychosocial hazard panel.
  • Ability to undertake the survey as an organisation multiple times during the licence period.
  • Templates and an animated video for communications to employees on the PERMAH Workplace Wellbeing Survey, why your organisation is doing it and how employees can participate.
  • Professional analysis of survey results, provision of a supplementary report and management debrief on the results.

We have the flexibility to package these elements in a variety of ways and to undertake other services such as individual PERMAH debriefings, training programs and facilitated sessions with leadership groups or consultative or safety committees.

Where to now?

If you would like to learn more about the positive duty to eliminate or control psychosocial hazards and your options for addressing it, we’ll be happy to advise you. Just give us a call on 1300 108 488 or email enquiries@ridgelinehr.com.au.

 

 

 

 

CONTACT US

Ridgeline Human Resources Pty Ltd
ABN : 24 091 644 094

enquiries@ridgelinehr.com.au

6 Ellesmere Ave, Croydon Victoria 3136

1300 108 488

PARTNER LINKS

Smilsafe

TELL US WHAT YOU NEED HELP WITH

Managing disconnection from work

Managing disconnection from work

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Managing disconnection from work

example flexible working arrangement

The impending legislated right for workers to disconnect from work outside their contracted working hours has the usual subjects again yelling that “the sky is falling” on employers.

The thrust of the proposed changes is to discourage employers from making unreasonable contact with or demands on their employees outside their contracted working hours, to provide for people to be paid for time worked outside their contracted working hours and to have access to the Fair Work Commission to make their employer stop making unreasonable connection with or demands on them outside their contracted working hours if the Commission finds the employer to be doing so.

There will be exceptions such as if the contact is due to an emergency or for welfare purposes. People who have roles that require them to be on call as a normal feature of their job won’t be an issue as long as the connection is reasonable in that context.

It has also been made clear by the Minister that it would be reasonable to contact relevant employees if a worker did not attend work and the employer needed someone to take their place or for normal rostering purposes.

Of course, if the contact is unreasonable, that might well constitute an unreasonable job demand in any case and therefore constitute a risk arising from a psychosocial hazard under Workplace Health and Safety laws.

Do you need to contact your employees outside their contracted working hours?

For the vast majority of workplaces, the answer is probably “no, other than in the case of an emergency or for welfare purposes” – just what the proposed legislative change says.

Sure, there will be times when you are working into the night and want to get an email off to an employee for their  attention when they come in in the morning ….. but you don’t need them to see it tonight so either delay sending it until the morning or use the scheduling facility on your email service for it to automatically go to the employee’s inbox at the start of their day in the morning.

It really is that easy to manage in most cases.

What about if the employee wants a flexible working arrangement?

One of the arguments that the naysayers are putting up is that this right to disconnect will adversely affect employers’ willingness to offer flexible working hours or hybrid working arrangements.

One of the things that should be covered off in the discussions and agreement about a flexible working arrangement is how communications and connection are going to be managed by the employer and the employee.

For example, let’s say a single mum who is an accounts clerk asks for a flexible working arrangement under which she would work from 9.30 am to 2.30 pm each day and from 8.00 pm to 9.30 pm each night so that she could manage her parental responsibilities in the morning up to school drop off time and from school pick up time through to the children’s bedtime. She might come into the office in the day and do the night work from home.

The arrangement with the night work might be that she can perform tasks which do not require interaction with others (eg data entry, accounts processing, etc) but that anything requiring contact with another person is to be done either by a scheduled email issuing the following morning or deferring that item until she came into the office the next day. 

You should Include that communications protocol in the flexible working arrangement agreement to ensure that it is understood and complied with.

And guess what? That pattern of hours of work becomes that employee’s contracted hours of work so there isn’t an issue of a need for that employee to disconnect in any case because they are working.  

Again, it really is that simple to manage in most cases.

Do you really want to be contacting your employees outside their contracted hours?

Because we live in such a digitally connected “look at it now” world, if you send something to an employee outside their contracted working hours, there are many who will not be able to resist having a look.

If, by having a look, that raises something for them that creates some level of anxiety and that in turn interferes with their state of mind and/or their sleep and/or their leisure time/rest and recovery and/or the relationship with their partner……..well, do you really want an anxious, tired, sleep deprived employee coming into work the next day?

The answer should be self-evident.

Other considerations

As noted above, a failure to ensure that there is no unreasonable connection with employees outside their contracted working hours could give rise to risks associated with psychosocial hazards and Workplace Health and Safety laws require employers to exercise a positive duty to eliminate or control such risks. There are a number of psychosocial hazards that could come into play in this regard. We have a blog and explainer video on each of the 14 psychosocial hazards on our website – you can access them here

Additionally, the Fair Work Commission has just begun a review of modern awards with respect to “Work and Care” and the issue of disconnection from work will no doubt be a prominent issue in considerations in that review. See https://ridgelinehr.com.au/award-review-on-work-and-care-underway/

We will keep you informed of further developments as they occur and ensure that we tell you what the real effects of legislative changes are rather than what the scaremongers would have you believe.

