Creating Confidence In How Australians Are Paid

Fair Work Update : Newsbite

Fair Work is building an API for award pay rates

The Fair Work Commission is nearing the finish line on an API that will allow businesses to call up wage and entitlements data for awards, potentially helping prevent underpayments to employees.

The commission began the project after receiving funding in last year’s federal budget to connect business software providers and other umpires directly to its modern awards pay (MAP) database.

The MAP database was created in 2019 to support the annual wage review – one of the FWC’s core functions that sees an expert panel set the minimum wage rate in Australia each year.

Trudy Jones, assistant director for the FWC’s modern awards, economics and research section, said the API – which is still undergoing final tests – had been designed to “encourage innovation”.

“People [will] have access to that source of truth through the API and integrate and automate their systems,” she told the Melbourne School of Government’s digital government festival.

With the “huge reliance on modern awards across Australia in terms of people’s entitlements”, the API also promises to reduce underpayments for employees.

She cited Australian Bureau of Statistics data that shows around 2.6 million employees getting their rates from an award in Australia, with many others “indirectly affected by those awards”.

“We really saw there was an opportunity to use a digital solution to make that easier because the consequences of not getting the rate correct, of non-compliance, is so significant,” Jones said.

“There are significant penalties that employees face and also, the employees would face an underpayment if that rate was not paid correctly.”

Jones said the API leveraged the MAP database – a “centralised repository for storing all the pay rates, allowances, penalties and overtime”.

“We needed to centralise the way in which we store those calculations because we need to recalculate them each year in the annual wage review,” she said.

Prior to the arrival of the MAP database, the FWC used a manual process that involved capturing calculations on spreadsheets and transferring them to legal documents and determinations.

Jones described this as a complex process with Australia’s 155 awards – 121 of which are industry and occupational awards – in its workplace relations system.

Businesses too are currently required to transcribe business rules into software from documents to generate rates of pay.

Matt Lewis, managing director at Canberra-based consultancy Capability Wise, who also worked on the project, described this process as “tedious” and “fraught with opportunities for human error”

In developing the API, the FWC conducted a series of workshops with more than 60 organisations and individuals, including peak bodies, unions and software provider, over a 12-week period.

The co-design process was followed by a 12-month build phase using a “large public cloud API gateway platform”.

As part of alpha, the team “put some foundation” in place, and “prototyped some high risk, complex requirements, and refined both the solution architecture and our data validation techniques”.

“The data coming from this API needs to be trusted and we need to make sure that what’s going into it is 100 percent,” Lewis added.

Moving to the beta phase, the team built out the functionality in two-week sprints and conducted testing on “everything that was coming through every cycle”, first internally and then with users.

“That [user acceptance testing] started around sprint two, and we invited those parties inside the fold to see what we were producing,” he said.

Nearing go-live

Lewis said the project is currently “nearing completion”, with go-live expected to be timed after the annual wage review, which will require a change management process at many organisations.

The go-live was also complicated by phase two of the single touch payroll, which some organisations in the account and financial management space are still “finishing off”.

“Realising this new capability so close to the annual wage review creates risks… so those inputs influence our decision around go live timeframes,” he said.

Some of the immediate use cases for the API could include employers determining the classification of an employee when the join the business, during a “payroll run” and employee termination.

But in the future, the API could also be used to help businesses undertake “roster planning or model the cost of a new employee”.

“Those are the kinds of innovative things that potentially can spin off this,” Lewis

Fair Work Commission (FWC) : Newsbite

Bullying tactics: Bullying allegations used as a tactic to direct attention away from an employee’s misconduct

It is not uncommon for employees to raise allegations against Employers in order to divert attention away from, or attempt to excuse their own misconduct.

In?Trika v Home@Scope Pty Ltd?[2022] FWC 749, the Fair Work Commission (FWC) has defended an Employer’s decision to dismiss an employee after he left his overnight shift early without authorisation.

The Employer managed and operated independent supported living facilities for disabled clients. The employee worked at a group home as a Disability Support Worker.

In February 2021, the Employer commenced an investigation into allegations of misconduct by the employee, including that the employee breached its code of conduct and other policies by engaging in inappropriate behaviour towards residents. The allegations included that:

• During one of his rostered shifts, the employee refused to help his colleague and left his shift early during the busiest time of the day. His departure left his colleague to attend to and take care of five clients alone, one of whom required one-on-one care at times.
• During the same week, one of the residents expressed dissatisfaction with the employee stating that she didn’t want him coming back and that the employee would not let her leave her room for a cup of tea.
• Other residents alleged the employee engaged in inappropriate restrictive practices including prohibiting some residents from leaving their bedroom before 7am and not allowing them to watch TV or listen to music.

In response the employee claimed that he was constantly bullied and harassed by his colleague and this was a significant factor contributing to his decision to leave his shift early.

The investigation concluded that the employee failed to:

• follow all policies and procedures related to his employment;
• carry out his duties;
• comply with legislation; and
• consider his own safety and the safety of the residents.

The Employer subsequently commenced a disciplinary process against the employee based on the investigation findings.

Although the employee disputed the allegations and the Employer was satisfied that the employee had engaged in serious misconduct and dismissed him.

Subsequently, the employee lodged an unfair dismissal claim.

In determining whether there was a valid reason for his dismissal, Deputy President Masson considered the significance of the employee’s conduct in leaving his shift early, in the context of the needs of the residents, noting that one of the residents was suffering from deteriorating health and needed one-on-one care at times.

DP Masson noted that the employee’s departure increased the risk to a group of vulnerable residents and the employee’s attempt at downplaying this risk suggested the employee did not grasp the gravity of his conduct.

In regard to the employee’s claims of bullying, he found that the credibility of those claims was undermined by the following:

• no formal complaints were ever made prior to the incident;
• it was not until the investigation was conducted that the employee provided a detailed list of instances of bullying; and
• he had previously claimed that he had no issue with other employees.

While the employee denied raising the bullying complaints as a defence tactic against his conduct, DP Masson was unconvinced.

DP Masson was of the view that the employee “confected and exaggerated” his claims to excuse his own conduct which raised a question as to his credit and honesty as a witness.

After finding that the employee’s conduct in leaving his shift early established a valid reason for dismissal, and the disciplinary process undertaken by the Employer was procedurally fair, DP Masson dismissed the employee’s unfair dismissal application.

Lessons for employers

This case will be of some comfort to Employers when dealing with employees who raise their own counter allegations or grievances during a disciplinary process.

Information provided in this blog is not legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Workplace Law does not accept liability for any loss or damage arising from reliance on the content of this blog, or from links on this website to any external website. Where applicable, liability is limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.

Payroll Podcast : Talking Payroll with Josh and Brad from Earnd

In this episode, Tracy speaks with Josh Vernon and Brad Joffe of Earnd.?If you are as skeptical as she was about earned wage access, then this episode is for you.?To say I got an education is an understatement…!

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Questions: We pay the June 2022 payroll on the 2nd of July 2022. What rate of Superannuation do we pay?

Answer: The super guarantee (SG) rate will also increase from 10% to 10.5% on 1 July 2022. You'll need to use the new rate to calculate super on payments you make to employees on or after 1 July, even if some or all of the pay period is for work done before 1 July. The SG rate is legislated to increase to 12% by 2025.

Make sure you update your payroll and accounting systems so that you continue to pay the right amount of super for your employees .

https://www.ato.gov.au/Business/Business-bulletins-newsroom/Employer-information/Get-ready-forsuper-changes-from-1-July/#:~:text=The%20super%20guarantee%20(SG)%20rate,increase%20to%20 12%25%20by%202025.

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