Does your organisation have the right tools to navigate the complexities of workforce compliance in Australia?
Across the Fair Work Act 2009 and the National Employment Standards, your organisation must adhere to myriad stipulations that are enforced by the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) to ensure employee safety and fair compensation. As part of these regulations, your company must comply with the industrial instruments appropriate for your business. These may be Modern Awards or Enterprise Agreements, which set out the conditions of employment and entitlements based on industry, occupation, employment type, and location.
With over 100 modern awards and more than 70,000 active agreements to navigate, award interpretation software can help your organisation maintain compliance without increasing your workload. Believe it or not, there are many companies that still calculate employee entitlements manually. Here we give you five reasons to automate this critical aspect of your employment obligations.
Automatically calculate employee entitlements
Once correctly configured and validated, award interpretation software operates in the background, ensuring compliance with the modern awards and agreements applicable to your business. This system requires alterations only when awards or Enterprise Bargaining Agreements (EBAs) undergo reviews to implement the changes in their conditions.
Automation significantly reduces the risk of errors that occur with manual calculation. Australia’s employment conditions include complex rules and regulations, and your business must continually apply varying conditions based on people’s roles, the work they complete and the hours in which they carry it out. Getting these wrong can have legal implications – at minimum, making good on previous errors but also the potential for financial penalties. Correctly configured award interpretation software minimises the risk of this occurring and can have a significant and positive impact on the time taken to obtain accurate results.
Automation also includes other standard business processes, such as payroll exports, at the end of each period. The ‘set and forget’ nature of award interpretation software provides peace of mind and efficiency, reducing risk and enabling better resource allocation.
Applying conditions of employment to scheduling and rostering
Award interpretation software can streamline rostering and scheduling by applying the necessary rules to your workforce management processes. When employment condition checks are built into your rostering and scheduling, you can ensure employees are rostered for the right times, with the correct breaks and have all necessary entitlements considered. For example, some of your team may need to take a certain number of hours or days off between shifts, and award interpretation software will account for this by using scheduling, business, and work rules to validate each roster.
Applying these rules and conditions to scheduling and rostering creates several benefits. It can streamline administrative processes by eliminating the need for managers to manually validate rosters. Automated compliance checking reduces the burden on staff and increases the efficiency and accuracy of the entire scheduling process. For your employees, it can take into account personal preferences. This can lead to fewer requests for changes to their roster, lower levels of daily absence or attrition and can significantly improve job satisfaction.
Compensating employees correctly
Award interpretation software integrates with your existing human resources and payroll platforms to calculate payments based on the specific awards an employee is subject to. For example, Tambla’s solution uses open APIs to support seamless integration, support automatic employee imports and payroll exports, and ensure data integrity and accuracy.
Such integration reduces the need for manual payroll calculations, making those processes more efficient. It reduces discrepancies and errors, which, if left unchecked, can account for weeks, months or even years of incorrectly compensating people for work completed.
When people find issues in their payslips that they need to raise continuously, it also creates more work for your payroll teams to rectify the issue. So, award interpretation software can greatly increase employee satisfaction, as people receive the correct pay for work completed.
Compliance and reporting
Award interpretation software does more than simply apply and monitor award rules; it also alerts your team to potential compliance issues. The software can record changes to the configuration of your award interpretation and associated rules. These records include specific details about who made the changes and when. These records reduce the need for speculation and investigations into potential compliance issues and make it easier to track issues should you need to investigate.
At Tambla, for example, the heart of our Payroll Compliance suite is our Award Interpretation Engine. We use this to calculate pay for a period with the current employment obligations and provide this as a comparison of what was actually paid through a company’s own calculations, highlighting variations and issues across the entire payroll. Detailed analysis views and reports can be used to identify underlying issues and implement corrective actions.
Reporting on your current costs
Award interpretation software also provides detailed cost reports. It calculates costs associated with schedules, rosters, and timesheets in real time, making it an excellent tool for operational budget management. These cost reports provide a comprehensive breakdown by location, region, or business unit, allowing for granular financial insights into your business operations.
The software updates costs in real time, as changes are made to the schedule and rosters and eliminate the need for lengthy, time-consuming re-costing procedures. Having access to such real-time data is crucial for Australian businesses. With up-to-date cost reports, your business can proactively manage budgets, make operational decisions based on real-time data, and get insights into where and how you use your resources.
Conclusion
Correctly implemented award interpretation software is a robust tool that can assist your business in maintaining compliance with Australian labour laws. From automating compliance tasks to applying award rules in scheduling and rostering, it streamlines administrative processes, ensures accurate employee compensation, alerts your business to potential compliance issues, and provides detailed real-time cost reports, contributing to effective budgeting and decision-making.
The numerous benefits it offers underscore why award interpretation software should rank high on the priority list for any Australian business. Navigating complex employment frameworks is arduous, but it becomes manageable and efficient with the right solution.
Why choose Tambla’s award interpretation software?
Designed in Australia, Tambla’s award interpretation software offers precise calculations and payments aligned with your Modern Awards or Enterprise Agreements. With over two decades of continual enhancements, it has the flexibility to handle any number of agreements or labour standards.
Our solution integrates with your existing applications or HR technology stack with open APIs and import capabilities. So, your business can automate data flow and replace manual processes. Visit our Award Interpretation page for more information.
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