If there is anything here that resonates with you and you would like to explore further, give us a call on 1300 108 488 or email enquiries@ridgelinehr.com.au. We would love to have a chat about it.

 

 

 

 

CONTACT US

Ridgeline Human Resources Pty Ltd
ABN : 24 091 644 094

enquiries@ridgelinehr.com.au

6 Ellesmere Ave, Croydon Victoria 3136

1300 108 488

PARTNER LINKS

Smilsafe

TELL US WHAT YOU NEED HELP WITH

Our Positive People Partner offering

Our Positive People Partner offering

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Our Positive People Partner offering

example flexible working arrangement

The introduction of positive duties to prevent sexual and gender-based harassment and to eliminate or control psychosocial hazards has raised the bar on compliance for all “Persons conducting a business or undertaking”. We believe that these responsibilities are especially challenging for small to medium businesses who don’t have their own specialist HR or WHS staff so we decided to design a solution for them.

You are a small business owner probably with 10 to 100 staff and you want to be a good employer but you are finding it tough to deal with the ever increasing compliance burden and the mental health and wellbeing challenges that some of your people have. You haven’t the training or experience in those things and you need to be focused on operating and growing your business.

1 in 4 Australians will have a mental health challenge this year so the odds are that you have some in your workplace.

The responsibilities that you have as an employer fall into the following areas (as set out in the National Mental Health Commission’s “Blueprint for mentally healthy workplaces”):

  • Protect: identify and manage work-related risks to mental health
  • Respond: identify and support people experiencing mental ill health or distress
  • Promote: recognise and enhance the positive aspects of work that contribute to good mental health

So you know that you need help but you are not sure where you can find all that you need to get this stuff right in a practical and affordable way.

That is where we come in. Ridgeline HR has been operating since 2000 and we specialise in “Helping PEOPLE in BUSINESS with PEOPLE BUSINESS” – from hiring to firing and everything in between”. 

We have the expertise in compliance and workplace wellbeing using a structured approach based in positive psychology to help with the positive duties and other change requirements in an engaging and compassionate way.

This is how our “Positive People Partner” offering works:

  • We effectively become your own People and Culture Manager
  • We visit your workplace on a scheduled basis, typically fortnightly or monthly 
  • We get to know you and your people and learn how we can be of assistance to you and them
  • We educate you and your team about key matters such as the positive duties to prevent sexual and gender-based behaviours and to eliminate or control psychosocial hazards
  • We facilitate the consultation process on key issues like those positive duties with your people so as to understand how your people see these and what issues might be of most significance for them in your workplace
  • We undertake the risk assessments and put together the risk management plans in consultation with you and your people 
  • We design the policies, systems and communications that need to be put in place and educate you, your leaders and your people about how they work, why they are necessary and what their responsibilities are
  • We are available for any of your people to call us for confidential discussions on any health and wellbeing challenge or other concern that they might have
  • We will advise and coach you and your leaders on any issues that you need to deal with in the area of people and culture
  • We provide you with access to our established network of quality employment lawyers and other specialists to help with specific issues as they arise
  • We’ll have a bit of fun along the way.

If you would like to explore our “Positive People Partner” offering further, please give us a call on 1300 108 488 for a free no obligation consultation about your needs and ways that we might be able to help.

 

 

CONTACT US

Ridgeline Human Resources Pty Ltd
ABN : 24 091 644 094

enquiries@ridgelinehr.com.au

6 Ellesmere Ave, Croydon Victoria 3136

1300 108 488

PARTNER LINKS

Smilsafe

TELL US WHAT YOU NEED HELP WITH

Opportunity knocks!

Opportunity knocks!

Latest News & Events

Opportunity knocks!

example flexible working arrangement

So you have new positive duties to eliminate sexual harassment and to eliminate or control psychosocial hazards, right?

And people are telling you that this is another layer of compliance and risk that you have to negotiate as a business owner or manager or find yourself in hot water, right?

What if I told you that, if you really do value and want to care for your people, this is a great opportunity…..to validate what you are doing right as well as to identify ways that you can do it better?

Like most “compliance questions”, it is about your mindset – are your people assets to be cared for or risks to be managed?

What would it look like if we flipped it?

Let’s revisit a few of the psychosocial hazards in Safe Work Australia’s “Model code for managing psychosocial hazards” and picture them as strengths:

  1. The work demands on our people are reasonable physically, psychologically and emotionally
  2. Our people have reasonable control over their jobs
  3. Our people are well supported.
  4. Our people are clear about the roles that they play in our organisation.
  5. People believe that we manage and communicate change effectively.
  6. People believe that they are properly and appropriately recognised and rewarded for the contributions that they make.

