The SCHADS Award Changes
The Fair Work Commission has announced significant changes to the Social, Community Home Care and Disability Services Industry (SCHADS) Award.
If you’re providing services in the NDIS or Aged Care sectors, you’ll need to be across them before going live on 1 July, 2022. Here’s what you need to know…
Minimum 2-hour shifts for disability support workers
- There are minimum engagement periods for part-time and casual workers.
- Social and community services employees (excluding those undertaking disability support work) is 3-hours.
- For all other employees, the minimum engagement period of 2-hours applies.
- A transition period of 1 Feb to 1 October will allow you to negotiate shift changes with your employees.
Broken shifts to be paid
- A ‘broken shift’ is defined as a shift that includes at least 1 break (non-meal) in a 12 hour period.
- Broken shift rules apply to support worker employees who undertake disability service and home care employees.
- You may only roster an employee to work a broken shift of 2 periods of work with unpaid break (excluding meal breaks).
- You can come to an agreement with an employee, where they agree to work a broken shift of 3 periods of work, with 2 unpaid breaks (other than meal breaks).
- Payment for a broken shift will be at ordinary pay. Weekend, overtime and public holidays will attract the appropriate penalty rates.
- Employees will now be paid an additional allowance of 1.7% of the standard rate (per broken shift) or 2.25% of the standard rate for two unpaid breaks in shifts over a 12-hour period.
Cancellations
- You cannot withhold payment for a cancelled employee shift. However, you can direct employees to perform other work during rostered hours. The pay rate must be equal (or greater).
- You are permitted to cancel a shift. In such circumstances, there are several provisions you must adhere to – these can be found by visiting fairwork.gov.au.
Overtime
- You must make it clear that additional working time for employees is ‘voluntary’.
- Remuneration terms should be reviewed if employees are required to do this regularly. An employee can request this from you in writing.
On-call Allowance
- Employees must be paid for time spent working ‘remotely’ outside their ordinary hours of duty.
- A sliding scale will help you calculate the minimum payments for employees who perform remote work outside of their rostered hours and designated shifts.
VisiCase’s Award Technology
VisiCase’s Award Awareness and Award Interpretation features help providers apply up-to-date and accurate Award management, easily and consistently – this includes changes to the SCHADS Award.
Payroll Module
VisiCase’s Payroll and Award Module has to be set up in a way that is aligned with external payroll system that your organisation is using to pay employees.
Award Awareness (AAW)
VisiCase can be set up for simple collection of timesheet hours, allowances and other entitlements. Using our Award Awareness (AAW) feature, the system refers to the use of Awards in the context of rostering – future / planned activities such as 1 to 1 sessions, group activities, house/facility shifts.
Because it’s based on rostering, AAW provides estimates. This means VisiCase calculates the rates at the time of rostering and any interpretation needs to be done manually or by your Payroll system.
AAW Functions:
- Supports the SCHADS Award or other Awards such as Nurses or Enterprise Agreements.
- Support for contracted hours per employee.
- No support for allowances.
- Calculates overtime status for allocation.
- ‘Optimised employee utilisation’ based on contracted hours.
- ‘Optimised employee allocation’ based on their hourly rates.
- Collection of worked hours on mobile timesheets.
- Timesheet reporting (without allowances).
- Standard timesheet extract (without allowances).
Award Interpretation (AIN)
AIN is a more accurate calculation as it’s based on actuals (because the data is historical such as the daily amounts that someone will be actually paid.
VisiCase can interpret working hours based on award rules. can calculate payments based different variables, including knowing when the employee’s shift starts and finishes; whether the employee was on-call, had breaks or had a sleepover; and if there were certain entitlements to be taken into account.
AIN Functions:
- All functions from AAW
- Support for award allowances
- Collection of Allowances on mobile timesheets
- Support for public holidays
- Timesheet reporting – w allowances
- Interface to the payroll system
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To keep up with ongoing compliance requirements, VisiCase recommends its partners at Amergin who monitor regulatory and legislative changes – visit Amerginhub.
For more information and a full list of the changes, we recommend visiting the Fair Work Commission’s Determination (Jan 2022).