Employees are the most valuable asset to any business. Ensuring you have the right pay rules set up to calculate and process wages correctly is essential, not only from a legal perspective but also in terms of job satisfaction and maintaining a positive workplace culture.
However, with over 100 different industry and occupation awards in existence in Australia alone, it’s easy to get it wrong when using outdated, manual or paper-based systems. This leaves you vulnerable to errors and unmanaged leave requests, putting you at risk of overpayments or an overall lack of visibility of staff leave and accruals.
Even worse, underpayments can happen, and the last thing a business needs is to land in hot water due to underpaying their staff.
Keeping up to date and on top of pay rates, leave liability, accrual, and entitlements, in addition to what can seem like never-ending legislative changes is an enormous challenge. Industries that employ shift workers are in a constant battle with changing rates and pay rules, some having to navigate differing pay rates for employees based upon specific qualifications and licences.
Recent wage and award changes in Australia and New Zealand include:
- Australia’s 2021 Annual Wage Review
- New Zealand’s Fair Pay Agreements system
- Casual employment terms (Australia)
- Loaded rate arrangements (Australia)
Managing multiple locations, and a workforce in the 1000s? Award rules can and do differ between jurisdictions, with the same role having varying pay rates and conditions dependent upon the state of operation.
Whether you’re going from paper to digital, or looking for a solution that integrates with your current systems processes this article outlines ways you can ensure you pay employees correctly, with minimal fuss and effort.
Pay rules – key considerations
Finance teams have a lot to consider ensuring employees are paid correctly. Firstly, it’s a business’s responsibility to make sure the modern award standards, industry, or occupation-based minimum employment standards are met.
Luckily, Fair Work Australia is your one-stop-shop for staying up to date with the legislation.
Additionally, employers must met the National Employment Standards (NES). The NES entitlements relate to, annual leave, minimum weekly hours, long-service leave, and public holidays, just to name a few. Business owners have the challenge of staying on top of any changes to award conditions, which recently have included changes such as the national minimum wage and the changes to casual employment laws.
Without an effective system in place, it’s almost impossible to stay on top of all of the variables and changes that can apply to your workforce. With non-compliance leading to fines and additional administrative time to correct errors such as overpayments and miscalculations, this is a risk you simply can’t afford to make.
The first step in transitioning into a more effective system for managing pay rules and leave entitlements to ensure your employees are always paid correctly is transitioning from a paper-based system to a digital system. For teams where manually processing leave requests causes considerable errors, the switch to digital is a smart move for businesses that are looking to streamline their processes.
Another benefit of the transition from paper to digital is that software-based pay systems provide business owners with a more accurate overview of the operational aspects of their business. Software allows business owners to track current and future leave clearly, providing accurate data across all shifts.
How Ento can help
Ento’s provides finance and payroll teams with easy-to-use solutions to managing pay rules. Our software takes pay rates, rules and any relevant leave and entitlement obligations, applying to all relevant employees with the simple click of a button. This can then be fed into your rosters to calculate labour costs, exported as a report, and synced to your payroll provider.
Staying up to date and complying with pay rules is more important than ever. Making sure you have the right system in place will give you peace of mind, especially if you’re a business on the path to reopening and kicking operations up a notch. Interested in how Ento can support your business, streamlining your pay rule and leave processes? Get in touch with our team to set up your free consultation today.