And so on for the rest of the psychosocial hazards. 

When you look at them in that way, how many of those statements do you think might be true in your organisation?

Where do you see that there might be opportunities for improvement?

Changing the language can make a real difference to how you look at the subject matter can’t it? 

And guess what – when you see this as an opportunity knocking, you will find it is actually the best way to manage the risks.

How can we help 

We have been encouraging and helping organisations to adopt a positive mindset to improving workplace culture, communications and people practices for many years so, for us, the new positive duty stuff just adds some context to what we have already been doing with our clients. It is nothing new for us and it needn’t be especially challenging for you with the right guidance and support. 

So for us it is just business as usual with a few more tools in the toolkit. 

Need help?

  • Give us a call on 1300 108 488 or email enquiries@ridgelinehr.com.au to arrange your free first consultation to see how we can help with advice and support on this or any other HR matter

CONTACT US

Ridgeline Human Resources Pty Ltd
ABN : 24 091 644 094

enquiries@ridgelinehr.com.au

6 Ellesmere Ave, Croydon Victoria 3136

1300 108 488

PARTNER LINKS

Smilsafe

TELL US WHAT YOU NEED HELP WITH

New code on sexual and gender-based harassment adds to the mix

New code on sexual and gender-based harassment adds to the mix

Latest News & Events

 

New code on sexual and gender-based harassment adds to the mix

example flexible working arrangement

Safe Work Australia has published a new code on sexual and gender-based harassment which makes reference to the positive duty to eliminate sexual harassment and gender-based behaviours that has been legislated nationally under the Sex Discrimination Act. You can access the code here.

It also notes that satisfying your duty under the Sex Discrimination Act doesn’t necessarily mean that you would also satisfy your WHS obligations – for example in relation to the positive duty to eliminate or control psychosocial hazards.

It also makes the point that, if someone is sexually harassed, it is likely that other psychosocial hazards could be in play.

I then got to thinking about all of the different jurisdictions that now have a footprint in the area of sexual harassment and how confusing it must be for people (whether a victim trying to access help or an employer trying to understand their obligations) to work out where to go for what – the picture above tells the story.  

So who does what?

This is what it looks like for Victorian employers and employees.

Firstly, Safe Work Australia which published this code is a national body funded by Commonwealth, State and Territory governments to develop national policy and guidance materials such as codes on workplace health and safety matters. It is not a regulator and has no involvement on complaints or enforcement matters. 

WorkSafe Victoria is the regulator on Workplace Health and Safety matters in Victoria. Complaints of sexual harassment can be made to WorkSafe Victoria and they will investigate such matters in the context of whether there is any breach of WHS obligations.

The Australian Human Rights Commission is an independent authority that investigates complaints about discrimination and human rights breaches. It does accept complaints of sexual harassment and discrimination and can assist in resolution of complaints through a process of conciliation. Since December 2023, it also has inspection and enforcement powers relative to any alleged breaches of the new positive duty on PCBUs including employers to eliminate sexual harassment and other unwanted gender-based behaviour.

The Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission deals with complaints under Victorian Equal Opportunity legislation including those related to sexual and gender-based harassment and provides a voluntary conciliation service.

The Fair Work Ombudsman is the national workplace relations regulator. Part of its role is educational and providing employers and employees on their obligations and rights and legal processes for dealing with such things as sexual harassment. Because there are specific jurisdictions that deal with sexual harassment cases, they are more likely to provide advice on what options a worker has rather than deal with a complaint themselves.

The Fair Work Commission has, for a number of years, had the power to issue “stop sexual harassment orders”. Since March 2023, the Commission has had additional powers enabling it to accept claims of sexual harassment and implement mediation, conciliation and arbitration processes to resolve them.  It is important to note that all workers, not just employees, have access to this jurisdiction.

So what do you do now?

As you can see from the above, this is a very complicated area of law with a variety of pathways that a complainant might take depending on the outcome that they are looking for.

There are a couple of things that all employers need to do. 

Firstly, take the positive duty to prevent sexual and gender-based harassment seriously and ensure that you do what is necessary to meet that duty.

Secondly, ensure that you have access to sound and informed professional advice.

At Ridgeline HR, we can help you with a lot of that and we have a network of specialist lawyers and other professional service providers to assist in complex or specialised areas.

If you would like to explore how we might help you and your business in this or any other area of people compliance and culture, please give us a call on 1300 108 488 or email enquiries@ridgelinehr.com.au to arrange your free first consultation.

 

 

CONTACT US

Ridgeline Human Resources Pty Ltd
ABN : 24 091 644 094

enquiries@ridgelinehr.com.au

6 Ellesmere Ave, Croydon Victoria 3136

1300 108 488

PARTNER LINKS

Smilsafe

TELL US WHAT YOU NEED HELP WITH